Racial Prejudice free essay sample

Throughout history, human beings have been eager to explore new worlds, conquer diverse lands and invent unbelievably amazing things. However, despite this inner thirst to discover new things, there is still resistance to accept those who appear different amongst us. Racial Prejudice is an insidious moral and social disease affecting populations all over the world. It can be diagnosed by its various symptoms and manifestations which include fear, intolerance, separation, segregation, discrimination and hatred. While all of these symptoms of racial prejudice may be evident, the single underlying cause of Racial Prejudice is ignorance. While all humans belong to the same species, races are distinguished from one another by such characteristics as hair colour and texture, skin colour, eye colour and shape, and the size of limbs and body parts. Though these differences are superficial mankind itself continues to view each other from the features that are outwardly perceived. Indeed, humans are outwardly different in appearance; the problem arises when the symptoms of the disease become evident: intolerance, separation and hatred. In a positive light, one may embrace the differences of peoples across the face of the earth and marvel at the uniqueness of the individuals who live on a different part of the globe or even across the street. Racial Prejudice perverts this uniqueness of the races and takes the view that these differences separate individuals further into groups, with one group always being inferior to the other. Racial prejudice has been a major cause of death and destruction to many cultures throughout history, some more so than others. The African American culture has been attempting to adjust itself to a world whose laws, customs and instruments of power were levelled against them. With white power being dominant, the African American community has always been marginalised and portrayed in a negative light. Over the years there have been many different novels, movies, poems and television shows representing how racial prejudice has affected a community. For this task three texts will be examined in attempt to demonstrate how prejudice and ignorance are undeniably destructive for those who have been denied basic rights. The three texts to be examined are the Pulitzer-prize winning novel To Kill A Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee; a popular poem named Between The World Me, by Richard Wright and finally the Oscar-winning movie, Mississippi Burning. Each one of these texts carries a message about racial prejudice and has illustrated this message in their own individual manner. The Civil rights movement in America in the 1950’s and 1960’s was about engineering social justice, specifically with reference to African Americans. Martin Luther King showed the white population that racism is a cancer in the heart of those who have prejudice. He showed them that it violates the most basic human values of justice and equal opportunity. This movement succeeded eventually, but not without cost. The civil rights movement invaded the consciousness of Americans and showed them signs of hope and progress to a new world. In 1964, the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) organised its Freedom Summer campaign, with the main objective being to end the political revocation of the right to vote for the African American people in the Deep South. During this time the CORE also established 30 Freedom Schools in towns throughout Mississippi. The school curriculum included black history and the philosophy of the civil rights movement and the curriculum was usually taught by volunteers. Freedom Schools were often targets of white mobs as were the homes of the local African Americans involved in the campaign. During the summer of 1964, 30 black homes and 37 black churches were firebombed. This horror and injustice along with the murder of two civil rights workers and a young black man by corrupt law enforcement inspired the Oscar-winning movie Mississippi Burning. Mississippi Burning illustrates the civil rights battle that the nation was confronting at this time. This movie is a visual representation of the injustice that was suffered by the African American people during the 1960‘s. Mississippi Burning attempts to portray to the audience the cruel and unjust actions directed at the black community; it portrays the pain and suffering of the blacks, and the hatred and rage within the white oppressors. The movie is an accomplished depiction of the civil rights events in 1964 and gives a powerful evocation of the era to its late 20th century audience. This text challenges the attitudes of many white Americans during the civil rights movement. By using visual media the director was able to immerse the audience in the brutal events that occurred in Mississippi. The director was also able to convey the events by using harsh and realistically southern language when talking about the â€Å"Negro† community, shown in lines such as, â€Å"If you were a Negro no one would give a damn about what you thought†. However, through all the harsh words and negative portrayals, the director has presented reality. The reality, that we are all human, emerges as the black community finds the courage to fight back, â€Å"Look at the face of this young man, and you will see the face of a black man. But if you look at the blood shed, it is red! It is like yours! It is JUST LIKE YOURS! The director also shows the audience the jail terms to which the KKK members were sentenced. He uses â€Å"freeze frames† to allow the audience to take it all in. Also, by emphasising these jail terms, he has invited the audience to understand that there will be a slow transition to justice in Mississippi. The second text, To Kill A Mockingbird, focuses on similar issues to that of Mississippi Burning. However, Harper Lee was able to convey these issues in a gentler and sweeter manner. By using the eyes of a child, the racial prejudice that is represented in this novel is less provocative and toned down to match the innocence of a child’s mind. During the first half of the novel, Lee constructs an almost affectionate description of growing up in small town named Maycomb, in Alabama. The innocence of the opening is undermined during the second half of the book as Lee dismantled the sweet facade of the home town to reveal the underbelly filled with social lies, prejudice and injustice. Harper Lee explores the nature of human beings and whether they can be essentially good or evil. This exploration is dramatized in Scout’s and Jem’s transition from that childhood innocence, which