Racism In Slumdog Millionaire

How Slumdog Millionaire Portrays Race and Class Media is often used to construct and emphasize social ideas on race, gender, sex, and identities. Slumdog Millionaire exemplifies how media subliminally reinforces racial inequality by presenting whites, and Americans, as superiors to the majority of Indians in the film and by negatively portraying India as a low-income, high-violence country. In a positive light, the 2008 film breaks the typical class system when, Jamal, an Indian teen in the lower economic class breaks the cultural norm and rises to the upper class without the help of violence and drugs. According to Omi and Winant, “race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to

One moment when Jamal is trying to earn money to continue his journey, he takes an American couple on a “tour” and ends up getting beaten up by another Indian who catches onto his scheme. After he is beaten up, the wife attempts to take care of him and Jamal says, “you wanted to see a bit of India” implying that that India is full of violence. The wife replies, “Well, here is a bit of America”(Slumdog Millionaire) implying that America does not stand for that. The white American couple implies that America is better than India and influences Jamal to be more like them by helping him when he is

Beltran says that people accept their racial identities and express them with music, clothing, and cultural norms that pertain to their race. This makes racial identities hard to demolish in film when every day people accept them. Slumdog Millionaire helps to reinforce the racial identities of Indian people by following the stereotypical fashions, but the film did not necessarily construct them. The music in the film is based on music that is most popular in the Indian culture. The music is played during multiple scenes and throughout the credits. The slave master uses the children he captures to sing to make gain prosperity. This is one of the few times the actors and actresses do not use English. They sing in the Hindi language with tunes that resemble Indian music. In her adolescent years, Latika dances with head jewelry consisting of numerous jewels and straps. This is representing the cultures of India instead of degrading them. The Indian culture that is presented in Slumdog Millionaire was not made up, but merely influenced by representations that are already