It was difficult to watch this week’s video and read the documents for this week. Both the video and the documents brought about feelings of anger and sadness. It is astonishing to see the dark side of human beings. What particularly struck me was how recent slavery is. I definitely always think of slavery as a far off historical event and so changing my perspective and realizing how recent it is was extremely eye opening. Hearing about the quantities of Africans that were brought into the new world for the sole purpose of slavery was shocking. I did not realize that the amounts were so huge especially in comparison to the amount of Europeans that lived in the New World. Although, North and South America have advanced in fighting for racial equality, I do not think equality has been achieved. I believe the United States needs to fully acknowledge their history of slavery in their education system. They could learn from Germany and how the German education system honestly teaches students about the holocaust and the Second World War. It is disgusting to see that in 2017, there are neo-Nazi protests in the United States and that their president calls some of these protestors “fine people”. On the other hand, when NFL players protest peacefully about injustice for African Americans, the president immediately attacks them in a vulgar manner. This is just one example of the many instances of discrimination and the institutional discrimination that still exists in the United States.

Latin America also has much progress to achieve in its fight for racial equality. In my travels to Mexico, I repeatedly notice racist attitudes and comments that persist in their society. Furthermore, I notice that race and social class are intertwined in Mexico. Clearly, North and South America still have to work towards guaranteeing racial equality. I found the document “Women: dedicated to Miss Maria Eugenia Echenique” by Judith, laughable. The idea that women’s dignity would be diminished if they were to be emancipated is completely foolish and I cannot believe that someone would have written a document based on this idea. This document was a window into the past and showed how much we have evolved over the years. Machismo is still a major problem in Latin America. Unfortunately, countless sexist attitudes still persist among men and women. I believe that these sexist attitudes will only be fully eradicated once parents raise their children without gender bias and without passing down sexist attitudes. It seems that sexism is learnt in the home and so education is the best way to combat these toxic and harmful attitudes. I really hope that Latin America continues progressing in its fight to achieve racial and gender equality. Gender equality would help alleviate issues of violence, and poverty, and it is simply necessary because it is what is right. Every human being is equal and should not be subject to different treatment because of race or gender. I’d like to discuss whether anyone has noticed racism or sexism in their experience living or travelling in Latin America.