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Ecuador has a history of Spanish colonization of indigenous people that were enslaved, abused, and exploited. Eventually the country adapted the French Neo-Lamarck ideology leading to “mestizaje.” This “mestizaje” began in the sixteenth century where white colonizers began to mix with indigenous to “improve” the indigenous race. Ecuador’s historical background has left the country with a very stratified social environment. This is the nucleus of the stratification of different social classes in Ecuador. There have been many attempts to reduce such stratification such as making indigenous languages official in 1998. The Republic of Ecuador also self claimed itself plurinational and intercultural in 2008 .It is essential to understand the causes of such racial inequality in a given society in order to be able to approach the problem. Understanding the root of the problems also allows us to understand the existence or lack of public policy initiatives. Interestingly enough, structuralist explanations for such inequality is supported by both the minority and dominant groups. Although 19.5% of Ecuadorians believe the economic inequality between the races is due to insufficient work effort from minorities, 47.0% believe it arises from discrimination.

Unfortunately, the widest gap of income inequality in the world is in Latin America. The difference in economic division across ethnicities is a consequence of human capital and discrimination. It can be concluded through research that indigenous people in Ecuador are predisposed to live in poverty and be discriminated against. The percent of indigenous population in Ecuador that lives in poverty differs by 4.5 times that of the non-indigenous population. Education is one of the greatest factors for such economical inequality in the country. The lack of education for many indigenous people makes it difficult for the ethnic group to overcome such poverty. Unfortunately, the probability of indigenous people to stay in school is very low. It is evident that there is an existing difference in education between the ethnic groups. The indigenous population only has an average of 4.5 years of formal education, while non-indigenous population’s average of years is 8. The minority group has a net secondary school enrollment rate of 14.0% and because of rural residence and work they have a much lower probability of staying in school.

There is also a drastic social impact on Indigenous people mainly through exclusion. This racism raised the use of certain terminology such as “cholo” and “longo” which are threatening because they are not institutionalized to any official ethnic group. With such unhistorical and unstructured rise to the terminology, the terminology is more flexible when used and persistent. The paternalistic system of ethnic discrimination transitioned to a more democratization of racial relations. Although there are no more “hacienda’s” (working systems where Indians were exploited for labor) and Indians now have a right to vote, there is still an everyday discriminatory challenge. Indians often feel vulnerable and predisposed to physical and verbal attacks, which cause them to be more reserved and avoid contact with whites. An indigenous witness claimed he was told to leave a restaurant because “no Indians [were] admitted to [that] locale”. Racism can be seen such as travelling in public transportation, interactions in public spaces, and the yearning to be white from Indians.



Although there is no doubt of gender discrimination in the workplace, a big factor of the wage gap is the decision of woman to have children. This takes time and dedication off work, causing the wage to decrease. A study found that when comparing woman without children to men, the wage gap was no longer significant.

Indigenous peoples in Ecuador

In this article I plan to contribute information on the discrimination towards indigenous people in Ecuador. There is an underlying social discrimination in the country that has been expressed through art, strikes, and literature.

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