In Brent Staples article “Just Walk on By”, Staples shares his thoughts on the way marginalized groups interact. He uses his own experiences as a young African American man to shed light on how people can have implied biases that affect the way they treat other people. Staples does this to demonstrate how society develops preconceived notions in the minds of individuals about marginalized groups, primarily African American men, which are often a flawed representation of the people within these groups. The rhetoric he uses is key to developing an understanding persona and an emotional appeal that exposes the implied biases of people without alienating or offending the audience, to whom-- among others-- he attributes these biases.
What seems to us now as excessive violence and misogyny in hip hop stems from a culture that has been consumed in a continuous battle against social and economic oppression since its early days. In the beginnings of hip hop, there was an explosion of defiance against the subjugation these artists had to experience on a daily basis. For many artists, rapping about guns and gang life was a reflection of daily life in the ghettos and inner-city housing projects. Not only did rap provide an outlet to voice the struggles of black youth, it also gave them a sense of pride. Before major hip hop groups such as NWA arrived on the scene, people would refuse to admit they were even from Compton. Nowadays, everyone wears the identity with pride. The genre was a testament to triumphing over hardships, to having enough confidence in oneself not to let the world drag you down, and to rising above the struggle, even when things seem hopeless. Violence in rap did not begin as an affective agent that threatened to harm America 's youth; rather, it was the outcry of an already-existing problem from youth whose world views have been shaped by the inequalities and prejudice they have experienced.
African Americans have been struggling and fighting hate crimes since the 1860s after the Emancipation Proclamation and continue to do so today with the black lives matter and the fight against police brutality and unfair judgement. “More than fifty out of every one million black citizens was the victim of a racially motivated hate crime in 2012,” (Sreenivasan). Hispanics are also causalities in this never-ending battle of hate crime. Between 2003 and 2007 the number of cases of hate crimes jumped by 40%. Several stories and accounts of this is because of the accusation that “[the Mexicans] are taking our jobs” and “are causing
“I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something,” (Graham, Crash 2004). Is part of the quote said in the opening scene to the movie Crash released in 2004. The movie deals with many social topics that were big at that moment in time and still are thirteen years later in 2017. Three of the main topics are racism, prejudice, and stereotypes.
The study of racism has a profound potential to become an ambiguous sociological endeavor. Incidentally, accounting for the multitude of factors which encompass this subject appear to make it the very heart of the matter and consequently the most time consuming. Although, it is my belief that all three of the main sociological theories (Functionalism, Conflict Theory and Symbolic Interactionism) should be integrated in order to achieve a legitimate and quantifiable outcome, for obvious reasons the “Conflict Theory” logically renders the best possible method to obtain a valid micro analysis of specific agents in this case. The oxford dictionary defines racism as being:
In the article, “A Million Dollar Exit From the Anarchic Slum-World: Slumdog Millionaire’s Hollow Idioms of Social Justice”, Mitu Sengupta responds to how the slums and its citizens are presented in the film Slumdog Millionaire by Danny Boyle. Sengupta describes the slums as run-down and then goes on to specifically address the poverty that exists in India. When writing about the portrayal of the slums, Sengupta states, “Slumdog depicts the ‘slum’ as a feral wasteland, a place of evil and decay that is devoid of order, productivity and compassion”(599). Sengupta uses imagery to illustrate to viewers the unsanitary conditions that the people of Mumbai experience on a daily basis. Viewers can picture the tattered slums and the surrounding streets
A wise man named Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” In other words, the color of a person’s skin should not be judged on how we treat each other. The color of a person’s skin should not be a bother in public. However, there has been many histories where the blacks were treated unnormal because of their skin color. Brent Staples strongly proved something mystical about the world on how many people react to black people in public spaces. He proved it by using ethos, pathos, and logos on his essay he wrote called, “Black Men and Public Space.” Staples who is six feet two inches with a beard approached that several people, especially women, sees him as a mugger, a rapist, or worse.
