Essay On Blackboard Jungle

The film Blackboard Jungle, written and directed by Richard Brooks, depicts the reality of the desegregated all male school, North Manual Trades High School. In this film Richard Dadier receives a job as a teacher and through the film he attempts to bring order and learning in to the classroom. The two main students in this film are Artie West and Gregory Miller. Artie West is white and is portrayed as the antagonist in the film because of his complete disregard of authority. In contrast, Miller is black and is initially defiant but in the end he agrees to Dadier terms. Daniel Perlstein and Leah Faw, in “Students without a Cause: Blackboard Jungle, High School Movies, and High School Life” claims that Millers “character demonstrated that if given a fair chance, African Americans possessed the same ability to

This movie was set in the 1950’s and during this time Brown V Board of education passed and ended separate but equal educational system so that schools were integrated but before this blacks were not even considered human. This way of perceiving black people was ingrained in the society long before integration therefore even if it is subconscious the majority of white people at this time still perceived blacks as inferior simply because this notion of blackness is what America is built on. This is why Miller was never given a fair chance to succeed.

In the movie when Dadier is called into the principal Wernicke’s office to be reprimanded for wrongly be accused of “being racist”. The principal ask if he believes that blacks are inferior and he says he does not. Then Wernicke says “it comes out under pressure I suppose” and Dadier responds “I suppose so”. In this scene, two white men are confessing the reality of race in America on the outside they are “colorblind” but deep inside the feelings of black inferiority is ingrained in their psyche and this alters the way they interact with