Author: bullock.218

Text Review: Princess and the Frog

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In the movie, Princess and the Frog, it is set in New Orleans and we see a young black woman named Tiana. Tiana lived her whole life working hard to make enough money to open up her own restaurant. One day everything hit a bump in the road when Prince Naveen shows up in her life. The only problem is that Prince Naveen has been turned into a frog by the evil Dr. Facilier. Naveen mistakes Tiana for a princess and kisses her, thinking he might defeat the curse put upon him. Only to find out he turns Tiana into a frog as well. The two of them thus go on an adventure through the bayou in search of finding a way to reverse the spell put on them. Throughout this movie we see a lot of problems with race and gender. if we look outside the story line and focus on the movie itself, we can see that Princess Tiana is one of the first main character in a Disney movie to be Black. This movie depicts the black community in New Orleans and how they live their day to day lives. The problem with this movie is that we see Tiana, a black woman working a minimum wage job as a waitress, and this girl named Charlotte. Charlotte is a white woman who comes from a very wealthy family. In this movie we see people of wealth being white and we see the poorer community as black. Tiana works insanely hard to get what she wants out of society while charlotte, who is friends with Tiana, does not have to work at all. This can be seen as a problem with power and injustice because the black community is depicted as less than the white community. I think that this movie expects us to take away that no matter where you come from or what you’re going through, you can achieve amazing things. Tiana started out barely making and ends the movie rich and achieving her dreams. We can reflect this back to some other works we have read in class, like “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. We see the author talk about women of color who ultimately are not the same level as men, meaning they are of lower rank in society. We see this in the Princess and the Frog because Tiana starts off the movie making ends meet, while Prince Naveen and even Charlotte’s dad, have lots of money and are of higher social class.

Haley Bullock’s Diary of Systemic Injustice Showcase

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One systemic injustice that has been seen around the United States is related to Chinese/Asian people and the Corona virus. Ever since the Corona virus became a huge pandemic around the world, people have been blaming Chinese/Asian people. People have been doing this for multiple reason, one of which is because of social media. In social media, people have been making up various memes and tweets that have been blaming the Chinese. Former President Donald Trump was going around calling it “The Chinese Virus” across news press conferences and across his twitter account. This resulted in a lot of hate and backlash against Asian-Americans because of this rumor, that had been debunked and proven wrong several times, that China created this virus. Now that more strains of the Corona virus have come to light, the more that the United States have engaged in xenophobia, prejudice against people from other countries. Another reason why people have latched on to the idea that Chinese/Asian people are to blame is because people find the need to blame someone or something to cope. The problem with this is that it has created a negative effect on Chinese/Asian people. Many of the Chinese/Asian youth is even facing hate that could have a huge negative impact on how they view themselves and their country. They are all scared for their lives while we as a society try to make jokes and throw hate at them. They had no control of this virus and it’s been proven that they did not create this virus, yet we still latch on to the hate and backlash against Chinese/Asian people. This can be related to the Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern speak”. Spivak states that a subaltern is “fragmented groups of marginalized people who are without power”. Chinese/Asian people are becoming a subaltern because they are being marginalized and they are struggling to have any power over white Americans. Asian people are being targeted and killed by white Americans over something they have had no involvement with. Chinese/Asian Americans are left with little to no power and are scared for their families and their own lives.

https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/racial-prejudice/96112/

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/covid-19-fueling-anti-asian-racism-and-xenophobia-worldwide

Week 4: Nonviolent Campaigns: Effectiveness and necessity

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There are many factors included in preparing for a nonviolent protest campaign that will inevitably equal a better outcome from the start.  As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. states in his Jailhouse letter, they start with “collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action.”  This factors already bring a heightened clarity to the issue from the start. They keep the disadvantaged aware of the goal at hand, the process that needs to be taken and is just naturally a more organized event. Knowledge is power. Knowledge keeps both parties aware of the issue at hand. Violence negates it. Nonviolent movements are moral, gain more respect and are found to have a greater potential to achieve the results wanted.

Violent acts garner more of just that, violence thus diminishing the real reason for acting. While it is stated that there is a fine line between good tension and bad tension. If the line rest more on the nonviolent action it increases the results for the disadvantaged.  It is still conflict vs resolution and violence only engulf the conflict.

On another note, nonviolent campaigns do not always mean that the advantaged group will not react themselves in violence. Many times, as noted by John Lewis and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, their acts of nonviolent campaigns ended up with themselves being beaten and/or arrested. This adds yet another layer to the issue at hand, that because of these arrests when they were initially a nonviolent protest, they could then turn violent. They turn to violence because as shown from John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr, nonviolent protests do not save them from being arrested.

Citations:

“APA PsycNet.” American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-59637-001.

Arntsen, Emily, and Emily Arntsen. “Are Peaceful Protests More Effective than Violent Ones?” News Northeastern Are Peaceful Protests More Effective than Violent Ones Comments, 10 June 2020, news.northeastern.edu/2020/06/10/are-peaceful-protests-more-effective-than-violent-ones/.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.], www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html.

Nicholasen, Michelle. “Why Nonviolent Resistance Beats Violent Force in Effecting Social, Political Change.” Harvard Gazette, Harvard Gazette, 22 Apr. 2019, news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why-nonviolent-resistance-beats-violent-force-in-effecting-social-political-change/.