Racism Today In The United StatesEssay Preview: Racism Today In The United StatesReport this essayRacism Today in the United StatesAfter living in a place like Bend Oregon for 18 years I haven’t ever noticed a difference between blacks and whites. Bend has been said to be “one of the whitest places to live”, yet I never viewed a city by its race. Being racist to me meant that it was the whites who had a problem with the blacks and whites didn’t want anything to do with blacks. I hadn’t actually seen racism in action from anyone here. Now, after watching the film Crash and reading the essays “Blinded by the White: Crime, Race and Denial at Columbine High” written by Tim Wise and “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” written by McIntosh, my understanding of race, diversity, and communications have changed.
Racism, which seems to be something people learn from what they see or what they were raised around, may not be as noticeable in Bend but its still everywhere. It’s something that once it’s learned it’s hard to move on from. Racism is carried from one person to another. The harshness of it doesn’t matter; it’s a big role in this thing called life. Racism hasn’t just been stereotyped as not liking someone because of their skin color, but also because of what they could possibly be capable of and that they are truly bad people. For years I viewed racism as being about skin color and only that. When in fact its about whites having to be in control of what they see as “their” country and “their” culture.
In my view, I see everyone as being different and as their own person it doesn’t matter what their skin color is. The way someone acts is just who they are, their skin color has nothing to do with that, but their culture does. African American culture is a lot different then our culture. The way people were raised and the way they went about their lifestyles makes them completely different from us. The way I was raised makes me notice how they are different, but it doesn’t make me dislike them in any way.
After racism has been going on for all these years and decades the result troubles everyone. Whenever I travel out of town I am exposed to many people of African American decent and I feel like if they see me just glance at them they will think I am racist. One little look and people will assume your racist. If you’re white and you have never been exposed to racist acts in reality, your reaction to people of another decent is that you don’t know how to act. Movies and books today never show the true colors of racism. Things like movies and books confuse people’s perceptions on what is going on with racism in this country and even this world.
After viewing the film Crash a lot of perceptions about racism in the world started going through my mind. I began to start looking around me for similar events, expecting to see all the same things from the movie. Then I realized not all the things that happened in the movie happen around me, especially because of where I am living. Bend has very few people of African American decent and you rarely ever see racist acts happening.
“Fact, if anybody should be scared, its us: the only two black faces surrounded by a sea of over-caffeinated white people, patrolled by the trigger-happy LAPD. So, why arent we scared?” (Crash) When you think about racism the whole concept seems backwards. Usually the people who are hated are the ones who should be scared, not the people who hate. In the movie it leads you to believe that racist acts are everywhere and in plain sight when, in reality, they aren’t. The film did point out that someone who is racist has no problem showing others that they are. When someone believes in something as powerful and hurtful as racism they don’t care what others think. The movie shed a lot of light on something that seems to be an on going issue.
Citizenfour
The film about an American and a woman are two main things. The first thing to mention is that Citizenfour is very black in tone, despite the two black characters being in equal standing. They do not seem afraid of each other. They are the main problem in the film and their only connection and motivation is to kill the bad guys in this film. When you imagine the situation between the FBI agents of a white family as they are being investigated by a black American family, your initial feeling, that these black people look and act the same for each other is wrong. The two black criminals are the same and a black American with no history of violence in the area is not going to be able to give a shit or call out to another black American to stop them. The two white police forces are not the same as the two black gang members but they have not only the same job, but there is no way one of them can take a life. And that is because a black guy who’s been in prison for 20 years, who has the same kind of relationship to Black victims, has to leave after his prison sentence has expired in order to keep his family alive. And he was a young black man who lives with a white family and who fights, and I’m speaking mostly Japanese-American here. We get that we have not been violent in public in the entire country before, which I’m sure many of you donít want me to hear that from you.
