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Discrimination In Michael Moore's Stupid White Men

Decent Essays

Zhao Yuqi The first text is an excerpt of Michael Moore’s novel Stupid White Men, which criticizes white American’s superiority in all the aspects of social life compared to black Americans from the angle of a white people; while the second article is an expert of Brothers and Keepers written by John E. Wideman, which focuses the social segregation between not only different races but also different power levels. Although slightly different, both of the two articles reveal the intense social imbalance, including serious racial discrimination, the deep-rooted prejudice and African-American’s limited rights. Both texts mention the serious racial discrimination in the society. In the first article, it shows that once the whole society expresses their discrimination directly and roughly, they put up signs like “whites only”, “colored” and “negroes only” (L. 83), which strengthens the tension and disharmony between races. In the second essay, Wideman doubts that if the metal braces on the kids’ teeth would be inspected, “will the boys feel like horses on sale” (L.15). Those kids would be treated like animals, it seems like they don’t have any dignity at all, they are just equivalent to the horses, which is a serious discrimination. …show more content…

In the first article, in line 51, it shows that due to the slavery system, African-Americans’ status are not totally equal even in today, they are on the lowest economic ladder, where they suffered a lot from the poverty. In the second article, according to the announcement of Roger Taney, the Supreme Court Chief Justice, “blacks have no rights which white man was bound to respect” (L.49), which shows different rules have been applied to different groups of people, there is nothing called justice. Besides, the blacks are linked with the weak and prisoners who should be inferior, while the whites are linked with the strong and keeper who deserve more

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