Examples Of Racism In The Birth Of A Nation

How would you react if you were falsely accused of a crime when all of your life you had been a good man. However, the catch was you were African American.  A white man’s word against your own. What would be running through your mind? This is exactly the kind of question that was running through Tom Robinson’s mind in this novel. During the 1930s, discrimination against targeted groups of society was prevalent, but small victories occurred to combat this issue in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. From Tom Robinson’s trial, to various stereotypes being broken, and the incidents that took place in Calpurnia’s church for colored people. All of these factors contribute to the purpose behind this novel’s meaning.

To Kill a Mockingbird took place during the 1930s, a period shortly after the American civil war in Maycomb County, Alabama, the deep south where black people suffered from racism and discrimination. In this book, Tom Robinson was accused of raping a white woman, which was something that he’s never done, even though all the evidence proved that he did not violate that white woman, Tom was judged guilty because he was a black man. Racism is presented throughout the entire book especially when Scout got teased by her family about Atticus taking Tom’s case, and the townspeople's perception about Atticus, as well as during the trial of Tom Robinson.

Just like the recent recession of 2008, the Great Depression brought fear upon our country like no other force in our nation’s history. Throughout the Great Depression, racism was at an all time high and money was at an all time low. Prices skyrocketed as inflation took hold of the economy. But these occurrences were not left undocumented. Steinbeck accurately portrays historical and cultural elements of the 1930’s, such as poverty and racism throughout his novella, Of Mice and Men.

Racism is the belief that characteristics and abilities can be attributed to people simply based on their race and that some racial groups are superior to others. This has been a problem in our world forever. In to Kill a Mockingbird there are so many racist events and it reflects on the society as a whole till this day. The book setting was the 1930’s in a small county of Maycomb, where most people were racist and discriminatory. People think racism has died off, but it is still a huge problem. People choose to raise their children and teach them that racism is okay and that is how there is still racism today. There are so many statistics out there based on skin color that right there is even racist if everyone is equal why are there polls being taken separating people by the color of their skin?

Birth of a Nation uses its histrionic plot to show how tangled destinies of a southern and northern family before and after the Civil War. It willingly portrays southern blacks as spiteful and uncivil, the northern whites as crafty, dishonest, and conceited, and the film’s southern whites as anguish recurrent radical and erotic mortifications at the hands of white northerners and black southerners before factually being saved by the thoughtful, Ku Klux Klan. The film is divided to show the different aspects of those two sides during this historical time. During this time Africans were coming to America and it started the reconstruction on our country. D.W. Griffith made this film to show us the reality of racism at this point in time.

Not much has changed in almost a century. Minorities are still being treated poorly. Harper Lee shows this many times throughout To Kill a Mockingbird. In her novel Lee portrays racial prejudice by showing the relationship between whites and blacks.

The Birth of a Nation, arguably one of the most ambiguous names in the history of cinema, is only about to get more complex and chaotic. The Birth of a Nation was originally the title of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 racist propaganda film about the rise of the Ku Klux Klan who “saved” the South from being dictated by blacks during the Reconstruction era when the North tried to rebuild the South after the Civil War. Now, that title poises a new movie written, directed, produced, and starring actor Nate Parker that dramatizes the 1831 slave rebellion led by enslaved African-American Nat Turner.

In this movie the African Americans were treated nicely but in reality they did not feel this way. The masters mistreated their slaves but in the movie they were actually having conversations. There is a scene in the movie where a group of African Americans were shaking hands with the white Americans. The producer of the movie wanted to inform others that the “birth” of America was founded on the basis of equality rather than discrimination. If the producer of the movie did not show how the slaves were mistreated, the people will just see the world in only that point of view; the slaves’ point of view does not exist. Ruling countries oppressed both the undeveloped, barren places and the African Americans. The Birth of the Nation is a perfect example of a form of travel writing; the Americans wanted to inform others about America but this movie was only produced in their perspective. Rather than recording the reality, the produces or writers record history with the input of their own influences.