assumes everyone is good because they have not experienced evil to an adult perspective, sobered by confronting evil and having to acknowledge its presence in their world. This transition from innocence to experience is designed to invite the audience to see the threat that hatred, prejudice and ignorance pose to innocent people. To Kill A Mockingbird has many themes and morals; however the most important of these is Racial Prejudice towards the black American community. This theme can be seen clearly with Tom Robinson’s hopeless case, also the demeaning reference to black men as â€Å"niggers† and â€Å"boys† which persist throughout the novel. The Black community occupies the lowest social class in Maycomb and the white population of every class wastes no time in reinforcing the South’s rigid class structure. The most explicit indicator of the deep-rooted racism can be seen when the meticulous arguments of Atticus are defeated and he loses Tom Robinson’s case because of prejudice of the jury towards the colour of Tom’s skin. The closing argument from Atticus during Tom Robinson‘s case clearly illustrates what Atticus’ views on racism are, â€Å"You know the truth, the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men cannot be trusted around women, black or white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. -Atticus (217) This rhetoric still fails to sufficiently sway the views of the other white men in the courtroom. The death of Tom demonstrates the absolute power of the white man and how his power can be corrupt and destructive. Harper Lee has assiduously separated fact from hysteria in this novel and has thus unmasked racial prejudice and demonstrated the injustice and havoc wreaked by prejudice. Lee demonstrates the effects of racial inequality through the main characters’ reactions and through the outcome of the narrative. Lee was able to avoid resistance to her representation of unfolding injustice by writing through the eyes of an innocent child. Lee spends time building a bond between the reader and this child, inviting the reader to identify with her, trust her integrity and willingly accept the truth as the child observes it. Richard Wright’s, Between The World Me offers one of the most chilling accounts of racist violence from the perspective of a black victim. The poem evokes an execution scene. Wright’s poem begins with the speaker inadvertently discovering the remains of a previous night’s lynching. â€Å"And one morning while in the woods I stumbled suddenly upon the thing, Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly oaks and elms† The horrific scene disrupts the narrator’s communication with Nature and corrupts the surroundings which might otherwise have been celebrated in conventional poems. In tangible, plain terms the narrator relates how â€Å"the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting themselves between the world and me†. The speaker stands transfixed on the scene. He stands before the charred remains of the victim’s body and helplessly undergoes a transformation into the charred bones and ashes, morphing into the victim in the midst of the lynching ritual, â€Å"and my skin clung to the bubbling hot tar, falling from me in limp patches†. While this adoption of first person perspective in this context is unusual, Wright has written in such a way to immerse the reader in the scene. He thrusts the reader amidst the fear and pain that the victim was feeling. The Imagery that was used is another way of confronting the reader with the scene, â€Å"Scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the lingering smell of gasoline. † Numerous kinds of imagery, namely visual, have been used and all the senses are being drawn on. This imagery is dense and the detail of imagery is used to bombard the reader with a type of sensory overload in order to overwhelm them, to keep them reading right up until the final climax, death, unable to escape, just as the victim is trapped. Wright’s undeniable gift for imagery allows the audience to view the sinister landscape that is littered with the remnants of hatred and darkened by the shadow of prejudice and injustice through the eyes of a victim. Between the World Me ends with a cry of pain from the author; this shows the audience how Wright has identified with the African American Man who has been executed. The closing lines contain an unsparing portrayal of the victim’s murder, â€Å"Then my blood was cooled mercifully, cooled by a baptism of gasoline. And in a blaze of red I leapt to the sky as pain rose like water, boiling my limbs. † With these two simple yet harsh lines, Wright has depicted just how gruesome and sadistic the white oppressors were. Wright invites sympathy for the victim by making the reader accompany him through the brutal attack. It is these lines, along with many others, that show the unnecessary bloodshed of the black community, and the prejudice and hatred from the white community. Each of these texts represent a time in history where ignorance and hatred resulted in injustice and death. They show the painful journey for African Americans struggling to be seen as equals, persevering in the face of overwhelming obstacles. These texts show how racism restricts the development of mankind. Whether expressed in open hostility, such as in Mississippi Burning and Between the World Me, or by indifference and ignorance, such as in To Kill a Mockingbird, racism divides society into separate antagonistic groups. These texts all suggest that racial attitudes are not instinctive; they are learned in the process of socialising with the â€Å"attitude holder†. This can be seen in Mississippi Burning with the children being taken along by their parents to a white pride rally. Also, in To Kill a Mockingbird, the younger children in Scout’s school calling her father a â€Å"Nigger Lover† shows the audience that racial prejudice emerges early, instilled in the young by their parents. In modern society discrimination and racial prejudice are still present. Due to ignorance we will form an opinion often based on stereotypical lines: â€Å"all people of such and such race are†¦. †. We can fill in the blanks with such expectations that certain races are intellectually superior, others are full of avarice, another is more artistically or athletically inclined, and still another has members who are apt to be dishonest. Perhaps these ideas have been taught directly or indirectly, acted out by one’s parents, as shown in Mississippi Burning. Whatever the source, even the most enlightened member of society will find that to some extent, he or she is judging another based on the superficial aspects of race.