Arizona Immigration Law SB1070... That's Racism!!

As being Latina so many times I've witnessed the racism that sad to say still exists in this country. Discrimination and racism against people just because where they come from, their skin color, or in other words many times for the simple reason of not being white. The same way that I've witnessed racism, I've also witnessed the white privilege that people have. Even though for many people this happens unconsciously, personally I think that this are advantages that white people have over the rest of people. From my own experience many times I get this surprised looks at me when I tell people that I am from Mexico. Most of the time people will say to me: "Really? How come? You're white." Of course what I answer is that not all Mexicans are brown as most people think. It's really sad to see how people can judge others just because of their skin color.
An issue that's been going around these days is the Arizona Immigration Law SB1070 that was passed on April 23rd. I'm not going to talk about immigration and illegal people here, since I believe this is not really the focus in our class but I do have to say that I think the pass of this law is an act of racism. To get familiar with it what this law requires is that all immigrants need to have their documents with them to verify their status, but this law also gives police officials an authority to stop a person if is there enough suspicion that the suspect is not a legal resident. Why is this racism? Well the question that is brought up is: How are police officers going to suspect that a person is not a legal resident? How are they going to know this for sure? Well the answer goes back to the fact that the only way for a police officer to stop someone will be because of the skin color they have, or according to their physical features and characteristics the place they come from.

I found these images by going to yahoo and just typing Arizona Immigration Law and this picture here at the bottom really got my attention. Here we can see a man who painted himself as a white man and then he has "Am I reasonably suspicious?" written all over his body. In other words trying to say that if you're a white person of course you will not be a suspicious suspect and this law will not affect you.


Through all this movement and since this law was passed it seems to be that the most affected people are Hispanics. Of course the law doesn't say that this will be applied only to Hispanics, but Hispanics clearly know that this law is directed to them. I'm sure that the police will not stop a white person but for sure they will stop Hispanics and who knows probably Asians and Black people too. Even president Obama declared this new law as a misguided law. Maybe you will think that I'm saying this because I'm Mexican, but Mexican or not I do believe that this law comes from racist people that want to "go back to the good old days" as we learned in class.

Haven't people realize that we live in the same planet?

Many people think that racism is part of history now. It’s part of the past, but even though when it looks like we have overcome it, this is not true. Sad to say, racism still exists today, and even worse is that from my personal perspective I don’t really believe that there is going to be a day when we will reach an equal treatment for everyone, well at least not the United States. When I say “at least not in the United States” I refer to the fact that many people who live in different countries don’t have to face this problem. The United States is the main country where people from different parts of the world come, and because of that I believe is the country that faces more with racism. For sure people have done a great progress, and the situation is so much better than it used to be back in the past and we can also keep working to make a difference, but this term of racism has been out there for so long that many people still do it either consciously or unconsciously.

Today during class we learned that among all people we have the active racists, who are the ones who are conscious of what they are doing, then we have the passive racists, who are the ones that differentiate people unconsciously or do nothing about a situation, and then we have the anti racists, which sad to say even though we have people that try to do something about it and help to overcome these kind of situations, these people are a very low percent of the population. All the rest of the population falls under the other two categories. As we can see this doesn’t help as much.

From my own experience, me as a Mexican, I didn’t have to face racism or even talk about it until I came to this country. In Mexico everyone was Mexican, everyone was the same, but then you come here and you find out that everyone seems to be different. I’ve seen people, not only from my country but also from different countries and different parts of the world treated differently just because of their race, and it’s not enough to live this in real life but they also have to show it in films. Here we have all these films that most of the time will show people from different races as the villains, servers, robbers, low class workers, making them inferior to others.

Today in class we watched “Boyz N The Hood”. It was hard to watch, and sad at the same time, but we clearly saw examples of racism in this movie. Some of the things that I noticed was that the teacher at the school was white, and something that really bothered me was when she mentioned the word “Indians” and then she changed it to “Native Americans”. Another thing that bothered me from her was when she called the mom of one of the boys and kept asking her questions in a rude way. Other quotes that we hear through out the movie were “black men have no place in the army” and “blacks own nothing”. Even though these came from black people, this was a reality back in those days. Like these movie we have lots more that keep giving out these messages that some races are inferior/superior to others.

I came to this country. I started to meet people from different cultures and parts of the world. Thanks God I never saw them inferior/superior to me. I saw everyone equal, because that’s the way we are. This is the way I was raised. I was raised to respect everyone, I was raised to see our differences as something special that each person has and not something that makes us inferior/superior to someone else, but of course not everyone thinks this way. We’ve been dealing with racism since the beginning of times, and until this point I still don’t see the end of it, will we reach that day when people realize that we live in the same planet?

Media... a lie. The beauty ideal has nothing to do with reality.

It seems to be that in this world everyone is looking for perfection, but how can you find something that doesn't exist? But what kind of perfection are we talking about here? We're talking about having the perfect body image and body figure. I have to say that media is the principal factor that has been in charge of throwing out to people all these wrong and false messages. People get all these messages about how they should look and what kind of people should they be in order to fit the standards.

You have a good body image? Perfect! Now you'll be accepted, you'll get people's attention, you'll get the job, everyone will be after you, you're normal. Not a good body image? Oh no, you better start working on it, that's not good, you're not normal.

It's impressive to see how all these messages can takes us to an extreme situation where we cannot even see reality anymore. In the two images above we see how a "good looking" man and a woman are looking to themselves at the mirror. Even though when it appears to be that they have the perfect body image, they don't see themselves this way. The guy seems to have muscles, but it's not enough, he needs to work out more. The girl seems to be very thin, but she doesn't see herself this way, it's not enough, she needs to be thinner. This wrong ideas many times take us to cross the limit and face the consequences.

All these kind of messages are thrown out and because of this we see all these people trying to meet these expectations and many times where they end up is at the hospitals if they are lucky enough to not to starve themselves to dead. Trying to meet all these expectations takes our time, our energy and even our money. We see all these ads and commercials advertising pills, teas, exercise equipment and who knows what else that assure you that you will get the image that you want if you buy them. Here you have all these people wasting their money in all that stuff that most of the time will not even work. But what happens when we find out that it's impossible to look the way we were told we should look? Well here is where we find all these people who end up having psychological problems, people who are afraid to face the world, people who have low self esteem and lack of confidence and sad to say these include all of those who cannot live with the idea that they look horrible and end up commiting suicide.

All we see in media is far away from reality. All we see in media is tricked, is faked but of course most of us as the viewers will think is the truth. This is what media wants us to believe. In media shapes and sizes are changed, body features from different bodies are combined to create the "perfect" image, body features are enhanced with props, lighting and by computers, any unwanted features are edited out. Everything is a lie. They don't care about how people will feel, what they will do to achieve all these expectations, of course they don't think about the consequences that this huge influences have at all and this is because media is all about money. Media is a lie.

This video I found on youtube shows just some of the tricks that media uses and what technology can do these days. I was carefully looking at it and it's impressive to see how as soon as they focus the lights against the girl's face this causes a dramatic change. I also like the quote they use at the end which says: "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted".