Spanglish Blog Post - Racial Understanding

​I'm not going to lie, this doesn't have a lot do do with the spanish language, but read it anyway. 

This blog post is about a person who passes, or can be mistaken for another race. Who is this person?

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Martin Sheen, or Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez, is an actor who is known for playing many famous roles. One role he played, has a very personal connection to me. In 1993, he portrayed confederate general Robert E. Lee in the war film Gettysburg

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I was confused. If Sheen is Spanish (he's a first generation American, with his mother being from Spain), why is he playing the leader of the Confederate Army? Why also, did he not look Spanish?


After a long time of reading and thought, I've come to an important and personal conclusion. There's nothing wrong with Martin Sheen. There's something wrong with me. I simply don't know what Spanish people look like. 

So what did I do? What any person would do. I googled "people from Spain" and found pictures of these people: 

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I was confused. If someone told me these people were American, I would believe them. But if someone told me these people were Spanish, I wouldn't. That's because before now, I thought Spanish people looked like this:
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I've come to the realization that no mater how true you may think it is, a generalization is bad. Assuming a person looks, dresses, or sounds a certain way just because they speak a certain language is wrong. 

Again, I apologize for this post having nothing to do with the Spanish language, but I felt that this was important nonetheless. 
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