The history of African Americans in early Hollywood films originated with blacks representing preconceived stereotypes. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, stirred many controversial issues within the black community. The fact that Griffith used white actors in blackface to portray black people showed how little he knew about African Americans. Bosley Crowther’s article “The Birth of Birth of a Nation” emphasizes that the film was a “highly pro-South drama of the American Civil War and the Period of Reconstruction, and it glorified the role of the Ku Klux Klan” (76). While viewing this film, one would assert that the Ku Klux Klan members are heroic forces that rescue white women from sexually abusive black men. Griffith

This essay will focus on the film Racism: a History. I picked the film over the other films offered, because it taught me many things about history of the Black Americans. It illustrates how race continues to justify economic misuse and injustices. It shows how people moved from their maternal land, bound in slavery, and killed. This happens when people view others as though they are not human beings.

In the 1962 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee, shows how racism can impact a society in a negative way through character construction because it is a reoccurring problem. In chapter 15; while Tom Robinson awaits his trial, he is transferred to the Maycomb jail. At ten o’clock pm, Atticus is on his way to the jailhouse; Scout, Jem, and Dill follow secretively. When Atticus got to the jail, he sat outside the doors and read; meanwhile the kids are hiding and spying on him. In the middle of Atticus is reading, four cars pull up, a group of men get out of the cars and tell Atticus to move away from the jailhouse doors. The men want Tom Robinson to get released; so that they can severely beat him and possibly murder him, simply because of the color of his skin.  The characters in To Kill a Mockingbird are all constructed differently. Some characters are constructed to be extremely closed-mindedly prejudice, while others are constructed to be open-minded and accepting of differences. Although the book is set in an earlier generation, concepts of the book are extremely relevant today.

The slave mindset of white families and slaveowners continued after the abolishment of slavery in 1865 in the form of segregation which was enforced by state and local governments through the use of Jim Crow laws. The levels of racism in the 1930s versus the lower levels of racism in the present correspond with the decline of Jim Crow laws beginning in the mid-20th century, which affected the societal status of black people, their economic status, and their continued effect on today’s laws.

Huck and Scout find themselves in the center of two societies that are welcoming to racism. Huck’s world takes place during a time before slavery was illegal and looked down upon. Slaves were everywhere in his home of the south and was seen as a part of life. He was surrounded by adults who owned slaves, accepted slavery, and were racist. His own father had been a racist man who looked down on African Americans as worthless trash. Because of the adults in his life had treated and viewed them in this way, Huck thought this was how it is. He viewed slaves as property and not much more than this. However, when Huck met Jim after running away from his abusive father, he seemed to have not been fully influenced from the racist adults he spent his

“D.W. Griffith was the first American director to be as well-known as the films he directed, and he was among the very first to insist that filmmaking was an art form” (Lewis 53). This statement is very true. However, the inherent discriminating content in some of his movies also made him one of the hardest to appreciate. One of the most famous examples was The Birth of a Nation (1915), which was in favor of the Ku Klux Klan. After a few more controversial movies, he finally tried to redeem his reputation with Broken Blossoms (1919). Broken Blossoms is Griffith’s attempt at an apology in the portrayal of minorities and the idea of miscegenation within The Birth of a Nation in the midst of a troubling society heading towards the anti-miscegenation law.

The Film A Time to Kill directed by Joel Schumacher, produced in 1996 is an American crime drama film and contains many examples of dominant attitudes in society. The film is focused around the dominant attitudes of racism in society which is primarily evident in the favouritism of whites in the perspective of law. The film features how a black man feared this discrimination so greatly he took the law into his own hands by punishing two white men the way two black men would be punished. Throughout the text we see the conflict between two opposing lawyers in court and how racism is an evident issue. This essay will discuss the dominant attitudes in society around the topic of racism and how they are represented and revealed by conflict between