The TV show All American is a very popular Netflix series with two seasons released. The show follows teenage football player, Spencer James, while he leaves his home in Crenshaw to play football for a rich Beverly Hills high school. Spencer fights to stay true to his hometown, and not change in the sight of excess and glamour, while the show also shows his friends dealing with their own battles. This series has a strong theme of identity. Spencer’s main internal battle is to maintain his hometown identity, and to always look out for his people back home. Other characters struggle with identity issues like living in a shadow in their parents eye, their sexuality, being biracial, and becoming poor after being rich their whole life. Spencer’s determination to not change into his Hollywood classmates focuses mostly on the social and economic class of his new town vs. his old one. The characters from Crenshaw are shown to be less wealthy, looked down upon, and have gangs in their town. The Beverly Hills kids have huge homes, nice cars, and crazy parties. While many of the other characters issues like dealing with their sexuality, parents, and being biracial, are more relatable identity problems to many teenagers watching. In this way the show can address and help many of its viewers.
The shows creator definitely wanted to play on some stereotypes- to help break them in the end. While the Beverly hills kids are rich and spoiled, they struggle with finding a sense of self, as well as dealing with drug problems. The wealthy family’s in Beverly Hills who appear perfect, dealt with deep issues and were far from having perfect relationships. Spencer being from “the hood”, is also the character with the strong moral compass and good head on his shoulders. The Crenshaw kids often intertwined with the Beverly hill high schoolers and formed relationships, and they would help each other with their problems. These were all ways the shows creator tried to fight what people would subconsciously believe about these characters, prior to seeing their plot line. This show also displays many examples of racism and injustice against the black characters. For example the main character Spencer gets frozen yogurt with his wealthy and white friends, and the store owner specifically addresses Spencer asking him to leave. The police are then called, and they side with the store owner. This was a great and subtle example of what an issue injustice is in our society, when even the authorities won’t always help. The school in Spencer’s hometown Crenshaw is also gentrified, with all of the lower income families being placed in that school’s zone. Gentrification is an extremely common way the black community experiences injustice in areas throughout the United States. Overall All American is a great show with a lot of relevant messages that relate to our society today.

While in my hometown Speedway, I witnessed a very common type of systemic injustice. Two friends came into the building, one being white and the other black. They separated to two different aisles, and immediately the store clerk’s eyes followed the black teenagers location. The store clerk seemed to try and make it obvious that he was watching, and it was clear to me that he was trying to prevent stealing. I think the black friend recognized this also, as he soon went to stand with his white friend. This doesn’t mean the store clerk was a bad person, but surely subconscious discrimination had occurred. The issue here is that this is so common. This story that black people steal more than white people, is a very old stereotype. Stereotypes like this are often instilled into people’s brains, and that’s why we need to make a conscious effort to recognize and correct them. People ignore these subconscious stories, and refuse to recognize them because they’re not a racist person. But your moral beliefs as a person can be very different from the implicit bias within you, the two don’t have to align. For example the store clerk may be a black lives matter supporter, and be very anti-racists, but thinks he’s just doing what “needs to be done” by watching the black kid in his store. Being more suspicious of black people, like this case in the gas station, leads to an unequal false accusation rate. It also leads to black people feeling unsafe around people of authority. This is a small issue, and many small issues make a big impact. Falsely accusing of stealing is just the smaller scale version of falsely accusing of a more serious crime. If people could stop this specific assumption that “black people steal more”, then maybe there would be less falsely accused black people of larger crime as well. This connects very well with King’s letter from jail. Martin Luther King Jr. spelled out perfectly in his letter that small injustices can be just as bad as large ones when it comes to civil equality. He also emphasized that those who say they believe in racial equality need to     work towards it, because doing nothing is working against it. Small injustices are something like a gas station clerk immediately distrusting the black individual in his store. He didn’t harm the boy, or cause him any further trouble, but he worked against the movement of racial equality in this action.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hsph.harvard.edu%2Fnews%2Fpress-releases%2Fblack-americans-discrimination-work-police%2F&psig=AOvVaw2gKU8-92MCXocn3lCdhq62&ust=1603590007062000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA0QjhxqFwoTCJjc8biMzOwCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

https://youtu.be/faI8kacPGbQ

Video showing a white woman not letting a black man into his apartment complex, because she believed he was breaking in.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2020/05/27/stop-calling-the-police-on-black-people/#7b4623de64c0

Woman discusses many viral videos that are examples of racial micro aggressions.

This weeks reading is “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe. This novel is about the main character Okonkwo, and his life as a leader of the Igbo tribe. The story follows his fictional experiences through years in time, but they are happening during a very real and big event in history. An important theme through this book is the colonization of the Igbo people.
European colonization is a big part of history. Very relevant to us is the colonization of America. Great Britain took control of America by the early 1600’s. The colonists were very interested in economic growth opportunities that they could find in this new land. The land had been occupied by the native population. This colonization led to stolen land, new laws, new religion, and the spread of new disease. This period ended much later in the late 1700’s with the American revolution, when the Americans came together for freedom from British rule.
The Igbo people were from southeastern Nigeria, and spoke the language Ibo. They were a separated people, and grouped into large cultural communities. The British entered Nigeria in 1914. The British assumed rule over the Nigerian people, and with their rule came changes in religion, education, and language. This was a lot of change at once for the Igbo people. The British profited a lot on crops, specifically groundnuts, while they were in Nigeria. This forced a lot of people to migrate to different areas and find new careers.
These two countries had both been colonized by Europe, in specific the country Britain. A big difference is the time frame, because the colonization of America was very early in history, and America was just then being put in the map. Nigeria was colonized much more recently, and had already established a people and system. The motive in both cases was Britain’s own economic and power growth. In both occurrences, the countries faced culture shock, and were forced into new ways of life. This was a big morality problem of colonization, in how it disregarded the people’s beliefs and feelings. Another big similarity between the two is that the colonization eventually led to unity among the countries people. Though both places were constrained under the rule by Britain, it had a positive outcome in the strength of their people as a whole in the fall of colonization.

Bibliography

Ajayi, J.F. Ade, and Reuben Kenrick Udo. “Nigeria as a Colony.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 9 Sept. 2020, www.britannica.com/place/Nigeria/Nigeria-as-a-colony.

Learning, Lumen. “US History I (OS Collection).” The Impact of Colonization | US History I (OS Collection), courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ushistory1os2xmaster/chapter/the-impact-of-colonization/.

Slattery, Katharine. “The Igbo People – Origins and History.” The Igbo People – Origins & History, www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/igbo/igbo1.htm.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Igbo.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 22 May 2020, www.britannica.com/topic/Igbo.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “The Contest with France.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2 Mar. 2020, www.britannica.com/topic/American-colonies/The-contest-with-France.