American History X

For this blog I was suppose to go and watch the film The Actresses. I actually drove downtown but I got there late so I couldn’t get in. Instead yesterday I went to watch American History X.
This film was a hard movie to watch and at the same time it was very sad because this kind of racism situations still exist these days. Plus it was totally related to class concepts. The main concept that we see through the whole film is racism. We see racism against all races. The two main characters of the film are Derek and his youngest brother Danny two white boys. Derek became racist because his father was killed by some black people while just doing his work, but his father was racist too. So he though minorities were only occupying extra space that didn’t belong to them. He also mentions that immigrants are just taking the jobs that supposedly belong to the white people. Whites were the norm and they owned this country.

It’s interesting to see how in the basketball game the ones who win the game are the whites and the blacks get to leave the court. In another scene in the movie Derek’s mom and her boyfriend try to tell Derek that white people also commit crimes and kill people, but Derek insists that the numbers are very different and that minorities and immigrants are guilty of everything. Dany followed his brother example and he became racist too. After some time Derek went to jail for three years for killing some black people. By being in jail he got to experience racism against white people also. He suffered a lot. He also got to hang out with a black guy who totally changed his way of viewing things. It’s impressive to see how the black guy got six years sentence in jail just because he stole a TV and he accidentally dropped it on the cop’s foot, while Derek got three years in prison for killing two black guys. In jail was where he learned that being a racist just brought him problems and he also realized that his life was a misery and he didn’t have any happiness. He was even sexually abused by his own race (white guys). He also realized that his brother was following the same path and that sooner or later he was going to also suffer the consequences. He had experienced a lot of things, bad things that he didn’t want his brother to go through. After he got out of jail he started to change everything. He wanted to fix his life and his family’s life was well. He was more focused on his brother. After Danny knew all that Derek went through in prison he realized that the path that he was following, the path that his brother used to follow wasn’t bringing him any happiness as well, so he agreed to change. They started to live a new life. A life were they stopped being racist and a life where they saw everyone equal, but it was too late. Danny was killed at school by some black guys that he always used to hate and they hated Danny as well. Even though Derek changed in prison and tried to change his family most of the people that knew them, knew them as racists so there were still more consequences. That’s why Danny was killed.

Even though we don’t see it much around, this movie definitely tells real life stories that people are living out there. Racist people and gang members killing each other. The movie also tells all the offensive words that there could be to describe another race and that many people still use out there. Active and passive racism are present. Active racism done by all the gang members against each other, and passive racism like the cops that didn't do anything when they saw that someone was being beaten in jail. As I mentioned before this kind of situations still happen in life and for this to change we need the cooperation of every single person in this country, and not only in this country but in this world which of course, is a very hard thing to do. But let’s don’t this stop us from doing what we can. We as an individual, even though is hard, we can still make a difference. I would like to end with a quote from the movie that I really liked: “Hate is baggage. Life is too short to be pissed all the time. It’s just not worth it”- Dany

Haven't people realize that we live in the same planet?

Many people think that racism is part of history now. It’s part of the past, but even though when it looks like we have overcome it, this is not true. Sad to say, racism still exists today, and even worse is that from my personal perspective I don’t really believe that there is going to be a day when we will reach an equal treatment for everyone, well at least not the United States. When I say “at least not in the United States” I refer to the fact that many people who live in different countries don’t have to face this problem. The United States is the main country where people from different parts of the world come, and because of that I believe is the country that faces more with racism. For sure people have done a great progress, and the situation is so much better than it used to be back in the past and we can also keep working to make a difference, but this term of racism has been out there for so long that many people still do it either consciously or unconsciously.

Today during class we learned that among all people we have the active racists, who are the ones who are conscious of what they are doing, then we have the passive racists, who are the ones that differentiate people unconsciously or do nothing about a situation, and then we have the anti racists, which sad to say even though we have people that try to do something about it and help to overcome these kind of situations, these people are a very low percent of the population. All the rest of the population falls under the other two categories. As we can see this doesn’t help as much.

From my own experience, me as a Mexican, I didn’t have to face racism or even talk about it until I came to this country. In Mexico everyone was Mexican, everyone was the same, but then you come here and you find out that everyone seems to be different. I’ve seen people, not only from my country but also from different countries and different parts of the world treated differently just because of their race, and it’s not enough to live this in real life but they also have to show it in films. Here we have all these films that most of the time will show people from different races as the villains, servers, robbers, low class workers, making them inferior to others.

Today in class we watched “Boyz N The Hood”. It was hard to watch, and sad at the same time, but we clearly saw examples of racism in this movie. Some of the things that I noticed was that the teacher at the school was white, and something that really bothered me was when she mentioned the word “Indians” and then she changed it to “Native Americans”. Another thing that bothered me from her was when she called the mom of one of the boys and kept asking her questions in a rude way. Other quotes that we hear through out the movie were “black men have no place in the army” and “blacks own nothing”. Even though these came from black people, this was a reality back in those days. Like these movie we have lots more that keep giving out these messages that some races are inferior/superior to others.

I came to this country. I started to meet people from different cultures and parts of the world. Thanks God I never saw them inferior/superior to me. I saw everyone equal, because that’s the way we are. This is the way I was raised. I was raised to respect everyone, I was raised to see our differences as something special that each person has and not something that makes us inferior/superior to someone else, but of course not everyone thinks this way. We’ve been dealing with racism since the beginning of times, and until this point I still don’t see the end of it, will we reach that day when people realize that we live in the same planet?