Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Whiteness

In today’s world, "white" tends to be the default definition of power, according to the article. In television and movies, Caucasian people are supposed to represent humans as a single race, but in a film starring an African American it is considered a "black film". Why the label? I don’t believe that these subtle references help the issue of whiteness and the struggle to erase these predispositions of superiority. The article states that films starring African American actors or actresses do not fare as well, because the “majority cannot relate.” So with this in mind, consider American History X. The members of the D.O.C. did not care to understand or get to know their African American counterparts, they simply believed that they were criminals and were in no way related to their lives, merely because of their skin color and propaganda of a white supremacist.
According to the article we read, whiteness does not necessarily refer to the color of a person's skin. For example, in the early 1800's thousands of Irish immigrants were forced to travel across the Atlantic to America. This was the first significant wave of immigration the New World had seen since settling, which led to much fear and hostility. Americans quickly forgot the fact that they had settled into inhabited lands, and "rallied around Nativism" and the fact that Americans should be strictly for Americans. These ideas led to harsh treatment of the Irish, similar to the treatment of many African Americans at the time. Why is that? During the Nazi control in Germany during the 1930’s, if you had any distant relatives who were Jewish, even if you did not consider yourself one, you were taken into captivity and considered a Jew. With these ideas in mind, does this suggest that anyone who is not a descendant of the original settlers is not American?

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