Prom In America

While waiting for her plane at John F Kennedy airport, Justine Sacco tweeted “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”(Ronson 1). She boarded the plane checking her phone every few seconds waiting for a response, nothing. It was an 11 hour flight to where she was going in Africa, so she decided that she would sleep. When she arrived in Cape Town airport Sacco turned on her phone to see the thousands of hateful responses to her tweet. Sacco’s twitter page had became a horror show, with one twitter user responding “How did @Justine-Sacco get a PR job?! Her level of racist ignorance belongs on Fox News. #AIDS can affect anyone!” (Ronson 2). During that 11-hour flight she had became the No. 1 trend

In “Teaching Resistance: The Racial Politics of Mass Media,” bell hooks focus her message on the role of the media when depicting black and white characters, how it negatively makes an impact on the public, and how white and black people see each other. Although racism began centuries before mass media could spread stereotypes, media’s artful approach to the masses has been useful to continue what has long existed. Mass media’s contents are so subtle and morphed into jokes and entertainable means, that the public becomes easily distracted and over time, they unconsciously absolve stereotypes and false ideas. The fight against these channels has long ago started, and as hooks states in her article, people should turn to “low-risk small acts that can become major interventions.” She suggests boycotts and protest letters that will bring awareness and will be used to gradually deconstruct the negative ideas media strongly built.

Why as white people have we been lulled into thinking its safe to be around other white people. Why have we been taught since birth that it’s the people of that other color we need to fear? They’re the ones that will slit your throat (Moore 57). The mass media has played and will continue to play a crucial role in the way white Americans perceive African-Americans. As a result of the overwhelming media focus on crime, drug use, gang violence, and other forms of anti-social behavior among African-Americans, the media is fostering a distorted public perception of African-Americans. Looking at past examples of African Americans treatment

A principal and an Assistant Principal, both black - were having a heated conversation with a white teacher and in the middle of the argument she stated that “she hated all black folks.”

A major practice that was perpetrated within my school would be aversive racism; in which race was not discussed, and if it was would result in little or no changes to some of the racist practices. Oftentimes people within my community would look for ways to avoid talking directly about race; however would make ill-suited jokes about race, and held outdated stereotypes (Koppelman, 2015, p. 185). For example, African American students who spent time in the library and whose friends were all- white was often referred to as “uncle- toms” or “Oreos,” and whites who had what was considered black attributes were called “wiggers.” These jokes and anecdotes on the face are not obviously meant to be racist, but do result in a feelings

Prom is supposed to be a very exciting night. I think finding a date for prom is even more exciting. You see my school has this thing called grand march and you have to have a prom date/ friend to even participate in the walk. So if you are a loner you can’t go. Well my experience finding a prom date so I wouldn’t be a loner was quite the adventure.

A Netflix TV show, Dear White People produced by Justin Simien, is about the students of Winchester University. This show tends to target not only the Netflix customers, but the black and white audience as well; the entire first season generally focuses on the media, racial, and gender roles within the community as well as the mainstream problem of the unrecognized white privilege by white skinned people. Looking up who the producer is, it turns out that Simien is a black-skinned man. Therefore, he fully understands the politics and the human behavior towards the black race from the white race (considering racism towards people with his skin color has been around for so long). Being black-skinned is already clear for many people to assume that he probably has dealt with the racism majority of his life, considering the repeating themes throughout the show. Even with the title, the producer is purposefully calling out to the specific audiences in a straightforward way. According to some reviews, many have concluded that Dear White People is extremely offensive to them. While watching the show, there were a few significant and periodic themes that showed throughout the first season and the major themes I chose were important how the roles of media played throughout the show. As a result, the roles of the media within the show reveals that people tend to communicate to the public of who they they really are as a person by showing what they want the public to see them as: in a

As the most globally known form of communication, social media outlets has continuously contributed to the dehumanization of African American males for decades starting with propaganda stereotyping the black men as the “black buck” to justify their domination and labor exploitation under chattel slavery in the mid-19th century(Herd 2014). To a hyper sexual rapist possessed by the over desire for white women during the era of wide spread lynching’s, helping to fuel the disenfranchisement and ideological support for extreme anti-black terrorism (Herd 2014). Ultimately providing the public with the idea that the black man is to be feared. From this historical backing of anti-black ideology by the system with laws such as black codes and segregation

Asking a highschool student whether or not they believe prom is worth it, you’ll get both a yes and a no. This is because each person forms their opinion based on the stereotypes of prom. It may be the cost or it may be getting dressed up and having a “magical night” that forms their definition of prom and it's worth which then helps them make their decision to say yes or no. To me, a high school senior, if i were asked if I believe prom is worth it my answer would be yes.

