Week Four

            This week in class, we talked about race and the impact that it had on newly independent Latin American countries. In Professor Stark’s class we spent a lot of time talking about Cuba and their fight for independence. I found it interesting that most of Cuban defeats were because Spain turned the Cuban war for independence into race wars. Spain was able to divide the people of the country and put them against each other based on their different races. I also found it surprising that people had different ideas of what race was. Some people saw it as a classification based on the color of one’s skin, some thought it was classified by being cultured and uncultured, and others did not even consider the idea of there being separate races.

            I found our discussion of race, specifically when reading Jose Martí’s “My Race,” something that could be applied to nowadays. Although some would beg to differ, there are still racists in the United States today. Martí, however, says that there essentially are no races, and that everyone is united under one nation.

             From personal experience, I recently went to a restaurant when I was home over Christmas Break, and encountered a group of men who ordered after me. While I was waiting for my food, I heard them start yelling, saying that they weren’t going to be served by a black man (although they used a more derogatory term instead). I was so surprised and upset that even in our age, there are still people who are unable to look past skin color and are willing to make a scene to express their “superiority.”