ENGC1012

Omni’s article “In Living Color: Race and American Culture� reminds us how many shows and movies present to us racial discrimination in “invisible� way. Most of the time when we watch TV we take the opinions of the media as our own, without thinking if they are right or wrong. We are so used to them that for us they are something normal and we don’t even notice them.
An example of this kind of discrimination is the TV news. Every day we watch them on different channels and most of the faces we see are white. A few exceptions that I recall are Fox 9’s news and NBC’s morning show. Most of the time this fact is not drawn to our attention because that is the way it has been in the past. But if we think about it, we can see it as pure discrimination. It is just something that the media is trying to convince us is normal.
In the movies many times the image of black people is portrayed in humorous way. They are put under the stereotype of comic characters. On the other hand the white men are the serious ones, the cops that save the situation. Movies of this sort try to show the idea that this is true even in real life and different color people behave in a way that no one else does.
The way different peoples are represented in our culture could be another example of racism. In some American movies, for instance, Jews are shown as selfish greedy people. It is stereotype through which we separate them from the rest of the world and create a specific opinion about them, even though we don’t realize it. The television makes it fine to see people in a certain way and not to worry about discrimination.

Posted by Denitsa Aleksieva at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The film definitely made me think about the way I see people around me and how I see myself. In interesting way it showed the perception of rich and poor families of the idea of social classes. One of the things that the movie talked about was how the lower income people are “invisible�. They work hard to feed their families, but no one notices their effort. Some higher class people even don’t know they exist because they just don’t need to. Their lives are far away from the poverty and most of the time they don’t think about how lower class people struggle. They see the world in a different way and have different values. Some people’s comments from the film were that there are two kinds of people: “people who have it from the beginning and people who must work hard for it�. The people who grow up with money and high lifestyle are taught to think in different way. They see these problems that concern them, but the problems of the poor people are just not part of their daily lives. The people who work hard every day for their food and shelter deal with much bigger problems. They have to find money not only for food, but also for their kids’ education so they have better future in front of them. Many times this is impossible for them, but they still fight for it all their lives.

Posted by Denitsa Aleksieva at 9:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)