Jihadah Martinez

September 16,2016

Before 1776, Americans were under the control of King George III of Great Britain.
During that excruciating period of time our nation had to deal with incredibly high taxes, having
towns burned and destroyed for no reason, numerous murders, and being trialed unfairly by
jury. It came to the point that the people said Enough is enough. and went on to write the
monumental Declaration of Independence, a document that was written by Thomas Jefferson to
let Great Britain know that the American colonies were breaking free of its overwhelmingly
strong grip. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty,
and the pursuit of Happiness (Jefferson.) However, if all people are created equally and given
the same rights why do issues such as racism, homophobia, and sexism still exist and control
how people view one another to this day?
Everyone in the United States and even outsiders are aware that this year's election and
its candidates are not fit to help fix our broken country especially the final two, Hillary Clinton
and Donald Trump. Both candidates have many scandals such as Clintons emails and have
made extremely poor choices in the past. For example, Trumps numerous failed business
attempts or when the candidate mocked disabled reporter, Serge Kovaleski. The list can go on
and on about how crooked both of them are, but one of the most recognizable flaws is how
incredibly racist and ignorant Republican Party nominee Donald Trump is. Ever since he
announced that he would be running for President, Trump has constantly made racist remarks
and assumptions towards Mexicans and other ethnic groups. According to an article from
cbs.news.com regarding Trumps opinion on immigration during one of Trumps ridiculous
speeches, he mentioned the Mexicans that are brought to the United States, When Mexico
sends its people, theyre not sending their best, theyre sending people that have lots of
problems theyre bringing drugs, theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, I assume,
are good people. (Deb.) This caused a huge uproar from many people all over the world
because he had the audacity to make a rude and degrading assumption towards a group of
people who have helped make our world the way it is today from the amazing food to being hard
working and doing the jobs no one else will do. Not all Mexican people are perfect, but then
again no specific ethnic group is and there will always be those who commit crimes and that is a
fact. Bullying and pointing out a single race and picking on them is immature and not something
that a presidential candidate who wants a good reputation would do. Almost always when
Trump speaks its always about Making America great again. what does this exactly mean?
How can this be done if he always mentioning banning others from different countries from
coming and building a wall to prevent people who want to have a better life from coming here?
Isnt the point of moving forward to stop doing what our ancestors did over 200 years ago? Not
letting people who werent born here to even visit loved ones or just see what our country has to
offer is depriving them of what we supposedly stand for. Donald Trumps actions are not
honoring the Declaration of Independence because he isnt not allowing others to have liberty
and happiness due to his stubbornness and lack of knowledge and understanding of those who
arent American. Maybe if he had a dose of reality and realized that his ancestors were not

American citizens and came here illegally he would know the struggle of not having the same
rights as someone just because they were born here or were lucky enough to get citizenship.
Since the dawn of time, women have always been given to short end of the stick. Lets
face it, we were and still are seen as weak, docile, and overly sensitive. All of those traits I just
mentioned are stereotypes that need to stop being believed and told because theyre not true,
plain and simply put. Not only are we seen as inferior, but we also get paid less than men for
doing the same jobs if not a harder and more demanding one! Ariane Hegewisch, a writer for
www.iwpr.org or Institute For Womens Policy Research wrote a fact sheet on the gender wage
gap between men and woman. It states that women who work full time earned 80 cents on
every dollar a man makes (a difference of 20%) for the exact same job. If the pace of change in
the annual earnings ratio continues at the same rate as it has since 1960, it will take another 99
years, until 2059, for men and women to reach parity.(Hegewisch and DuMonthier). In other
words, if women still get paid at this rate which we have since 1960, it will take almost 100 years
for us to get paid at the same rate. It is 2016, the year where pretty much almost everything is
accepted and has been invented, but we somehow still havent been able to make sure that
women get their fair share in the work industry? This is borderline if not considered complete
discrimination because women are not being treated the same way that men are and this is a
clear sign of sexism being a huge issue in our society to this day. Just because we are a
different gender we dont deserve the same amount of money? There is no greater sign of
disrespect in my opinion than this, Im basically being told that Ill never be better or as good as
a man and to prove it Ill be paid less than him. Going to school, getting great grades, and doing
everything else I can possibly do to be able to become what I want in life is hard enough with all
the tough decisions and sacrifices that must be made in order to succeed. In what way is it
possibly fair that a woman should make less than a man and who let this happen? This possibly
could have given some men the mentality that they are better than women. If we, the United
States of America is trying to follow what our Founding Fathers wrote in the Declaration of
Independence then we should start by both women and men being treated equally sooner
rather than later.
Same sex marriage has also been a controversial topic in our country and has only been
legal all over America for a little over a year. In all honesty, I have never understood why it took
so long for two people who are of the same gender that love each other to get married and
continue living their lives. Its not as if it is some strange taboo that just started trending,
homosexuality has been around since the dawn of ages just like heterosexuality not only in
humans, but in at least 450 other species such as apes. A recent survey that was taking this
year by www.pewforum.org polled that 55% of Americans were for same sex marriage unlike
the 37% who still saw it as unorthocox or 58% of women and 52% of men favor same sex
marriage. The main argument that people use to say same sex marriage should not be allowed
just like a lot of other things is because of religion. People love to mention how in the Bible and
in the Book of Leviticus it states that lying with mankind as with womankind (Moses.) is a sin.
However, there are numerous sins that people commit on a daily basis that we dont even seem
to recognize such as wearing makeup, lusting over your favorite celebrity, overeating, or being
jealous of your best friend who just got the new iPhone 7 and you didnt. It should not be
acceptable for people to use the Bible for their convenience when trying to prove others wrong

when they can not even own up to their own mistakes. Always practice what you preach
because there will never be a valid way to justify hypocrisy. In order to improve our nation we all
really need to stop sweating the small stuff and start focusing on the bigger issues that impact
all of us. Regardless of who anyone wants to be with, man or woman, I am definitely not losing
sleep over it and neither should anyone else. Lets focus on other things that are more important
like climate change and our economy, two very important issues that control our lives everyday.
Overall, our country has not made as much significant progress as we should have
considering the Declaration of Independence was written over 200 years ago. Everyday on the
news and internet we hear and read about police brutality, women getting sexually assaulted
and there not being justice for them, and hate against those who love someone who is the same
sex. As I said earlier, the year is 2016 we have already done so much in terms of technology
there should not be a reason why certain people cant get past another persons skin tone. If we
love and respect our country as much as we claim to then we should really follow what our
Founding Fathers set out to do a long time ago. Lets move forward as a nation instead of going
back in time.