A Class Apart: A Mexican American Civil Rights Story

After watching the movie “A Class Apart: A Mexican American Civil Rights Story”, I realized that I didn’t know much about how Mexico lost part of their land to the United States and about how hard life used to be for Mexican Americans compared to now. I learned about how Mexican Americans were treated in the United States. The movie was mainly about how Mexican Americans were discriminated and they were treated as inferior people. They were not seen as actual “Americans”, but as a second class, calling them names like “shiftless, lazy, dumb, etc.” Another important thing I learned is who was Gus García and what he did for Mexican Americans. His history made a huge difference making people feel stronger. He fought for his people and he didn’t stop until he won. Me being Mexican American makes me

Thinking about the Chicanos movement, all the walk-outs that were happening and people standing for what they believe in happened after García’s and his colleague’s victory on the Hernández’s case. They inspired so many people and for me, that’s one of the most important things. If I could send a copy of this film to anyone in the world I would send it to my friend that lives in Oregon. She grew up with the mentality that “white” people were superior than any other race/ethnicity. Growing up, she was always surrounded by Caucasian people. She told me that the majority of the time, she was the only Mexican American person in a classroom. Maybe one or two other people plus a couple of African Americans, but mainly Caucasian. She told me that there was never equality in the classroom, at least that’s how she felt. She said that most of the attention would be for the Caucasian and the ones that got in trouble the most were the other races. As she got older, she started to be ashamed of her own race. Most of her friends were Caucasian, but she never