Racism is Alive and Well because...
Whoopie Goldberg stars in this movie opposite Sissy Spacek. It is about a liberal white woman who has a police officer aplogize to her maid when he saw her in the park with her white children and called her a "nigger" and asked her to get out of the park immediately. The person played by Sissy Spacek is later blasted by her husband for making the officer apologize to a "nigger". Sissy defends her position and sticks to the fact that it was wrong and that this was a person who took care of her children.
Still today there is this lack of respect for people of color that prompts me to say "the gays came out of the closet and the racist got in". I sincerely believe that racism is still alive and thriving in the souls of many people who still believe people of color are less than them and have a horrible disrespect and opinion of us. Yet we deny it. Not only whites but also people of color deny that racism is still an isssue. It may not be as overt as it use to be and in fact it is not overt but rather covert. The racist took the place of the gays that were in the closet quietly talking about Hispanics, Asians, Blacks and Indians as if we were some form of second class people. Oddly enough I can see some white women as being oppressed in a similar manner by men who believe they should not be paid as much as they make. But I digress.
Racism seems to be a rather taboo subject but the truth is it is there. Some of us are doing something about it by admitting it is there and by talking about it. Most of us seem to be of the position of almost a "don't ask don't tell policy". We think if we don't talk about it then it will desolve and go away. It's not going to just go away and there is still a direct need for an awareness around what we are doing to maintain a society that keeps whites in power and people of color supressed or believing that all is well. The reason we are still making movies about racism is because it needs to be in our awareness bank. It needs to be in the fron of our minds because that is the only way it is going to stop. We simply have to admit it and work on making it right.
I for one appreciate a movie like The Color Purple taht tells of the history of African Americans and that brought to the forefront the importance of not forgetting just as we cannot forget the Holocaust. Thousands of Black women and men were tortured, uses as slaves and killed as did thousands of Jewish people.
I will never ever forget the day that I was in a person's living room with someone I knew and him making a comment to the effect of "What is this big deal these Jews are making about the Holocaust" as if to complain that Jewish people need to forget about it or as to minimize it. In that same room was his daughter who smiled from ear to ear as he said it. She hung on every word to my utter shock. It was then that I decided that racism and lack of compassion for the plight of a people who were literally burned to death was still alive. I could not hate or be angry at the man that said it. I was more upset at myself for not saying something when in fact I was upset at this statement that minimized the plight of the Jewish people, one that we should be ashamed of and sensitive to at the same time.
Still today there is this lack of respect for people of color that prompts me to say "the gays came out of the closet and the racist got in". I sincerely believe that racism is still alive and thriving in the souls of many people who still believe people of color are less than them and have a horrible disrespect and opinion of us. Yet we deny it. Not only whites but also people of color deny that racism is still an isssue. It may not be as overt as it use to be and in fact it is not overt but rather covert. The racist took the place of the gays that were in the closet quietly talking about Hispanics, Asians, Blacks and Indians as if we were some form of second class people. Oddly enough I can see some white women as being oppressed in a similar manner by men who believe they should not be paid as much as they make. But I digress.
Racism seems to be a rather taboo subject but the truth is it is there. Some of us are doing something about it by admitting it is there and by talking about it. Most of us seem to be of the position of almost a "don't ask don't tell policy". We think if we don't talk about it then it will desolve and go away. It's not going to just go away and there is still a direct need for an awareness around what we are doing to maintain a society that keeps whites in power and people of color supressed or believing that all is well. The reason we are still making movies about racism is because it needs to be in our awareness bank. It needs to be in the fron of our minds because that is the only way it is going to stop. We simply have to admit it and work on making it right.
I for one appreciate a movie like The Color Purple taht tells of the history of African Americans and that brought to the forefront the importance of not forgetting just as we cannot forget the Holocaust. Thousands of Black women and men were tortured, uses as slaves and killed as did thousands of Jewish people.
I will never ever forget the day that I was in a person's living room with someone I knew and him making a comment to the effect of "What is this big deal these Jews are making about the Holocaust" as if to complain that Jewish people need to forget about it or as to minimize it. In that same room was his daughter who smiled from ear to ear as he said it. She hung on every word to my utter shock. It was then that I decided that racism and lack of compassion for the plight of a people who were literally burned to death was still alive. I could not hate or be angry at the man that said it. I was more upset at myself for not saying something when in fact I was upset at this statement that minimized the plight of the Jewish people, one that we should be ashamed of and sensitive to at the same time.
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