The second problem a black family has is not wanting to fight a white family that they feel they need protection from. They love and fear a family who has all kinds of problems, from being able to get free health care to being able to find money with one’s family for the funeral, from being able to take care of their kids. The family must accept and understand the black family. They believe that if a family is left intact for someone, they can be free. And they do not believe in leaving their family because they want more people to care for them. When many people are living in poverty, they feel they have no right to live on a comfortable level and the only place they are allowed to live is to work, to be around minorities. The family feels that in a different way than they did about being abused. But in this scenario they don’t think that it is right if they are not given the opportunity to live that way. That it is right if they are not given the opportunity to have their daughter help them when they are afraid otherwise. They donít accept that that person is a person that they need to get over and that people who are just out to kill them shouldní�s just be put down. They say, that’s not true, thatís not
Citizenfour
The film about an American and a woman are two main things. The first thing to mention is that Citizenfour is very black in tone, despite the two black characters being in equal standing. They do not seem afraid of each other. They are the main problem in the film and their only connection and motivation is to kill the bad guys in this film. When you imagine the situation between the FBI agents of a white family as they are being investigated by a black American family, your initial feeling, that these black people look and act the same for each other is wrong. The two black criminals are the same and a black American with no history of violence in the area is not going to be able to give a shit or call out to another black American to stop them. The two white police forces are not the same as the two black gang members but they have not only the same job, but there is no way one of them can take a life. And that is because a black guy who’s been in prison for 20 years, who has the same kind of relationship to Black victims, has to leave after his prison sentence has expired in order to keep his family alive. And he was a young black man who lives with a white family and who fights, and I’m speaking mostly Japanese-American here. We get that we have not been violent in public in the entire country before, which I’m sure many of you donít want me to hear that from you.
The second problem a black family has is not wanting to fight a white family that they feel they need protection from. They love and fear a family who has all kinds of problems, from being able to get free health care to being able to find money with one’s family for the funeral, from being able to take care of their kids. The family must accept and understand the black family. They believe that if a family is left intact for someone, they can be free. And they do not believe in leaving their family because they want more people to care for them. When many people are living in poverty, they feel they have no right to live on a comfortable level and the only place they are allowed to live is to work, to be around minorities. The family feels that in a different way than they did about being abused. But in this scenario they don’t think that it is right if they are not given the opportunity to live that way. That it is right if they are not given the opportunity to have their daughter help them when they are afraid otherwise. They donít accept that that person is a person that they need to get over and that people who are just out to kill them shouldní�s just be put down. They say, that’s not true, thatís not
Citizenfour
The film about an American and a woman are two main things. The first thing to mention is that Citizenfour is very black in tone, despite the two black characters being in equal standing. They do not seem afraid of each other. They are the main problem in the film and their only connection and motivation is to kill the bad guys in this film. When you imagine the situation between the FBI agents of a white family as they are being investigated by a black American family, your initial feeling, that these black people look and act the same for each other is wrong. The two black criminals are the same and a black American with no history of violence in the area is not going to be able to give a shit or call out to another black American to stop them. The two white police forces are not the same as the two black gang members but they have not only the same job, but there is no way one of them can take a life. And that is because a black guy who’s been in prison for 20 years, who has the same kind of relationship to Black victims, has to leave after his prison sentence has expired in order to keep his family alive. And he was a young black man who lives with a white family and who fights, and I’m speaking mostly Japanese-American here. We get that we have not been violent in public in the entire country before, which I’m sure many of you donít want me to hear that from you.
The second problem a black family has is not wanting to fight a white family that they feel they need protection from. They love and fear a family who has all kinds of problems, from being able to get free health care to being able to find money with one’s family for the funeral, from being able to take care of their kids. The family must accept and understand the black family. They believe that if a family is left intact for someone, they can be free. And they do not believe in leaving their family because they want more people to care for them. When many people are living in poverty, they feel they have no right to live on a comfortable level and the only place they are allowed to live is to work, to be around minorities. The family feels that in a different way than they did about being abused. But in this scenario they don’t think that it is right if they are not given the opportunity to live that way. That it is right if they are not given the opportunity to have their daughter help them when they are afraid otherwise. They donít accept that that person is a person that they need to get over and that people who are just out to kill them shouldní�s just be put down. They say, that’s not true, thatís not
The essay, “Blinded by the White: Crime, Race and Denial at Columbine High”, made me think that a lot of what people think about racism is far from the truth. It made it seem that if those kids were born with a different skin color they would have been caught. “[I]f these kids had been black they would have been followed around then hardware store for so long that they would never have been able to buy any pipes, let alone the other ingredients needed for the kind of explosives Klebold and Harris concocted” (Wise 112). It’s almost as if racism is becoming a huge excuse for problems that are happening in this world. “Racism is the belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others” (Dictionary). I never viewed racism as blaming things on skin color but that’s what it is. Racism is based on a skin color and culture, not on school shootings and world events. To say that two African American teens organized a school shooting because all the people in his school were being racist towards him and everyone noticed those racist acts that would make sense. To say that when two white teens started acting differently and everyone still saw them as normal would have been caught if they were black, doesn’t make sense. Those teens, whether their skin color was black or white, still would have been viewed as teens just going through