Race is a movie that highlights the life and racing career of one of our very own Ohio State Buckeyes, Jesse Owens. The movie focuses on many injustices that were present at the time, most notably racial injustice. We worked heavily on racial injustice throughout this semester and this movie does a great job of showing how an injustice can impact every aspect of people’s lives.
Race starts out by giving some background about Jesse Owens, the challenges he faces as a younger kid, and how he gets his start at Ohio State. This time is obviously a very racist time period in our country and throughout the world, so Jesse faces backlash the entire movie. One of the notable scenes is when him and another African American track member are trying to take a shower in the locker room. They are confronted by white football players and the football players make it very clear that they are more important and tell Jesse and his friend that they have to wait to shower until the football players are done. Nonetheless, Jesse becomes one of the best track and field stars at Ohio State and has the chance to go to the olympics to represent the United States in Berlin, Germany. This is at the height of the Hitler and Nazi regime, so it is very dangerous for Jesse to even go to the olympics. He has mixed emotions about going and the coach at Ohio State basically tells him that he is going to go and they get in an argument. The coach screams at him that he has nothing to worry about and that he has the chance to make history and Jesse emphatically responds by yelling, “Well you’re white Larry, you don’t have to!” This scenes leaves a drastic impact on the viewer and shows just how scared Jesse was to go. Jesse ends up winning almost every event and breaks multiple world records. It is such a good movie because Jesse one-ups all of the racists and bad people that doubted him.
To wrap up, I would recommend this movie to anyone. It does an awesome job of highlighting many of our course concepts like racial injustices, the othering, and intersectionality. It is very easy to see that Jesse feels like he is the other, and that the others do not want him to be successful. Intersectionality is present as well because all of Jesse’s white teammates still face injustices in Germany but they do not face the same ones that Jesse does. The director wants everyone to know this story and the fact that no matter your skin color, you can be successful at anything. I believe it is a great movie for everyone to watch, but especially for young African American kids because it is very easy for them to look up to this movie and show them that they can do anything they believe in and put their mind to!
