Author: carroll.763

The Hunger Games Text Review

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The text that I wanted to review an analyze would be the first chapter of The Hunger Games film, directed by Gary Ross. This is a science fiction and action film that was meant to display a futuristic and dystopian society to an extent. There are twelve “districts” which can be related to states and once a year, two people are chosen from each district to fight in a game to the death, ending once only one person remains. Throughout the film, there are many instances which signify power, which is often in the hands of the wealthy, as well as injustices against the poor. For example, the wealthy population of individuals live in the nation’s capital of Panem, which holds all of the power over the other districts. When the selection of the Hunger Games start, no one from Panem is selected, since they only view the games as a sort of entertainment. This puts power in the hands of the wealthy, specifically for the people of Panem, since they are using their wealth and status to avoid being put into the games. Power at the hands of the wealthy can also be seen throughout districts. District three is the closest related to Panem, since that district has a background of innovation and tend to hold the wealthier of the populations. Because of this, the people selected for the games in this district tend to get more sponsorships (more help for the games) and these sponsorships tend to hold more value over sponsorships compared to district twelve. District twelve receives essentially received no help since they are a poor and overlooked community, and the help the tributes do receive is generally a placeholder who acts as a sponsor from Panem. Because of this, there is a clear advantage for the wealthier, since they tend to hold more power than the poor communities. The same can be said for injustices between the wealthy and the poor. There is always a feeling of superiority of the wealthy, and they tend to treat the poor as if they aren’t even human. This once again relates back the sponsorships each district receives; the wealthy receive more substantial benefits compared to the poor. By doing this, the author of the book / director of the film wants the audience to relate this to our modern-day society and look at how the rich and the poor act. People who are wealthier tend to feel like they are superior to those who are poor, which can be seen through both the movie and through society.

 

Western Views of Traditional African Culture

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The movie Black Panther directed by Ryan Coogler, is a great film that mixes the traditional African culture, with a bit of futuristic concepts. The movie does an excellent job at promoting and giving power to the African culture, as well as showing how “western views” of African culture can be interpreted. In general, many westerner’s views Africa’s traditional culture as a very outdated one, since many parts of the continent are still ruled by tribes living off of the land and following ancient traditions. It is known that roughly seven to eight percent of the continent’s population is composed of these traditional tribes, which is a lot of people when the entire continent of Africa has over one billion people. These tribes still live the way that their ancestors did thousands of years ago and will likely continue their traditions until they are forced to transition to modern standards.

An example of the film portraying these types of African culture can be seen through the tradition of mortal combat for power of the throne.  This depicts the traditional African culture for obtaining power in a tribe, which can be seen through the Ibibio people Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria (Idang). According to Gabriel E. Idang, who wrote the article African Culture and Values, he described how few tribes still carry on these ancient traditions to determine the leader of the tribe. Generally, the first-born son of the previous leader gets birth rights to the throne, but an outsider is able to challenge for power.

The film can also imply western views through the tribal clothing and weapon choices. Throughout the entirety of the film, the people of the Wakanda tribes are all shown wearing traditional clothing such as cloaks or a special clothing item called Kitnege. A Kitenge is a traditional garment worn by women and is generally worn by Samburu people of northern Kenya (Hansen). The movie also shows traditional weaponry such as Zulu spear. The spear, commonly referred to as an “Iklwa” or “Ixwa” is a type of spear created and still used by the Zulu tribe of South Africa (Ogunniyi).

 

 

Works Cited

 

Idang, Gabriel E. “African culture and values.” Phronimon 16.2 (2015): 97-111.

Hansen, Karen Tranberg. “The world in dress: Anthropological perspectives on clothing, fashion, and culture.” Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 33 (2004): 369-392.

Ogunniyi, Meshach Bolaji. “Adapting western science to traditional African culture.” International journal of science education 10.1 (1988): 1-9.

