UC Personal Insight: Creativity Anonymous

As a son of first-generation Indian immigrants, stories of hardship were not unfamiliar to me. Hate manifested in the form of chants like "Go back to YOUR country!". Hate manifested in the form of fear- fear of wearing our traditional kurtas or speak in Gujarati outside our home. We silently acknowledged a narrative of silence. It was always safer to keep our cultural beliefs private- and I did so without question.

As I watched the resurgence of racial justice movements, I became aware that I was not alone in my trials against racism, and felt energized to make incremental positive change. However, it was frustrating to see people practice performative activism, like posting black squares on social media, as opposed to genuinely addressing the problems at their root. Upon recognizing this, I decided to do something less performative and more innovative, using my particular strengths to attempt to revolutionize the way we fight for a better society.

Using the coding skills I had developed in my computer science classes, I spent months designing and building a website called Ullulu (ullulu.com) that fulfilled my vision: a website that rates businesses on how inclusive, race-neutral, and tolerant they are in order to determine...