How Country Lovers and the Gold Cadillac Tackle Racism
Country lovers, is a tale set in South Africa where whites are more
privileged than black people. The story is set during apartheid. This
is made clear in the first paragraph, as it says "…but once the white
children go away to school, they don't play together anymore." Also,
"…beginning to call their old play mates missus and baasie- little
master." It is made clear that separation occurs at an early age, this
is reinforced throughout the story. As it states later, whilst
discussing how Thebedi's father works on Paulus's family's farm "…it
was part of her fathers work to tend." It also mentions that Paulus's
family own a "Mercedes."
The story is written in third person. This is a more successful way of
writing for this particular piece, as the writer is directly able to
state what each character is feeling. This was very necessary in the
tale. The writer, on several occasions, suggests her disapproval by
stating the totally different paths their lives had taken, for example
"…Thebedi went for the first time, to the country town, where Paulus
had been to school."
When Paulus is sent away to boarding school, the process of apartheid
begins to get in the way of their friendship. Yet even when Paulus is
fifteen, when he is attending school dances and has learnt to "…tease,
flirt and fondle quite intimately," with other girls of his "league,
race or culture," he still returns to Thebedi. Even after he had many
other opportunities and experiences with other girls, I think he did
value Thebedi more, it reads "…had never made him feel what he felt
now." I think at fir...
... middle of paper ...
...ves, making us get
more involved and it shows us exactly how apartheid occurred in ones
life. We are able to follow a relationship through its ups and downs
and we can really relate to it, and sense the tension their racial
differences are creating. We feel the characters pain, and almost put
ourselves in the situation. I think this is a brilliant way of showing
how racism occurred and affected peoples' lives. It was very gripping
and very powerful. The problem was with the gold Cadillac was, it
didn't grab the readers attention quite so much and didn't have much
of a tale behind it. The writer was more concerned about making the
Cadillac a symbol and putting in morals. I just didn't enjoy the tale
much and I don't think it informed people as to how bad the situation
was. I personally couldn't relate to the characters.
Cultural Perspectives in Tom Robbins' Even Cowgirls Get the Blues Literary works are always affected by the times and places in which they are written. Those crafted in Western America often reflect conflicts that occurred between advancing civilization and the free spirited individual. The 1970’s was a particularly popular time for authors to introduce new ideas for living in the modern world. There are few authors who captured the essence and feeling of culture quite like Tom Robbins. Robbins comments on the differences and similarities between Western civilization and Eastern philosophies.
“Uncle Tom: an African-American who is overeager to win the approval of whites as by obsequious behavior or uncritical acceptance of white values and goals (Merriam Webster).” This a term that is of utmost offensiveness, a characterization that is normally used as an exaggeration, yet is shockingly relevant to this book. This book presents a strong motif of powerful African-American people supporting the white institution of racism, preserving its power and appearance for their own personal gain. This shows up early in the novel with Bledsoe, yet the strongest examples of it show up in the Liberty Paints chapter, where the support of the institution of racism by influential black people is shown to be pivotal to the status quo’s unfortunate survival.
Racism has been a major issue in this world throughout history and still occurs today. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, racism is the poor treatment of or violence against people because of their race. There are numerous movies that focus on the subject of racism, and Glory Road is a movie that depicts racism very accurately. Glory Road achieves this by vividly explaining the attitudes of the players and how they had to fight to break down the barriers of discrimination in order to have a successful season.
