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Ethnic Notions

1 Pages 287 Words


It’s no coincidence that America thinks the way it does. Images and ideas are being feed into our minds every time we open our eyes. African Americans were thought of as the inferior race so they were portrayed that way in the media. The media over exaggerated African American features and portrayed them in ways they didn’t really look like. They were fat, black, with gap teeth, big lips, ate watermelon and spoke broken English. The video showed that African Americans were always dancing, making music, moving rhythmically as they performed their chores in tattered clothing. They were the “happy slave”. People were working to end slavery and America was being bombarded with images of the “happy slave”. As I watched this video for the first time I was upset. The racial tension is not gone. Although the images are not that extreme anymore they have only come up with different ways to say the same thing. There is no hiding the fact that at one time in our past we were not humans but property sold and branded as cattle. Here in 2002 it doesn’t look the same but it is. We are not equal; we do not have the same opportunities as a White person in America. Some African Americans are even prejudice against their own race. Black men have suffered the worst. Black women are so comfortable with the stereotype that was shown in the movie, carefree and irresponsible, that they believe this to be true of Black men. Some Black men even believe it and don’t try to go any further. I am not Jim Crow...

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