EVERYONE is equal.

Essential Question: Why is it essential to acknowledge human value regardless of race?  How are the events in the Latin American Revolutions evidence of this social imperative?

The essential question is extremely important to think about because racism can have a huge impact on how we perceive people.  Just because someone has a different skin color or ethnicity, it does not mean that they are inferior.  Everyone was created equal and therefore everyone should be treated justly.  Racism has been a problem dating far back into our history and it's a shame that it is still a problem in the world today.  The class studied the impact of race on the Latin American revolutions for independence by analyzing summaries on each of the revolutions and by creating timelines to represent each revolution.

Timeline created for Gran Colombia Revolution:

The commonalities discussed in the jigsaw were that all of the countries had a primary goal of achieving independence, it was in the 1800's, and after declaring independence, the first rulers were not in power for very long.  Also, all of the revolutions were successful.  The differences were that the Brazilian Revolution was not very violent while the others were very violent.   Next, the Gran Colombian revolution for independence resulted in several independent countries while the others resulted in one.  Thinking back to the essential question, race was an issue in all three different routes to independence.  It was an issue in the Brazil revolution for independence because the ruler Pedro only appointed peninsulares to high government offices and the other people saw this as discriminatory against other groups so they began to oppose him.  In the Gran Colombian revolution for independence, the people were unhappy with how the peninsulares treated them so the races came together to fight off the common enemy.  Lastly, in the Mexico revolution for independence the Mexicans of Spanish descent were originally seen as inferior to pure Spaniards and the Mexicans of mixed or pure Indian blood would have lesser rights.  Racism was an issue in all three revolutions despite the different routes they each took to gain independence.  

Today, judgments are still made based on race in society all the time.  Especially in movies and TV shows, people with different ethnicity and skin color are constantly made fun of or looked down upon.  A real life example that happened not too long ago was in Cleveland when a police officer shot a 12 year old colored boy because he had a toy air-soft gun.  The cop made the inappropriate assumption that the boy was twenty years of age.  The article also stated that cops tend to look a black boys as less innocent.  This crime probably would have played out a lot differently if the boy carrying the toy gun was white.  The world really needs to take action and stop making judgments based on racism.  Racism has a serious impact on the way we perceive people and this is just one of the examples of a recent event.