...Academy awards. The movie revolves mainly around the overlapping or interlocking events in the life of whites and blacks, rich and poor, cops and criminals, Iranians, Koreans and Latinos - everything defined ultimately by racism. The idea is that “moving at the speed of life, we are bound to collide with each other”. It is based on everyday racial reactions in the human society. How we react to situations adds hue to our perceptions of living life itself. All the people involved are guilty of the discrimination but sometimes through indifference, they rise above these. Assuming something about the person before us is rather a dominant feature in Crash. Crash describes a number of people with almost equal importance and shows the psychological inhibitions each of them has based on these narrowness of discrimination. The movie contains coldness, cruelty and pain, but finally unfolds to generate sympathy from general audience and an expectation that people would learn to share similar hopes and fears. As far as Crash is concerned, the symbolism revolves around that of the idea of a traffic crash or may be just a crash of lives of different people, coming from various layers of the society. The film begins on the aftermath of a traffic accident, which finally turns out into a clash between several people of different backgrounds. The truth that is highlighted here is that the people in the society ultimately do not...
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...family are the most apparent victim of racism. He is guilty by raping a white woman but actually he is innocent. Everyone is blinded by his color and has already decided to put him into the jail. Obviously, he gets an unfair trial. In the court, Mr. Gilmer, the lawyer who defends for Mayella Ewell, treats Tom without any respect. Even though Atticus finds much evidence that proves Tom is innocent, no one listens to him. Tom is a nice man and he only wants to help others, however, his kindness becomes his murderer. After his death, his wife Helen Robinson needs to raise their children by herself. But no one feels sympathy for her and even no one is willing to offer her a job. Is appearance so important that can destroy our humanity? We are going to lose our selves because of racism. Atticus defends for Tom in order to protect the justice. However, he and his children are disliked by the town people. Jem and Souct get troubles from school. Everyone teases them and no one is willing to make friends with them. Furthermore racism brings out blood. Bob Ewell, Mayella’s father revenges Atticus on his children because he thinks Atticus is against him. He tries to hurt Jem and Scout on that Halloween night. Fortunately Jem just breaks his arm but Bob is killed by another knife. Racism lead him to a wrong way, as a result he loses his life. Criminal is encouraged by racism. In Maycomb, Black and White people...
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...Origins of Racism When the word racism comes about, many people don’t really stop and think where or even when racism began. They just think that since our history books tell us about the segregation that had occurred that it’s just a natural thing that happened in the past and still goes on today. The invention of racism was socially constructed and as a society, we developed the concept of racial segregation, racial discrimination, racial stereotyping and negative prejudice. Some believe that there is no real original concepts of how racism began, but how would we wrap ourselves around the concept of racism being uniquely developed so that one race was meant to be inferior to all the rest? There are many ideas about how racism came about. Some say that it’s because that’s how nature took its course. It was just made to have one race has to be above all the others, a superior race, and the inferior races, which are looked at as being intolerable. Seeing one race less important than another is dehumanizing but it is within the definition of racism, inferiority and superiority are stated. According to the Oxford dictionary, racism is defined as the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. This mentality of having superior and inferior races began in the 1600s where slave trade was considered to be normal. Slavery was not based on racial discrimination...
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...African Americans, his achievements for the Black people were outstanding. On the other hand there are ideas that contradict his greatness on making such an impact to civil rights. We are able measure MLK’s achievements, by analysing how successful he was with his campaigns. Success can be given upon by the result of the predicted outcome compared to the true outcome. In this case it’s whether King’s ambitions for the movement came to be achieved or if his campaigns failed. For this we shall be studying his achievements and failures in the civil rights movement between 1955 and 1968. You can also look at how much awareness of the campaign was made to America, along with this the consequences of the campaigns and what resulted after them. You can use all of these criteria to judge how successful MLK was. King’s first major involvement of leading a campaign started on the 1st of December 1955, when Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up a seat on a bus in Montgomery Alabama. This was when King was first recognised as being a strong leader in gaining equality for African Americans, along with the backing of the church. The result of Rosa Park’s arrest became the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was run by MLK, the NAACP, MIA and the backing of the church. This gave King his first real shot at showing the African American community that he was able to lead by taking over the campaign in Montgomery. He managed to capture the people’s attention greatly, which started the theme...