Some People tend to laugh and feed on putting someone down based on their race and some may not even know they are being racist at all. The fact is that your behavior towards someone can be racist even when you may be “Joking” or “Messing around.” The matter of fact is the racial comments were still made and still have a hurtful message. In the essays we read we were given a real life example of how even unintentional racial comments can still be harmful to someone and shouldn’t be used as a cultural norm. One imperative stride to lessening the racist culture in America is to incorporate educational programs for our youth to show them that we are all created equal and racism has no place in our society. These measures can help raise equality and counter the impacts of any prejudice or dogmatism that happens in the children’s homes by helping them see and comprehend what generalizations and racism are and that they ought to be stayed away from. The adults and leaders in the lives of the youngsters are the illustrations that the kids look up to and will determine how they will act when they are older. By instructing the kids at a young age about the threats of generalization and racism, we can limit the transference of bigotry to the future

The segment was about the University of Missouri president, Tim Wolfe stepping down. The black football players at the university had demanded his step down because Tim was a racist. The University was primarily a white schol. After countless situations of other students using racial slurs and many more, the students are not able to reach their academic goals with these hurtful and demeaning obstacles. It is wrong for a school's president to not take action upon racism. I would recommend fixing this situation by not only getting rid of that president, but get not a new single president but a whole unbiased council and afterwards deal with the racism children. I would make them get to do the janitor’s job for 1-3 weeks and the tell each of those

The only thing Stryker and I can agree is the old way of public shaming doesn't work. In this day and age, you can't do things like that anymore, as it simply doesn't work. as Stryker says scarlet letters stopped working because with planes, trains and automobiles, if people were being shamed they just left and moved somewhere else. “So we turn instead to public humiliation, an organic form of social control that never went away completely,” (Stryker 2.) The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts a woman pregnant out of wedlock and she gets branded with a red A for adultery, a very clear case of public shaming and humiliation. Like Stryker discuss scarlet letters just don't work anymore. If that happened today (even though it wouldn't) she would just leave town and live somewhere else. So I do agree with Stryker that things like that are a way of the past. Doxxing is the new world of public shaming and it's working. As seen in this story from the Charlottesville riots in august. “Logan Smith, the man behind the Twitter account @YesYoureRacist, began posting photos of alleged white supremacist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia—and gained over 300,000 followers in a single weekend, some of whom helped him expose the identities of the protesters. One of the people Smith outed has since been fired

When you referenced Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article “Letter to My Son”, I was terrified by his experience with his son when you reiterated, “Ta-Nehisi Coates took his son, not yet 5, to see a movie on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. As his son made his way off the escalator, a white woman pushed him and said, ‘Come on!’ Chaos ensued. There was a black parent’s rage and a white man’s threat to have the black parent arrested” (Bernard 1-4). This incident forced me to reflect on the dominance that white people have held over black people throughout our country’s history, and it is sickening to know that there are still people around who are willing to impose this ideology upon others. I hold even more sympathy for Black American mothers due to America’s extensive history of oppressing African-Americans. This is evident given the many years they have been subjected to prejudice and violence on top of the fact that they were coerced to leave their homeland and serve as slaves in America and then repeatedly battle just to gain equal rights with white people. For these reasons, I do not hold any disagreements with your fears and that you have every right to believe that your daughters could be a target due to their skin color given our country’s brutal history. Nonetheless, if we are going to resolve this predicament, then we need to

For centuries, there have been ongoing cases of racism and discrimination against blacks in America, not only in the workplace, but also in the criminal justice system, the government, housing, and countless other establishments. One cannot describe America without slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and other racially motivated movements. Race (and racism, unfortunately) is what makes America, America. For this essay, I will be exploring the question: Is there still a racial issue in America, predominantly, against blacks? Also, I will be exploring if stereotypes are related to racial profiling, if the media affects racism, and if racism is still present in the 21st century, in particularly, since President Barack Obama got elected as the United States first black president in 2008. This topic’s inspiration came about after reading Sojourner Truth’s speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” and after watching the famous, or at times, infamous Fox News program, Bill O’Riley. On this particular program, O’Riley and Martin Luther King III were discussing the situation in Ferguson, Missouri after the police officer that had shot and killed Michael Brown did not get charged with murder. O’Riley stated that blacks should ‘sit down’ and wear “Don’t Get Pregnant at 14” t-shirts in order for black relations/issues to get better. This topic is relevant because, as stated before, race and racism is what makes America and it is something that needs to be changed for us, as a country, to move forward

Yet, last August, a sorority at the University of Alabama kicked a pledge sister out of their organization for sending an offensive Snapchat. The picture was celebrating that Chi Omega was off probation, however the sender was using a racial slur. Exactly 365 days earlier, a snapchat was sent celebrating the fact that the same sorority had no black women in their new pledge class. While these members were dismissed from the organization, the issue of race within traditionally white environments still flourishes.