Our+Confused+Racial+Mores+Reflection

It is hard to imagine that even after 200 years, Americans have yet to learn how to co-exists with different races. What is even more astonishing is that we were founded upon the principles that “all men are created equal,” yet we still manage to oppress and persecute people simply because a person may have more melanin in their skin than another. Our racial tendencies have affected us in such a way that it is almost impossible to disassociate from them. Andres Serrano, a notoriously controversial photographer, took a series of photographs of seven members of the Atlanta, Georgia chapter of the Klu Klux Klan in order to create disturbing paradoxes. The KKK represents to Serrano the racial hatred that is still existent in the United States today regardless of our progress during the Civil Rights Movement. Alexis de Tocqueville, however, if he were still living would not be surprised by the fact that regardless of laws we are unable to eliminate our prejudice against the African American community. De Tocqueville enumerated in his novel //Democracy in America// the fact that slavery and prejudice had run so deep within our roots as Americans that even the harshest laws would not succeed in destroying our racist mores. Our inability to teach respect and erase our deep roots of prejudice is apparent in Tony Kayne’s movie, //American History X//. The movie follows a very troubled and misled young man, Derek, who, confused after his father dies in a fire, blames his death upon the black, Jewish, and other minority groups he feels are inferior. Once a studious and well-learned young man eager to pursue a meaningful life, his fathers racism and prejudice against minorities in the neighborhood and then his death seriously confused him. The two movie clips shown on the wall demonstrate the power of racism to brainwash the minds of the young and insecure. One of which gives a general overview of the movie creating a microscopic view of Derek’s evolution from a young pure man, to a white supremacist, to finally a mature adult who hopes to keep his brother away from his own troubled path. The other video clip displays the hatred and prejudice that has befuddled Derek’s mind as he attacks his mother’s Jewish boyfriend. While American History X shows racism through the eyes of a white male, //The Invisible Man// by Ralph Ellison takes a different point of view. The unnamed main character becomes so frustrated by the fact that the white majority refuses to recognize his dignity as a person that he results to intimidation and violence in order to be seen. He plays off the fear of the average white man in order to feel as though he is somewhat alive and human. After brutally beating a white man who had refused to see him, main character is “amused” by the idea that this white man will now no longer be able to deny his dignity because he has made himself be noticed even though to the white man, he does not exist. It is a devastating blow to our identities as Americans to recognize that the reason the invisible man had to result to violence and the fear of others in order to be seen by the greater community, which, in a metaphorical way is a presiding factor of this struggle to overcome our unfortunate racial mores. In a way, the invisible man is a man of two consciences as he once existed as an African American molded into the ideal, accommodating individual for the whites to parade around and then on the other he is a man overwhelmed by hostile hatred that he projects onto the “supreme race.” W.E.B. Du Bois also noticed African Americans tendency to feel obligated to please two different types of people resulting in a serious identity crisis. On the one hand, he noticed that the African American longed to be somewhat “bleached" in order to blend in better with the predominant race. On the other hand, the African-American struggles further to try and also maintain their cultural identity. As a result, the African-American finds himself stuck in the middle unable to commit to one extreme or the other. This longing of a “double self” stems from a sensitive “self-consciousness” that only the Americanized African obtains. This has been caused by the prejudice habits of our society. Finally, in a somewhat darkly satirical song, Big Billy Broonzy describes the hierarchy of social color, which plays into the general theme of racial prejudice regardless of our many steps to destroy prejudice through the law. Americans, however, must recognize that our prejudice roots cannot simply be eliminated by a written document.