The movie Hairspray is a story set in the 1960’s about Tracy Turnblad and her friends. This is a time within the Civil Rights movement and the movie does a good job displaying what it was like for colored people and white people during that time. The whole movie is based around a popular TV dance show called the “Corny Collins Show” and how it was segregated. We see segregation everywhere in this film, the blacks not being able to dance on the show with their white peers, separate parts of town for each race and even segregation in the schools detention and classrooms. This is a good movie to analyze with the topics we learned about in class because it is specifically set within the Civil Rights Movement time period. We have learned about how the African American community has been a victim to “othering” and social injustices and we see those in the movie. There is even a scene where Tracy goes to protest in one of MLK’s walks for justice amongst the African American community. This is a big scene because we see Tracy sticking up for social equality and the police assault her and label her as a trader. We can relate this to our current time today with the Black Lives Matter movement. Now in todays age we see a lot more white people (and other races) walking with their black peers for equality than we did in the 60’s, but these white people still are faced with their white peers judgments. I think we have come a long ways since the films 1960’s equality movements but as we see there is still a lot of work to be done to this day. For the black community to be able to have the same equalities and freedoms white people have we need more people like Tracy Turnblad to stand up for these communities and share that we all deserve equal rights and opportunities.
Author: borne.10
Yo is this Racism Corbin and Maddi
Introduction
Hello and welcome to the yo, is this racism? Podcast where we discuss events that have taken place, break them down and determine whether if it was an act of racism or not. My name is Corbin Nichols partnered with Maddi Borne, today we will be talking about certain instances such as displacement and destabilization, unequal pay, discrimination towards all kinds of minorities, and finally the inequality of assistance from authorities such as police and the FBI.
Corbin systemic injustice 1: First (injustice) of today A systemic injustice that I recently researched was how African Americans for Centuries have experienced displacement which has destabilized Black communities and undermined their access to opportunity. One specific example would be the labor force issue that occurs. Some issues I researched were that African Americans were reported to do harsher, more dangerous jobs and deal with lower pay. Also during the civil rights movement, employers would hire African Americans in the labor force just so they would not have to deal with unions because white people never dreamed about uniting with African Americans which is so sad. Oftentimes the white people would get paid more ultimately giving them more praise so they felt above African Americans. This systemic injustice in the past may be present today is harsh and not okay that employers were getting away with treating people unequally. Another example of workers not being treated equally involves our government. African Americans in the 1900s would join the military in hopes to have full civil rights and being recognized as citizens, however, this was not the case at the time because African Americans would be assigned to unimportant assignments with poorer quality equipment and training than others. All of these systemic injustices fueled the civil rights movement, giving African Americans better opportunities to succeed in America, however, some systemic issues continue to occur.
Maddi’s comment: It is really upsetting to see all the hard work that the African American community did during the Civil Rights Movement being disrespected decades later. This disrespect comes from Americans who feel threatened by other races finally getting treated with equal rights in society. It is crazy to still see African Americans getting less pay and lesser respect and opportunities in such a modern age. I think that as a society we really need to realize we all deserve the same rights and respect to be able to work as a cohesive community, whether that be equal pay, affordable healthcare, or just basic human kindness and decency.
Maddi injustice 1: The injustice I researched is similar but relates more to the unequal pay between men and women. In recent years this issue has been more widely noticed because women have gained the confidence to speak up about how unfair their pay is compared to their male coworkers. It has been proven that women make 82 cents for every dollar a man makes, which in my opinion in unacceptable especially if the man and woman share the same job title. Not only do women as a whole make less than men but, studies show that African American females make 20% less than white females. This is insane to think about how unequal the pay gap is between men and women as a whole then putting the extra 20% less cost for African American women. Like you said the African American community has gone through so much displacement and injustices that it is even more unfair to women that they are faced with such a high pay gap. For centuries women have been seen as lesser than men and it continues with today’s massive pay gap. This pay gap also contributes to stereotypes in society. For example, it has been a huge stereotype that women are supposed to stay at home with the kids while the man is the breadwinner for the family. I think that the pay gap may be caused by these stereotypes to try to keep women at home. Hopefully, this issue can be resolved soon so we can raise our daughters to want to be independent in the workforce and not be ashamed by unequal pay, which leads to unequal opportunities, especially if you aren’t white.
Corbin’s Comment: Oh yes, this is a very touchy subject. I researched something very similar to this and found similarities about what you are discussing. I would have to say this is a very bad injustice that continues being fought against to gain equal pay, this injustice directly impacts minorities such as African Americans, in particular, making this without doubt racism in the workplace because African Americans are denied equal pay due to their race. Running the numbers .82 on the dollar minus the 20% is merely .66 cents compared to the average white male which is over ⅓ of their pay. It is also eye-opening to hear the idea that the stereotype tied into society pushes women to stay at home which could be a factor as to why women are denied equal pay.
