Growing up in Mumbai, my grandma would walk miles to retrieve water from a well and go years without electricity. Now, she lives in a high-rise building in downtown Chicago, having truly achieved the American Dream. She always tells me how important it is to find your people—especially Indian ones—which is why I joined the Asian Student Alliance (ASA).

Finding your place in high school can be tough. So what better way to make connections than to be in a room with others who share similar experiences to you, especially in ways that are culturally relevant. “Affinity groups are great places for people to talk about their identity,” senior and ASA Co-Head Sebastian Lee-Yee said. “For example, I am Chinese, and although my family doesn’t celebrate Chinese New Year, it’s important to be able to discuss this perspective with someone who might be the opposite, and how it impacts my identity.”

I found Sebastian’s views interesting because I never think too hard about “being Indian.” It’s just another facet of my life. However, junior co-head of ASA Ani Mehta-Shah agrees with Sebastian on the importance of cultural dialogue: “I have always been primarily in white spaces, so coming to Latin and seeing there was an affinity group I could fit in with was cool,” she said.

Clearly, affinities have upsides. What troubles me is that the origin of affinity groups was based on the idea that all non-white groups are inexorably oppressed. America obviously has had shameful periods of discrimination in the past, but today, my friends and I—who are white, Chinese, Indian, Black, Jewish, and Mexican—hardly feel any differences between us aside from our physical appearance. Of course, this may not be true for everyone at Latin. But our entire lives, we have been taught to prioritize the content of our character rather than the color of our skin, and that is how we have tried to live.

Many see oppression as an unending battle, which affinity groups ostensibly help fight. On this point, Sebastian was crystal clear: “The goal is obviously for no group to feel oppressed. [But] I honestly don’t think that’s going to happen in my lifetime,” he said.

Now, I feel the world has come a long way in mitigating racism, but sometimes I wonder if explicitly focusing on our racial differences in clubs might actually cause this progression to go backwards.

When I tell my friends who attend other Illinois high schools about the number of affinity groups Latin has, they are quite surprised. And even within Latin, many students lack any experience with affinity groups. One of them, freshman Lea Lutfi, said, “Why do we have to come together in separate groups? If the point of affinity groups is to unite us, why wouldn’t we do that more effectively by spending time building community schoolwide rather than separately?” Given that we are already in an extremely polarized era—in politics, identity, and culture—is it smart to divide ourselves further?

Ani sees both sides of the issue. “When highlighting that there are oppressed groups, it can also come off in a way where we’re just emphasizing that we are different and that we’re a minority,” she said. “But if you’re looking at it from where Sebastian was seeing it, it’s a positive space for people to come together and talk about their experiences.” While I agree that coming together is positive, I am skeptical that we are doing so in the right way.

I’m not saying that we should get rid of affinities. I just want to raise a question about their long-term consequences. While they provide comfort and validation in the short term within a smaller community, will that sense of belonging translate to a larger environment, such as college or the workforce? Obviously, as a freshman, I do not know. I just hope affinities aren’t providing us with a temporary safety net in our high school years.

My grandma says that one of the most magical characteristics of the United States is that anyone who moves here from any country can quickly consider themselves “American.” Perhaps our school can lean into this principle and create more unifying clubs and activities based on what we have in common, not what separates us. That is a reality I would love to fight for, and one that I think is certainly possible in my time at Latin.