Daily Discussion

My government teacher said something interesting the other day. Our class was talking about the upcoming presidential elections and how Hillary Clinton would be running. This then led to my teacher saying how he voted for Hillary Clinton instead of Barack Obama back in 2008. His reason, upon others, for this was because he believes having a woman as a president would have been a more historical event compared to having our first African-American president. He says people still see women in most cases as second class citizens, no matter the race or culture. Do I agree with this statement? I took a minute to form an opinion on this and I am here to share my thought process with you. First, I thought about the recent cases of racial profiling within the police force and how these sort of things are still problems. I also thought about the racial profiling people make when just driving around town or walking across the street. I thought about rivalries between races and I thought about the fact that some still look down on black people as being less educated and incapable of achieving much. I thought about the guy who says he isn’t racist but then “The black guy probably stole it!” comes out of his mouth. Then I thought about the same situations but with women, I thought about the cases of African American, Hispanic, Caucasian, women constantly abused and talked down on by their significant other. I thought about the assumptions people, even women themselves make about their own gender. I thought about the guy who whistled at me the other day while just walking down the street with my friend. I thought about the expectations as women as a whole and the fact that in some workplaces women aren’t even paid the same a their male employees. Yes, of course I know feminism (oh yes that word! It’s not a disease!) is not just needed in America,  think about places like Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, etc. these are just a few of the most unfair countries for women in the world, but although these places are of course very far behind America regarding equality for women, we assume America would be one of the best right? But in a 2013 study it is shown that we aren’t even in the top 10! The gender gap is the widest in the world of politics, and America ranks as the 60th most equal country in that area, which isn’t as terrible compared to others, but still why must we be so far behind! I thought about all of these facts and realized it doesn’t matter if the woman is African American, Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, she is still a woman and so often I see myself and so many other women be put down because of the simple fact; that we were born female. So where does this leave my opinion? Putting away their political views, though Obama and Clinton are both democrats, I do clearly agree with my government teacher to an extent. What do you think?

Would like to point out that in no way am I saying that racism is not a problem any less than sexism today, just mere observations and opinions about the subject at hand. If anyone would like to contribute to this subject please do! -Alexis Carbajal