Camille Yim<\/p>\n
HIST 128<\/p>\n
3\/12\/19<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The American Life<\/p>\n
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The University of San Diego honors Black History Month by hosting events on campus.\u00a0 On February 21st<\/sup>, I attended a screening of the movie Do the Right Thing.<\/em>\u00a0 The film is essentially about the lifestyle of a post-slavery black community.\u00a0 An African American man working for a White man, a White family business, an Asian family business, a female African American, African American men, and White policemen are characters used to illustrate various perspectives of struggles, tensions, and emotions of this transitional period where African Americans are no longer enslaved, but now displaced to live amongst themselves apart from the rest of the American society.\u00a0 This period is important to African American history, because as they showed in the film, past racial discrimination, anger, fear, and frustration creates misconceptions that prevents the communities from living harmoniously.\u00a0 Two guest speakers, a theologist and a philosopher, also shared their insights after the film regarding the different cultural aspects, as well as brought up critical questions concerning what racism is, and who is racist?<\/p>\n Racism associated with fear, anger, frustration, inferiority, superiority, disrespect, ignorance, dehumanizing, and distinction during the discussion after the film.\u00a0 There was one scene in the movie that I thought disclosed why the idea of racism is so difficult to understand, and so unclear to define.\u00a0 Mookie, an African American employee at Sal\u2019s Famous Pizza, and Pino, Sal\u2019s son who is Italian, never see eye to eye.\u00a0 One time when they get into it, Mookie asks Pino who his favorite singer, athlete, actors are, and Pino comes back naming all African Americans.<\/p>\n Mookie says, \u201cSounds funny to me.\u00a0 As much as you say nigger this and nigger that, all your favorite people are \u201cniggers.\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n Pino replies back saying, \u201cIt\u2019s different.\u00a0 Magic, Eddie, Prince, are not niggers, I mean, are not Black.\u00a0 I mean, they\u2019re Black, but not really Black.\u00a0 They\u2019re more than Black.\u00a0 It\u2019s different.\u201d<\/p>\n Pino was saying that famous African Americans are Black by race or skin color but not in the sense of belonging or purpose as a citizen.\u00a0 Since those African Americans are talented and successful, they\u2019re more than the poor and uneducated people living in neighborhoods like the one in the film. \u00a0In order to understand where Pino and Mookie are coming from, one must need to understand the history of Africans in America.<\/p>\n During the Transatlantic slave trade, through the plantation generation, and even after the revolutionary war, African Americans were societies of possessable objects.\u00a0 They viewed them as less than a poor person.\u00a0 As African Americans gradually gained their rights as a citizen, they were never given back what they lost, but instead left misplaced trying to earn an \u201cAmerican life\u201d where they not only didn\u2019t have proper skills or money, but also felt unwanted.\u00a0 White men brought African to America for their labor, and now they didn\u2019t feel like they had a purpose to be there.\u00a0 What Mookie and Pino are getting at, is that the idea of racism against African Americans has shifted from dehumanization, to now in a way analogous to distinguishing between the rich and the poor class.<\/p>\n Unsettled tension and anger between White Americans and African Americans built up from the feeling of being an outcast, along with the economical class differentiation.\u00a0 The entire movie’s fight against the current misconceptions between two races made it feel hopeless to watch.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until the end when Sal over paid Mookie and told him to keep it, that Mookie saw beyond the economical class difference.\u00a0 He saw that Sal could care less about being wealthy, and more about having a business that people<\/em> enjoyed.\u00a0 In the end the problem comes down to racism, but not in the way most people would automatically think.\u00a0 The problem of racism in terms of uneven distribution of power and lack of empathy.\u00a0 The movie is trying to get people to realize is that everybody is struggling to feel a sense of belonging and purpose.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Citations<\/p>\n Lee, Spike, Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Bill Nunn, et al. 2001.\u00a0Do the right thing<\/em>. Universal City, CA: Universal City Studios.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Camille Yim HIST 128 3\/12\/19 The American Life The University of San Diego honors Black History Month by hosting events on campus.\u00a0 On February 21st, I attended a screening of the movie Do the Right Thing.\u00a0 The film Continue reading