Blackface

As long as there has been humanity, there has been art. As long as there has been art, there has been culture. Both Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man and Spike Lee’s 2000 film Bamboozled examine the links between the two. Invisible Man follows an unnamed protagonist, the narrator, through his journey as a young black man navigating life from the south to the north, and eventually through the Brotherhood, a predominantly white organization who fight for racial equality. Bamboozled is the…

Jazz music is a staple of the Civil Rights movement, signifying the long struggle and the long-awaited freedom of African-American people in the United States. Jazz musicians, such as Nina Simone and Billie Holiday, worked tirelessly to get their messages across in order to further the Civil Rights movement. While all art forms seem to come with a sense of irony, it appears that jazz is the most prone, due to the ever-lingering racism of the United States, the self-proclaimed superiority of…

Hollywood: Truly a Land of Opportunity? From white actors portraying black men in classics, such as Othello, or even from white actress playing dark skinned women, such as Mariane Pearl, white actors portraying people of color in american films has been a tradition in Hollywood. Hollywood has historically made the decision to cast white actors instead of letting minorities play their own roles. While Hollywood is known for being a white industry, over the past years more noise, such as the…

though the film is riddled with racist and evil themes, A Birth of a Nation is still considered a great film and learning tool today. One of the most striking aesthetic choices D.W Griffith made in the film is the unconvincing use of white actors in blackface. A character that stood out to me during the first act was the republican senators housekeeper played by Mary Alden. It’s very visually jarring to look at her because of the way they made her eyes bug out and her lips seem to remain in a…

Racial discrimination on college campuses is a problem, not only for this generation, but many to come. How can students be expected to be professional and show respect when they aren’t treated with the same consideration. Racial discrimination is alive and is present within our college campuses. Minorities have been targeted with insults, racial slurs, and have been treated like criminals, which is evident throughout our history of the trail of tears to the civil war and to the Japanese…

It was three a.m. in early March when the wrath of winter decided to trespass and enter global warming’s territory in central Alabama. I don’t know if it was adrenaline or fear but I didn’t feel the gust of wind that swept down the street that I called my set. It was the last shot of the last day of our four-day shoot. After enduring 4-hour rain and thunderstorm delays, tornado warnings, the inconsistencies of an unreliable generator, and disgruntled town people principal photography for my…

A recent topic that has been given light in the last few weeks of class has been the differences between the idea of race and the concept of ethnicity. The terms are often misused or switched when discussed so it is important to recognize the differences between these two ideas. Knowing the difference between them is necessary in order to be politically correct when discussing the idea. Race is a socially constructed concept that society has created in order to classify members of society…

focus in great detail regarding the colorblind racism on the critical report paper, but some examples of colorblind racism are shown in the power point slides starting from slide 70 which shows fraternity member from University of Florida wearing blackface, and Penn State University Sorority making fun of Mexican…

The border states between the North and South faced a migration of African Americans attempting to begin a life anywhere except under the oppression of Jim Crow and the bleak conditions of the postbellum South. As extremist movements and relational events occurred throughout the nation, urban areas experienced a renaissance of black culture. Was this period truly the “birth of a nation?” As black culture graced America with music, art, and literature, white Protestant women attempted to gain…

Arike Jacobs The Marrow of Tradition: Lynching and “Justice” When discussing American history it is near impossible to ignore the centuries of racial tension. The Marrow of Tradition by Charles W. Chesnutt exposes the social pathology of the American South that has normalized the brutalization of black bodies. Chesnutt writes of various lives both black and white in the events that lead up to a race riot similar to the Wilmington Massacre of 1898. By fictionalizing such an event he is able to…