Blog #18 Chapter 22

When reading the section about the fight for independence, I automatically reflected back to the enlightenment period. Mandala and Gandhi were both leaders in this period in order to gain independence for their nation. The reason it reminded me of the enlightenment era was because they were fighting for equality in order for a society to become fair, a path to a more perfect human society. The enlightenment era is still echoing through out many decades, and people are still using the enlightenment ideas in order to start a revolution or many protests to make a change. The only sad part about reading this and reflecting throughout history the people, who stand up against a society in order to make change, change for the better always get assassinated. For instance Gandhi got assassinated for standing up to stop the violence; to make a change for the best, as well as Martin Luther King got assassination when he demanded change for the people of his nationality. These intelligent, brave, and who want to change the world for the better, end up getting their lives taken away. It just ashamed to hear about the leaders for change lives gets taken away, that had big idea that could impact the world greatly, and their ideas plus influence disappear by people who don’t want to accept change for the best. They always encourage a peaceful protest to get their views across, but it seems like the violence gets the best of them and end up taking away their lives. Also when reading the section about Africa the different communities that fought against each other. Mainly the term Afrikaner, reminded me of a book I read in high school my senior year called The Power of One. If I could remember correctly the book is about a boy who is an Afrikaner who wants to be a boxer and his innocence toward the war happening in South Africa against the Afrikaner and the Africans. The boy was not raised as an Afrikaner, but at the end he managed to bring together these to groups. It is a very powerful book and I really enjoyed it I would definitely recommend it to anyone. Also the movie Hotel Wanda is about the division of South Africa. This issues happening all around the World the violence and the violence that the world experience in the past have been made into a lot of movies in order to get a message across to people without it being direct. Race and ethnicity are a major factor in starting protest through change, this is not happening only in on nation but  many nation experience this, and people have not realize this. I think racism is the leading factor in starting this violent protests, this violent protest are ending many peoples life and are hurting/ affecting innocent people. These only create ripples that grow throughout the world and influence and affect other countries. Reading this chapter got the impression the world is in a fight against racism.