Corbin Injustice 2: For the last systemic injustice entry, I will discuss the hate involved in several races and not just African Americans like previous entries. This systemic injustice talks about the hatred and racism that comes from stereotypes starting from media news and going outward into society. There are two specific examples of this and one deals with the similar main topics of this that I have learned in class being Asian hate. Along with that there is also hate towards Arabs and Muslims. An example of Asian hate is the stereotypes of Asians being the cause of Covid-19 due to their race because Covid started in China, I would see throughout social media people bashing Asians due to the fact of their race which has nothing to do with the start of Covid, these innocent people had to deal with harsh hatred and racism due to reason Covid started in a foreign country. I also remember a movement that came out of an awful act of hatred towards Asians where there was a shooting where several targeted Asians suffered along with their families. The movement that came out of this was Stop Asian Hate. The other example of racist hate that came out after the horrible attacks on the twin towers on 9/11 is hatred towards Arabs and Muslims because of similar culture and clothing. However, these groups of people were dramatically different and had way different morals than Al Qaeda, a terrorist group. Arabs and Muslims got all kinds of hate because of their culture and fashion coming from similar locations, however, they had nothing to do with these attacks, and an interview I saw on social media a while back, Army soldiers showed these attacks and they were unaware of the attacks. The sad truth is that these people are innocent and uncorrelated to being terrorists, still deal with hatred to this day.
Maddi’s Comment: It is really sad that we place the blame upon a whole race of people when a tragic event happens when in reality placing this blame is very harmful to these people well being. This issue has been going on for decades in America when we racially profile people based on stereotypes we as a society hold. I also think it is interesting that when a white person is the one to commit a horrible crime/ terrorist attack in America we don’t place the blame on every white American citizen as we do with other races. As a society, we need to realize that people of other cultures are not represented by a single person or a group of people who terrorize us. What really saddens me the most is the recent Asian hate crimes due to COVID because these people are not the ones who planted the mass pandemic that reached across the world and they too were affected by the trauma and loss we all were/are.
Maddi Injustice 2: Lastly, another injustice I found was actually due to the missing persons case of Gabby Petito. I think we have all heard about Gabby’s story and are saddened by the outcome of her death and her supposed killer’s death, Brian Laundire. This case did bring some well-needed coverage though to people of color’s inactive missing persons cases. There are thousands of missing persons cases yearly in the US and the ones that really get the media coverage and attention are those of white males and females. Media coverage is important because like we saw from Gabby Petito’s case it helps trace where these people were last found and really gets the word out there so everyone is looking for them worldwide. People of color do not get the same treatment though. Jelani day is a young man who had been missing for months and when his mother saw the attention Gabby’s case was getting she went to the media and the FBI and was begging them to give her son’s case the same respect and urgency. I saw her interview on ABC where you could feel her emotions and anger that her African American son’s case wasn’t being treated as an urgent need. This is an injustice within our police force, media, and society. There is no reason why we shouldn’t spread the word about missing men and women of color. We learned from Gabby’s case that if we can all come together and look for someone we can find these people or unfortunately their remains. I think that as a society we are taught all these dangerous stereotypes we have been talking about and assume these people don’t deserve to be found, which is never the case. Jelani was able to be found as well thanks to his mother pleading with the media and FBI to reopen and re-investigate his case so he could be treated with the same respect as Gabby, which can also be done for the other hundreds of missing persons cases.
Corbin’s Comment: It is devastating to see that situations that are life-threatening do not get the same recognition. Nobody should have to ask for exposure to help locate a missing person from the government, it should be given initially. Thankfully he was found, however, that is not always the case. I would go on to say that there are most likely still missing people that are minorities who are not given the same recognition as others. I believe everyone deserves the recognition and help from everything to be found because if it was your own kid who went missing it would be a different story. This is exactly what went down with Jelani’s mother contacting authorities to get the help that she should have had in the first place.
Conclusion
In all, we can see that people of color are faced with many racial injustices in the world today. America is supposed to be a place of acceptance and prosperity but instead, people come here in search of a better life and are faced with all these injustices. These injustices are really caused by stereotypes whether they be racial or sexism they still prove to be dangerous and harmful. As a society, we need to recognize that there is still inequality around us on a daily basis if we want to fix it. After this class, I feel like I have learned so much and I’m ready to say and teach those around me about the issues at hand. That is all that we have for you guys today, thank you for tuning in on Yo, is this racism? I am Maddi… And I am Corbin, we look forward to having you listen again!