Yo, is this Racist? Podcast Assignment

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Donovan Carroll

Throughout the course of this semester, I have written diaries about systemic injustices that occur throughout society. These have been written on the ideas based on police brutality among the African American community, societal racism regarding the Asian American community, the intolerance of certain religions, and the list goes on. The idea that I wanted to talk about in this “Yo, is this Racist?” podcast assignment would be that of systemic injustices facing the African American communities. The specific category I wanted to talk about would be the rise occurrences of police brutality among African Americans (I.E., excessive force, unlawful shootings, etc.) since these types of situations have been a staple of the news world as of lately, which should not be considered a good thing. If you look closely at all of these situations, you can observe and tie together pieces of evidence that can relate to one overarching idea about society. Here in the United States, the general public has specific stereotype placed on the African American community, which influences how people react in certain situations regarding African Americans.

The first situation I want to bring to the stage would be that of Andre Hill. A little back story, Andre Hill is a native here to Columbus, Ohio and was tragically involved in a shooting involving a Columbus PD officer in December of 2020. The policeman who shot and killed Andre was officer Adam Coy. The officer has since been fired from his job, since the shooting was considered unnecessary on the officer’s part. Although the shooting happened, it was deemed to be unnecessary, and to possibly uncover the motive behind the situation, we need to look closely at the details. According to a news report done by NBC 4, officer Coy was called to the scene when a neighbor reported that there was a suspicious vehicle being parked outside of their home, which was being constantly turned on an off. Coy arrived to the scene and later ended up shooting and killing Andre Hill. Andre was shot four times, once in the chest, and three times in the right leg. The situation ended up being investigated. What they noticed was that once Coy arrived at the scene, he didn’t turn on his body camera, which is needed for every situation that the officer responds to. The second thing was that there were no weapons of any sort found on the scene or in Andre’s car, which leads to the question, “Why was Andre shot and killed that day?” Well, the world may never know the true answer to that question, but it is easy to break down the situation and analyze why the officer responded the way he did. My thought is that the policeman did not turn on his body camera because he had an intention of doing something illegal once he arrived at the scene. It may sound far-fetched, but that is just how I have interpreted the situation. The role of systemic racism applied heavily to this situation as well. It was reported that there was an African American man (Andre Hill) doing suspicious activity involving a car outside of someone’s home. When officer Coy heard the report, he most likely assumed that the car was being stolen, since a lot of police officers have a general stereotype among African Americans. This could be the reason why Andre was shot. The officer had an existing bias toward Andre’s ethnicity, and acted accordingly toward that personal bias. This existing bias would be that African American people tend to invoke more dangerous activity and are then deemed more of a danger when it comes to police officers themselves. This existing bias Is well known among the African American community and influences the way they act toward police officers as well. The African American community tends to show a large amount of mistrust toward police officers, which is why many of which are involved in a crime (most the time not even involved in one) tend to run out of fear of what might happen to them. They are afraid of the idea that they may be shot and killed just because of a looming stereotype that police officers placed on them. So, it leads to the question, “Yo, is this Racist?” The answer is yes, this situation and action performed by the officer is racist and cannot be considered in any different manner. The fact that the police officer shot and killed Andre without evidence of video, or without evidence of any weapons found near the scene proves that officer Coy had a looming stereotype of African Americans when he arrived at the scene, which made him act the way he did. These types of situations further the mistrust among the African American community and police officers, which explains why these types of situation have been on the rise as of late. This is not the only situation that involves the prejudice among police officers; Vincent Belmonte was involved in a similar situation as well.