All through time, the world has been racist and intolerant of people different from themselves. Countless millions have suffered due to the bigotry of people that couldn't understand change or differences among one another. There was a time when any soul that wasn't blue eyed and blonde haired in Germany, anyone with darker skin where immediately classed as inferior and not human. Even now, when you are not aware, racism is still a considerable problem. But sometimes it isn't one person being racist against another, but rather one person being racist against them self. The movie crash shows good examples of how racism against oneself, caused by fear and misunderstanding, is just as malevolent and evil as racism against another person. Fear is what makes people act racist. Farhad is one of many examples in the movie of a person who recognizes his own race and paralyzes himself through his own fear. Farhad believes that since he is Persian he is immediately being persecuted against and cheated. He flips out at the gun shop when the owner was insulting him which just furthers his fear of Americans. After the events on 9/11, which are referenced a lot in the movie, Farhad thinks that anyone who is Middle Eastern isn't welcome in America. Even after the gun shop owner was rude; his shop was destroyed by racist people who hated him. It is this same fear of being cheated because of his race that makes him very untrusting to people he doesn't know. He calls a lock smith to come fix his door because it won't lock. He immediately thinks that Daniel is trying to cheat him and steal money from him just because of his past endeavors.
Nothing translates the modern depiction of southern literature quite like the novel, Forrest Gump. Set in the deep south of the fictional town of Greenbow, Alabama, Winston Groom’s Forrest Gump gives the audience an adequate insight into how the southern way of life was in the late fifties through the seventies. The majority of the movie shows important events during American history at the time. Although this is an essential part of the storyline, the novel itself gives readers a much more in-depth look into southern life. Forrest Gump notes the racial references related to that time period, the portrayal of classic southern culture, and allows southern stereotypes to be apparent throughout.
In One Friday Morning Nancy Lee, a beautiful, proud African American student, is given the Artist Club Scholarship but unfortunately it is taken away from her “when the committee learned that [she was] colored.” It is not right nor fair what Nancy Lee faces, but it is and has been an ongoing issue here in the world today. America has struggled with racism for over centuries now. What is racism exactly? Racism is hatred or intolerance of another race or races. We as a country tend to brush off racism and act as though the problem has diminished over the years but it is still very much an issue here in America. Our government and our people can pass as many laws as they want, but no laws will change us, the people. We the people as a nation need to be willing to change to better the world Americans live in. One needs to learn to be accepting of the others in this nation. It does not matter that on the outside one may look or appear different because on the inside everyone looks the same. Everybody wants the same things in life. One just wants to have a happy life full of love. One should never deny that to anyone because of the color of their skin pigment. No one should ever be judged or discriminated against.
The Freedom Writer tells a story that taken place among a first year teacher and a group of different students that own all kinds of origin, color of skin and background. Erin Gruwell came from Newport Beach while the students came from East Los Angeles. In the movie, racism is a problem that cannot be neglected. It is the root cause of hatred, as well as a global issue.
At the time when humans were learning to use spears constructed out of sticks and stones and the
One of the widely recognized controversies in American history is the 1930s, which housed the Great Depression and the post-civil war, the ruling of Plessy versus Ferguson and the Jim Crow Laws, and segregation. While textbooks detail the factual aspect of the time there is only one other literature that can exhibit the emotion experienced in the era. To Kill a Mockingbird is the acclaimed novel that displays the experiences of the South, through inequality and segregation, social class differences and the right to fairness. The novel’s experiences are narrated through a grown Scout, who appears as a little girl in the novel, offering her innocent views on the happenings in Maycomb County. The most observed aspect of the novel is race and racism; with Tom Robinson’s trial being the prime focus of the novel, the issue of race is bound to be discussed throughout the novel is race, racism and segregation; with Tom Robinson’s trial being the focus of the novel, the issue of race is heavily represented throughout the novel. With Mockingbird being a common book among English Language Arts and Literatures classrooms, the topic of race is bound to surface amid a young, twenty-first century group of student of students with the inevitability of this discussion, the question remains on how to approach the conversation as an educator. As an educator, one should seek to establish the context of the times, prepare the students for the conversation and examine the other characters and situations similarly to race. Educators must also be introspective before examining their students’ feelings, so that they are not surprised by their emotions and can also express their feelings to their students. The discussion should target a goal, one of examin...