Why should the color of someone’s skin effect a crime that was committed? In the vignette of “Twelve Angry Men” the author, Reginald Rose addresses racism. According to act three on page 27 the Jurors are coming to a vote on whether or not the boy was guilty or not. The boy claimed that he wasn’t guilty of committing a premeditated murder but Juror number ten said otherwise. The evidence that is shown to prove this point is when all the jurors are all at the table and they all go to the window and turn their backs towards juror number ten, specifically juror numbers three and four. This happened while the vote was nine to three, nine voted innocent and three voted guilty. Three and four turned their backs towards number ten because they disagreed on why they thought the boy was guilty.
McBride begins his essay in high contrast to his intended purpose with an anecdotal discussion of his first encounters with Hip Hop music that inevitably represents black men as arrogant, aggressive, and poor. The introductory paragraph details McBride’s fear of his daughter marrying a black rapper that he describes as having “a mouthful of gold teeth, a do-rag on his head, muscles popping out of his arms, and a thug attitude” (McBride para. 1). This stereotypical description of a rapper, as well as the sense of fear McBride feels, contributes to his initial representation of black males as aggressive thugs that are unsuitable to become husbands. He then describes a physical altercation between his friend and another black man from the poor south bronx region that he describes as “a big guy, a dude wearing a do-rag who’d
Have you ever wonder how different communities can shape the outlook of an individual’s life? In “How to Make a Slave,” Jerald Walker effectively argues how different societies impact Walker and his family’s “relationships and life choices”(192). Throughout his personal anecdote, Walker uses a compelling stylistic choice of second person narrative to convey how different backgrounds governs people’s worldviews and the choices they make today, and he also argues that racism should never be taken lightly or ignored because if racism persists, endless amount of conflicts will arise.
If you ever want to start a debate on racial issues, just screen Spike Lee’s ‘Do The Right’ to a group of people. Right from the title of the movie the controversial messages start to bring out what someone really thinks on racial injustice. The movie shows racial tensions between groups in a neighborhood. Present in the film are the Italian pizza shop owners that have selectively opened their business in a black neighborhood, while having a racist son. There is the black protester who boycotts their business since the owners do not have any black legend’s placed up on their wall of fame. You’ve got Radio Raheem who busts out Public Enemy for a good portion of the movie, however as soon he blasts it in the Italian pizza shop, things go astray.
“Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can't move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.”- Bob Marley. There are two people who would agree with this quote, and those people would be Grace Hsiang and Brent Staples, who have both experienced prejudice firsthand. Hsiang, the author of “FOBs vs. Twinkies”, tells of her experiences with intraracial discrimination between the Asian race. Staples, the author of “Black Men and Public Spaces”, tells of the experiences he's had as a black man with prejudice from whites. In these articles, the authors show similarities of discrimination, however, these articles highlight differences using diction and tone.
These men produced songs concerning real experiences, murder, drugs, police brutality, racism and other brutally honest, realistic issues. They called it “reality rap,” as it was a true depiction of communities and their lives. One of the main focuses of this movie was the victimization and harassment of the black youth caused by police forces. This is depicted in the scene where the NWA are playing in Detroit and the police warned and told the group not to play the song, “F*** Tha Police,” but the rappers did anyway. The group of men were chased off stage by the cops and thrown to the ground of the parking lot and into a police car. The first scene also portrays police brutality when the police show up to the drug house with a vehicle using a huge tank-like battery ram to raid the house. This military style raid is just an example of the unjustified and brutal attacks on blacks throughout the movie. The police assert their authority using power relations, not law enforcement. Another issue depicted in this movie was the
No person has been enabled to become racist, it has been learned and therefore can be unlearned by using words and different fictional stories to reiterate the minds of us students and those of younger generations. No person has been enabled to become racist, it has been learned and therefore can be unlearned by using words and different fictional stories to reiterate the minds of us students and those of younger generations.In the book, “The Hate U Give”, written by Angie Thomas Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil
Shalom is more than only peace, it is a peace that grows out of harmony and right relationships. The book "Cry The Beloved Country" by Alan Paton" is about a Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo going on a journey to Johannesburg and discovering devastating news about his family members, and beginning to see the racial injustice between black and white people in South Africa. This book demonstrates various examples of shalom being built and broken. Throughout the book, it shows how shalom is breaking, but towards the end of the book it shows that the shalom is getting healed. One of the main theme is discrimination, segregation and racial injustice and throughout the book, there are various examples of shalom breaking through racial injustice and discrimination.