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...To Kill a Mockingbird “Mockingbirds don’t do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat people’ gardens, don’t nest in the corncribs, they don’t do one thing but just sing their hearts out to us,” Atticus said to Scout (148). Indeed, Atticus’s word was extremely true in the situation of Tom Robinson, one of the characters in the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird”, which was written by Harper Lee. This story took place in 1930’s in Southern Alabama when the injustice between black people and white people was very deep. In this period, the black people were considered as the Mockingbirds, the innocuous birds for people’s lives. However, these birds often were killed without any guilt just like the black people were shot and lynched by the white people even though they were innocent. It was the fate for the black people in the South who lived in the 1930’s. Especially, through the court scene in “To Kill a Mockingbird” which was about the trial of Tom Robinson, a married black man, who was sentenced for raping Mayella, a white woman, Harper Lee emphasized deeply the injustice for the black people. Indeed, the black people did not have any justice in the South in 1930’s. Tom Robinson was the defendant who was accused of raping Mayella on the night of August 21st. The truth was that Tom did not do anything bad to Mayella. On that day, he only passed by Mayella’s house and came in to her house to help her as she requested. Suddenly, she hugged him around the waist and kissed...
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...to hear the opinions of people who disagree with them or hear facts, statistics, and jarring world history without trigger warnings, how weak, right? Cameron Okeke on the other hand, paints a different picture of these so called “weak Millennial snowflakes”. In his essay “I’m a black UChicago graduate. Safe spaces got me through college.”...
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...The Black Panthers and their Impact on the Civil Rights Movement The Civil rights movement was a time in history when African Americans fought to gain equality in society. In 1966, the Black Panther Party was formed under Huey Newton as one way to do this by patrolling streets to protect African-Americans from police brutality. The group would branch out, creating aide programs for children and families. (Garrett Duncan) As time went by and the Party grew, however, they became more militant. The group and its members were involved in several gun battles with police and became viewed as a terrorist group. During the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panther Party’s influenced public view mainly through the violent actions that they took, but they were able to benefit society for the better through the many aid programs they would come to enact. The source of the Black Panther’s violence mainly stemmed from the fact they felt a passive and peaceful approach to equality would take too long. (C N Trueman). In the early 1960s, 65 African Americans had been killed by police in Los Angeles alone, leading to the Panther’s ideologies (Brandon Harris). The Panther’s responses to actions like these, however, did not gain much sympathy. The group was becoming more and more of a symbol of hatred that was feared unlike the respect...
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...written from a child’s perspective, and it ends with a grown up point of view. It seems that not only the child has suffered the father’s abuse, but the mother and siblings too. Throughout the poem, the children in that family are taught to hate their father while the mother takes everything away from him until he is reduce to be a beggar. The poem ends with the same person reflecting on who the real victims were in the story. 2) What about the structure/movements of the poem? The poem has two very well differentiated parts: the first part that is written in past tense, and the second part, which is written in present tense. The poem starts hating the father and being happy when the mother divorced him, and it ends feeling some kind of sympathy towards the father. The author accomplished this shift in the poem thanks to the descriptions and the change of tense, but most importantly, thanks to the comparison of the father to bums. Another thing that I noticed about this poem is that every phrase in each line is not complete; it’s like the author chose to cut the phrase to jump to the next line. I mean, the ideas and phrases in the poem are complete, but Olds cut them to create some kind of “mystery”. This resource or device made me want to continue reading the poem to get its entire idea (I noticed the same thing in her other poem “Sex Without Love”). The poem does not have an established meter or rhyme. 3) Your interpretation of the symbols in the poem: - “When Mother...
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...the young woman Akunna from Nigeria wins the American visa lottery. She travels to the United States to live with her aunt and uncle, but when the uncle tries to abuse her, she leaves their house. She finds an apartment and a job as a waitress. A young man in the restaurant quickly finds her interesting, and Akunna says yes to go on a date with him, after he has persistently tried to ask her out. They are in a relationship until she gets a letter, informing her that her father is dead. She travels back to Nigeria without her boyfriend even though he offers to travel back with her. America is the land of opportunities, but are these opportunities for everybody? At first Akunna’s family have many expectations to America and thinks that people living in the country gets a big car, house and a gun. Therefore, the country is from their point of view a land of prosperity. However, when the protagonist first arrives to the USA, she gets a “big hot dog with yellow mustard that nauseated you” . She is nauseated by America and never gets a car, house and gun. Instead, she ends up not being able to go to school because she needs to work in order to earn enough money so she can afford not to live with her uncle. So according...
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...led peaceful protests and presented fantastic speeches. One of his most famous speeches being his “I Have a Dream” speech spoken in Washington D.C. in front of many black and white people to present his idea of equality. John F. Kennedy was a young, white American who possessed incredible charisma that got him to the oval office in one of the closest presidential elections. He knew his Inaugural Address must...
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...allowing the reader to see clearly the actions of everyone involved. Chapter Two The desperate need for labor was one of the many factors that brought slavery to America. Zinn exposes the hardships the settlers went through as they failed to keep themselves fed and well. Zinn introduces the reader to the horrible treatments the slaves went through on the way to America and once there. The relationships between white servants and black slaves had a less violent presence within it, but racism materialized even more when “a law was passed requiring masters to provide white servants” more rights. This created an even more prominent color line. Chapter Three Zinn analyses the Bacon Rebellion and introduces the reader to Nathaniel Bacon, the leader. In that...