Diary Showcase: Undercoverage for Missing People of Color
This systematic injustice has been brought to light by the recent missing person (turned murder) case of Gabby Petito. This case was widely broadcasted across various major media forums and essentially all everyone was talking about on social media for weeks. With the help of civilians and the FBI Ms. Petito’s body was found after she was missing for nearly a month. This case did make people upset though because it brought to light how many people of color missing persons cases do not get the same treatment Gabby’s did. The colored community feels ignored and hurt by the lack of care media outlets, the police and the general population have when it’s an African American, Hispanic, Asian etc. man or woman that goes missing. The colored community’s missing persons cases often go inactive and unsolved. This is a systemic injustice because the police and media outlets give more special treatment to the superior race of white people while yet again the colored community gets unequal opportunities and treatment.
The graph above is a summary from the FBI of all the active missing persons cases of 2020. The blue lines represent the percentage of missing people compared to the yellow bar which represents the percentage that race makes up of the total US population. This graph just proves even more that the undercoverage of people of color missing persons cases are systemic injustices. I think this because as you can see the African American community makes up nearly 1/3 of the missing people cases but only make up 13% of the total population. These missing persons do not get the same treatment that white missing people do. Cases like Gabby Petitio’s taught us that if we gave these people of color missing persons cases as much care and coverage there would be less and less.
The above image is of Jelani Day. This missing persons case was inactive for months until the Gabby Petito case came around and Jelani’s mother pleaded with the FBI to treat her sons case with the same urgency as they did Gabby’s. I have included a link to a video below to see his mother plead for the same treatment that is truly heartbreaking. We can relate this systemic injustice to the concept of “other” we have learned about this semester. I think that often the priority for the FBI in missing persons cases are white women, and the rest really are pushed back into the category of other. Othering is about how we categorize people and issues amongst other things into a separate category from the supreme white race. I think that to stop this systemic injustice we need to give the colored community the same treatment we give white missing persons. Jelani’s mothers plea made his case more widespread and in turn helped find his body. There are so many other cases out there like Jelani’s and we as a community need to bring more awareness to them. Unfourtanley as a society there are pre-dispositions made against the colored community (due to the idea that colored people are “other”) which make widespread media coverage of these cases not common. If we can all work together to hold our officials and community members accountable for their racial injustices we can help bring these missing persons cases to a closured end.
Links: https://abc7chicago.com/jelani-day-mother-update-investigation/11134742/
https://www.wcia.com/news/mother-of-missing-graduate-student-asks-for-communitys-support/
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/23/us/families-missing-black-people/index.html
Context Presentation on Aijaz Ahmad’s “Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness and the “National Allegory”.
In 1986 Fredric Jameson was one of the most famous American Marxist writers. In his essay published by the text Social Journal , “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism”, he became criticized for his work for years to come. Jameson speaks upon the “Three Worlds Theory” and how all texts that come from the Third World would function as the national allegory, therefore all groups from other world countries have the same cultural logic of the third world (Robert Tally JR).
Aijaz Ahmad argues that Jameson defines the “Third World” in terms of colonialism and nationalism. The problem here is that the so-called third world is defined in “experience” while the First and Second worlds are defined by their production systems (Ahmad, 78). This quote stood out to me, ” …this classification divides the world between those who make history and those who are mere objects of it”(Ahmad, 78). Ahmad is arguing that Jameson as a Marxist wasn’t rigorous enough in his argument around Marxism playing any role within the Three Worlds theory. Instead it is contradictory because Jameson as an American white male is talking about how to overcome capitalistic views. A single story coming from all third world texts can help overcome the ongoing battle.
The battle against capitalism is still present in this world and we still use ideas from the Three Worlds Theory. I’m going to relate this to the ongoing wage crisis in America. We are seen as the best country with many opportunities but this vision of America is read through the lenses of single stories from many third world texts. Immigrants come from all over the world to find better paying jobs in America but really we struggle with minimum wages. In a study done by OECD it is found that, “Immigrants perform relatively better than native-born workers on the labour market, but their working conditions are often poorer” (OECD,27). These people come here in hopes for a better life but get paid less to do specialized work for companies who profit so much off their small wages. This goes back to Jamesons theory of First world countries being the ones making history while the people who actually make the history are the workers from other world countries. We need to consider that these immigrants are the ones supplying us the ability to be a First World country considering that, “40 percent of the immigrant workforce that is employed in low skilled occupations” (Camarota,37). Without these workers working out lower skilled factory jobs we wouldn’t be able to survive as a First World country.
Sources:
OECD/International Labour Organization (2018), “Immigrants’ contribution to developing countries’ economies: Overview and policy recommendations”, in How Immigrants Contribute to Developing Countries’ Economies, International Labour Organization, Geneva/OECD Publishing, Paris.
Steven A. Camarotaon January. “The Wages of Immigration.” CIS.org, 1 Jan. 1998, cis.org/Report/Wages-Immigration.
Talley , Robert T. “Fredric Jameson and the Controversy Over ‘Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.’” Global South Studies, U.Va., globalsouthstudies.as.virginia.edu/key-thinkers/fredric-jameson-and-controversy-over-%E2%80%9Cthird-world-literature-era-multinational.