LAS VEGAS SUN — While growing up in Las Vegas, Yadira Santana observed how her Mexican mother’s heavy accent and dark complexion was a point of ridicule and discrimination for those with whom she interacted. These taunts were Santana’s motivation to go to law school, she said, to help those who “can’t advocate for themselves.” The third-year UNLV Boyd School of Law student said she was struck by those memories of her mother Tuesday as she sat in the U.S. Capitol watching the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for President Joe Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Santana was one of five UNLV law students of color attending the hearings for Jackson, the first Black woman nominated to the high court. “My parents, they grew up very, very poor,” Santana said. “There’s days where my mom told me that she would go to sleep with an empty stomach because her parents just didn’t have any money to buy food, unfortunately. And so when I look at my parents’ background, and I look at the opportunity I had today, who would have ever thought?”