Review of Dr. Michael Benitez Jr. virtual event：Latinidad at the crossroads of race, culture, and COVID-19

On 09/17/2020 1pm to 2pm, I attended a virtual event hosted by Speakout institute with guest speaker Dr. Michael Benitez Jr. The title of the event is called: Latinidad at the Crossroads of Race, Culture, and COVID-19. In today's virtual event, Dr. Benitez talked about the existing issues in latino culture, the meaning of being hispanic, history of latinidad, racism in our current American culture, Afro-latinidad in America, whiteness practice in our American culture. 

                                 Dr. Michael Benitez Jr. lecture slides, 09/17/2020

I like how he introduce the hispanic culture and value to me. First he pointed out a few issues in latino culture. Latino was suffering from their own white supremacy. Also, being honest to each other is not necessary means being nice to other. Another issue is hispanic identity issue. Some people got offended by being identified as Latinas. Meanwhile, Latinas was raised with their own value. He combined with his own personal experience and how he was raised. It was very interesting to me. I don't like the topic regards to COVID-19. He reasoned why hispanic has higher death rate compared to other races. For example, latinos continue to work through the crisis to survive. But I think this explanation should be encouraged. During global crisis like COVID, I think our government should step up and help with people with their financial needs. Lastly, I think since he talked a lot issues regards to white supremacy. I wish he could also include Asian and Native American people in the webinar. He discussed Black community, Afro-latinadad community, Hispanic community. But he forgot to mentioned about Asian Latin community. There are more than 4 million Asian Latin Americans. It is nearly 1% of Latin American's population. 

               U.S. population by race & ethnicity in 2016, population division, US Census Bureau.

In conclusion, I enjoyed learning hispanic culture and value. Also I agree with his point of white supremacy comes from the root of colonized culture background. As a colored ethnic myself, we should search for justice not privilege.