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...Picasso to paint a large mural about the bombing to display at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. Guernica show the anguish, horror and pain inflicted on humanity and the innocent. It shows the destructions of war and the awareness for others to remember and never forget. Guernica is a powerful painting, considered a “Masterpiece” by Pablo Picasso and has become an anti-war icon. Guernica became a very powerful art work for many reasons but, most importantly for its usage of colors and of imagery depicting the emotions the characters are showing in the painting. Guernica consists of shades of blacks, grays and whites, representing sadness, and dark emotions for the characters and the event of the bombing. It shows the pains of the innocent, a woman wailing over a dead child in her hands, a horse ripped open, tragic events with images of soldier, flames painted to signify the town on fire and people in a sorrowful atmosphere conveying suffering and disorder. Guernica displays an image that is hard to get out of one’s mind, make one think about what it must have felt like to live back then during that time period, experiencing that event. There is three other art works that can be related to Guernica either by the story it tells, the type of event that is happening or both. The first...
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...of 1845 a serious rotting issue began killing off the potato farms (Spartacus). Typhus broke out and killed many Irish families. The main item in the Irish people’s diet was the potatoes. Due to the agricultural disaster people died from famine if Typhus did not get them first. By 1846 an estimated 350,000 people died (Spartacus). In search of a better life nearly two million Irishman emigrated to the U.S. When the first group of approximately 6, ooo Irishman arrived in the U.S. they suffered from discrimination. According to the Irish American Historical Society (IAHS) there were two major ports of entry; New York and Boston. A majority of the immigrants were poverty stricken which caused them to remain in the port they arrived. The influx in immigrants strained the society’s economy and created hatred. The Irishman was credited for all the economic problems they were now facing. The Irish Americans started being viewed as dirty, lazy and stupid. Competition for housing and jobs grew rapidly. The competition and hatred developed in to discrimination towards the Irish. The new Irish arrivals started being victims of employment discrimination. The employment ads placed in the newspapers always ended with, “No Irish need apply” (IAHS). Restaurants and hotels started posting signs advising people that Irish were not permitted at their establishment. Since the Irish could not find work they were forced to live in homes with several families living together...
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... Altering public space In the essay “Black men and Public Space” by Brent Staples, he talks about how being a black man alters public space in a negative way. Altering public space is changing how a person, place, or thing makes you feel. It can be negative, but it also can be positive. Some positive ways altering public space can be a friendly smile walking into a room, beautiful new constructions, and planting trees to better the environment. But with good, there’s always bad. Ways of altering public space in a bad way is Staples discovery of this comes during a late-night encounter. A young white female, whom Staples labels “my first victim” (197), was walking down the street in front of Staples and was not comfortable with the space he provided for her. After a couple of glances back and changes in her pace, she soon began running and disappeared down a side street. Of course, Staples had no intention of robbing or in any way harming this woman. He was just taking a walk, just as she was. Sometimes these kinds of aspects of life are just inevitable. It can be unfair and hard to deal with, but these situations happen in our everyday lives. Nevertheless, this was a fairly well to do neighborhood. Apparently, this woman figured that if a black man did find himself in this part of town, he was most likely up to something. Not wanting any trouble, she decided to get out of harm’s way. When you alter public space, people take notice to you; you get singled out. Whether...
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...trade, Olaudah Equiano, gave a horrifying account of the four by four feet compartments in which the salves were forced to stay for weeks. The mention of the blood, feces, and vomit were enough to acquaint us with the realities of the slave trade. This makes the film valuable to the study of history, because it allows us to understand why abolitionism received such popular support in 1787-1788 (Drescher, 43). It brings the “distaste and revulsion that the overseas slave system evoked” (Drescher, 43) right in front of our eyes As well, the brutality and morality of the slave ships was a popular subject for propaganda (Drescher, 49), which the film also portrays effectively. In the scene where Wilberforce commands a crowd of wealthy, affluent people to experience the stench of a slave ship, and continually urges them to “remember”, we can see how the inhumanity against the slaves can be used as a propaganda tool. Also, the scene in which Clarkson brings a set of chains to Wilberforce’s house shows how abolitionists could use this subject matter as an effective argument (52), not entirely outside the realm of propaganda. The film presented a visual reconstruction of the past, in terms of the tactics abolitionists used, and allowed us to sympathize with the abolitionist movement. ORIGINAL POST 2 – A Link to Modern Times From earlier readings in the Pereboom book, we have learned that, in order for a historical film to be a commercial success, it must appeal to its audiences (Pereboom...
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