The next victim involved in a most-likely biased shooting was Vincent Belmonte. Vincent, who generally went by the nickname Vinny, was from a suburb of Cleveland. This situation occurred a little bit more recently, happening on January 8th of this year. The situation started when Vinny had to borrow his stepmother’s car in order to drive his girlfriend to work. He then proceeded to drive his girlfriend to work but passed an officer by the name of Larry McDonald at an “excessive speed” and McDonald decided to follow. The officer ran the plates of the car and found out that the car Vinny was driving had recently ran from another police officer a week earlier. That is when McDonald decided to turn his lights on and pull over the car. Once Vinny came to a complete stop, he jumped out of the car and tried to flee the scene. As he was jumping over the fence, he was shot in the back of the neck by the officer, killing him instantly. The reason why the officer shot at him is unknown, but it is assumed that the officer linked the running of the car a week earlier, as well as Vinny fleeing the scene, made the officer assume that this person is one of dangerous intentions. McDonald responded to the situation according to his pre-observed bias against African Americans. Although Vinny did try and flee the scene, there were no reports of dangerous activity happening recently, nor any weapons found in the car or near the scene. This once again to the question, “Yo, is this racist?” The answer once again is yes, the way the officer responded to the situation Is racist and cannot be seen as any other type of way. The officer most likely responded in a manner that involved is bias of African Americans. He saw that there was an African American trying to flee the scene, which he identified as a dangerous situation. The officer shot Vinny because of his ethnicity and the fact that he was trying to run. He believed that since it was an African American trying to flee the scene, he assumed (based on stereotypes) that he was dangerous to society and shot him. This situation was made more dangerous with the shooting, since it was in a residential area. This once again leads to a further mistrust of the African American community in relation to police officers. This situation shows just how far an officer is willing to go when a simple situation, such as this with a traffic stop.

These types of situations have been on the rise throughout the American society for a number of years but have been brought to light with the recent death of George Floyd. This shooting as many know, was unprovoked and was seen as a turning point for society in regard to these types of situations. The stereotype seen in many of these situations point to the African American stereotype (according to police officers) is that of “danger” and many are perceived as “thieves” just because of the color of their skin. Police officers react to situations according to the stereotypes placed on these people, which is why a lot of them unfortunately end up in the unlawful shooting or even killing of the victims. This foreseen stereotype placed on African Americans results in these people reacting to situations involving police officers. They tend to avoid police interaction in whatever means possible, in fear of their wellbeing. This in turn creates a cycle of stereotypes being positively reinforced by these police officers. Simply, African Americans are afraid of the police officers, so they run and avoid them. This furthers the policeman’s view that they are running for an illegal reason. For the most part, the officer’s do not even consider that the people are running and avoiding them for their own well-being. In order for these situations to change, the police officers need to change their views and remain unbiased, no matter who they are involving themselves with. The only reason why most of these situations occur is because of the stereotypes, and these situations will not stop until this changes. So, to answer the question; Yes, this is racist.

 

 

Diary of Systemic Injustices Showcase- Donovan Carroll

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Systemic injustice has been a large-scale problem in the United States society ever since the country was founded. Even in modern times, it is still regarded as a problem. A phenomenon that I personally witnessed was during the past few weeks in the off-campus area. It was the first weekend of the second semester, and parties were full force to celebrate the start of the spring semester. I was walking to my off-campus house, which is on the corner of 14th and Indianola, and I witnessed a group of six or seven African American people being stopped by the police for no apparent reason (as far as I knew). I saw the same group of people earlier and noticed that they were party hopping like the many other people at the time. Out of everyone in groups roaming around the off-campus area, they were the only people who I saw being talked to by police. I stood and observed the scene for a bit, and I overheard the police telling them to go home, as well as some stuff that I couldn’t comprehend from a distance. I believe this is systemic injustice because out of all the people who were wandering around campus that night, they were the only group that I saw being stopped and questioned by police. The impact that this has is that it shows that police still have a mistrust among the African American community, and still have personal bias of crime rather than everyone else. The specific category in play here was most likely systemic racism, since the police zeroed in on one of the few colored groups in campus that were at a minority at the time compared to the whites. The police tend to have bias of crimes, like a mentioned toward African American people, which is why it is systemic racism. Something that would have to change for the wrong to be a right would be if the African American group went up to the police themselves, rather than the police stopping them. I don’t know for sure if that is what actually happened, but based off of a history of systemic racism, I doubt that is what happened.

The extent of these types of situations seems to be never ending. There are also other ways that society has performed systemic racism amongst African Americans.  From the articles linked below, the article from American Progress points out that African American households make an average income of around $20,000 per year compared to white households who average around $170,000 a year. This shows that society has been structured around favoring white households, while not giving a chance to those of African Americans households. The other article written by Catalyst shows the many instances of systemic racism in America, and how it has been structured into every day life.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality/

https://www.catalyst.org/research/structural-racism-black-americans/