Racism is not a factor of the heart, according to Tommie Shelby in “Is Racism in the ‘Heart’?” He writes “the ‘heart’ does not have to be involved in order for an action or institution to be racist” (483). Instead, Shelby argues that racism is based on the effect of a person’s actions on deepening racist institutions or promulgating the oppression of a particular group of people based on their race. The individual intention of a person or the “purity” or his or her heart does not take precedence over the effect of his or her actions. Shelby’s argument is constructed as follows: Individual beliefs can be true or false but not inherently immoral. Therefore, it is not appropriate to morally condemn someone for holding a particular belief. However, when the particular belief leads to “race-based hatred...actions...or institutions” that is when it becomes appropriate to hold the individual with the belief morally culpable for racism.
Racism was everywhere and it wasn’t just the adults who saw it, or felt it, but young children as well. I thought everyone was created equal. That we weren't all that different. That no one was judged. I thought I was right, but I realize I couldn't have been more wrong. I was born the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries. My parents had named me Pearl Sydenstricker Buck and I spent virtually half my life in China.
This movie is a wonderful production starting from 1960 and ending in 1969 covering all the different things that occurred during this unbelievable decade. The movie takes place in many different areas starring two main families; a very suburban, white family who were excepting of blacks, and a very positive black family trying to push black rights in Mississippi. The movie portrayed many historical events while also including the families and how the two were intertwined. These families were very different, yet so much alike, they both portrayed what to me the whole ‘message’ of the movie was. Although everyone was so different they all faced such drastic decisions and issues that affected everyone in so many different ways. It wasn’t like one person’s pain was easier to handle than another is that’s like saying Vietnam was harder on those men than on the men that stood for black rights or vice versa, everyone faced these equally hard issues. So it seemed everyone was very emotionally involved. In fact our whole country was very involved in president elections and campaigns against the war, it seemed everyone really cared.
In the world of sociology and the studies of human interaction, the term intersectionality has been defined as, “the idea that various biological, social, and cultural categories – including gender, race, class, and ethnicity – interact and contribute towards systematic social inequality” (“Definition of Intersectionality – Sociology”). However, as Dr. White defined the term on the Spring 2014 Final Writing Assignment sheet, these categories that make up one’s identity can “intersect or interact in ways that can either advantage or disadvantage the person’s well-being and development” (White). In regards to the text, David M. Newman’s Identities & Inequalities: Exploring the Intersections of Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality, Newman progressively explores the concept of intersectionality throughout the entirety of the text, but he does not ever actually define the term itself. Although an exact, clear-cut definition of the term “intersectionality” has not been officially established, the concept of the term is fairly simple to understand. Every person has different social identities that they carry to their name. Intersectionality is simply an analysis of how those different identities play off of each other and how they affect the person they are describing.
Crash is a good movie that portrays all the racism and stereotyping that people and communities are facing. There are more issues than what I found during the movie but I will talk about the ones that stood out to me. One thing amazing about the movie is how the story develops and how all the stories tie into one another. Crash evokes the "racial" problem that faces the United States because of its diversity that should be an advantage but in general, it is not often the case. It often does not work as expected because of stereotype, discrimination and racism that face different minority communities. Whether emotion, terror and rage, Crash depicts the brutal realism of cynicism, or the American collective fantasy into force of a dominant race.
Tension between the African Americans and Caucasians have been present in America since slavery. In the movie Crash (2004), race and culture are major themes that can be seen in the lives of the characters in the film. One character in particular, Cameron, a prestigious color vision director, displays the friction between two cultures. He belongs to the educated, upper class of the Los Angeles area. He is also an African American, yet he seems to have no ties with that class. He has a light-skinned wife, attends award shows, and it appears that his acquaintances are predominately white. When he and his wife, Christine, get pulled over by a racist cop, he experiences emotions of powerlessness and helplessness that he never knew he would experience due to his upbringing and place in society. Cameron goes through a radical transformation where he comes to grips with his background and how he fits into these two clashing cultures.