You Sound Like a White Girl

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When I was about eight, I was playing in a solo color with some friends from school when an indigenous girl approached us to sell candy. One of the light-skinned girls started taunting her, saying she's not like Kaka. The idea comes from a time during the colonial period where there was a caste system and the only way that you could have a better life was literally to marry someone who was lighter skin than you. These ideas come from a very real place of survival and of trying to survive under this very oppressive times. We haven't yet recognized that we're still living under that rule.

When do you feel like you've reached "success"? Julissa Arce is an acclaimed social justice advocate, the author of four books, a former vice president at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, and was named a 2019 Woman of the Year by the City of Los Angeles. But if you ask her, she’s still redefining what success looks like, and if it matters. Julissa immigrated to the United States at 11, and was undocumented for almost 15 years. In her latest book, and in today’s episode, she rejects the idea that assimilation can create belonging and brings success – and asks what we can do instead to reconnect and celebrate all that makes us unique. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts