Race: White People and Color Purple Essay

What does race means? To me race means where we come from, the color of my skin, appearance and the beliefs I follow. Even though for many people is the skin color or the appearance of a person. Many of the minority races had being treated unequally in the United States since early colonization. Over time there has being an increase of Hispanics, Blacks and Asians, each one bringing new experiences to the country and changing it in a good way. I have learned in my choice unit books, that many people just see someone’s skin color to try to figure out how they are instead of their personality. Most of the characters in those books had experience racism, lack of education, and economic statue. Each of the main characters had different stories, and went through different hardships but there is one thing in common. They come from a different culture and a poor family. Racism is one of the main issues of this country since slavery was introduced to the colonies and so did I saw it in different book and films this year. As I notice while reading The Color Purple whites has most of the superiority and so did man of any race. Sofia a big girl who wasn’t afraid of anyone and always talked back when there was something she didn’t like. One time she met a white woman and asked her if Sofia will like to work as her maid. Sofia refused that offered and so the white woman’s husband asked her again and she refused again, so the man slapped her and so Sofia responded back. At the end she was sent to jail for hitting a white person and was sentenced to work on the white’s family house for many years. She couldn’t see her children for many years or any one from her family. This example shows how many whites have superiority over certain race. Before you didn’t have to be rich, to be superior, you just needed to be white in order to set the rules, vote, and to be free in a few days if there was a crime. In my history class I saw a documentary how an African American 14 years old boy was killed just for talking to a white women and his case to get the guilty men in prison wasn’t that successful, and those men were set free and declared not guilty. After a few days a press told them they will receive money if they told the media the truth and so did the white men confessed and were sent to jail. This was a victory for the boy’s mom, but still they left an empty whole in that boy’s family. This is one of the few cases in the early years that a crime was solve to favor African Americans and many were just forgotten. Now days we have seeing that there is a huge percentage of color people dropping school every day. Many of these kids face pregnancy at an early age, they start looking for jobs, etc. In The Color Purple, Celie was abused by her stepfather and had two kids with him. He always lowered her esteem by telling her she was dumb and fat. She didn’t want to go to school for this causes but slowly she started learning how to read and write because her sister helped her. Later on she created her own store and triumph in life. Also in the film A Better Life we can see how a community of Hispanics has lowered education and many of the gangs are formed inside school. Schools are supposed to represent a safety environment so everyone can learn. The school environment I saw in the film was kind of like a jail. Police was everywhere the school and many kids had tattoos everywhere in their body. Many poor cities are more likely to have a lack of education and many of them are black or Latinos. In Macho, the people in Mexico living in that city were struggling for a job. The ones that had a job didn’t make a lot of money to bring food to their families. Since that’s a big issue, many falls in the hands of coyotes and try to immigrate illegally to its neighbor country which is the United States. Many try to get a working visa but also many fail, and the only choice they had was to travel by the desert. A lot of people died in the process of passing border or they were left to die or they were shot but gang members. In conclusion races are the one that define this country because many of us came from different cultures. We came to the United States to find freedom, which the first amendment allowed to us, also to escape poverty of our countries, and give our family a better future. Many of the families that migrate to this country do it in different forms. Many innocent people face discriminations and racism because of their skin color or how they look. Their communities’ faces lack of educations, many of the schools are not receiving help from the government. Poor communities are the ones that have a lot of diversity including blacks, Hispanic and Asians. This people have hardship looking for jobs and sometimes their only choice is to join a gang. Race has changed this country in different ways, and hopefully in years racism will have a different face.