Author: suarez.118

The Hate U Give

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When choosing a topic for this assignment, I knew right away what I was going to choose. The movie “The Hate U Give” is a great movie to choose to talk about for this assignment. This movie was made in 2018 and demonstrated injustice, identity, and power. This movie is about a 16-year-old African American girl named Starr who is constantly going back and forth between two worlds which are the poor, mostly black neighborhood where she lives and the wealthy, mostly white prep school that she attends. But one night, she witnesses a fatal shooting of her childhood friend at the hands of a white police officer that changes her life forever. Starr goes through this traumatic event and tries to fight for justice for her best friend Khili. At the end of the movie, she ends up telling the world what happened and that he deserved to live even though the white officer got away with it. She is faced with the pressure from both sides of the community when trying to find her voice and to stand up for what’s right.

Throughout this movie, Starr struggles with finding her identity because of the mostly white prep school that she attends. She explains that she has to watch how she talks because she doesn’t want to come off as “ghetto” in a majority rich white school. She comes face to face with one of her white friend’s reactions and racist comments that she says about how she felt bad for the police officer, when he was in the wrong. This movie also demonstrates white privilege because the officer got away with the murder of Khalil due to being white. In one scene, Starr has a conversation with her uncle who is an officer. She asks him if Khalil was a white male, would he have told him to put his hands up or shot him right away when seeing him reach into the car and he said that he would have asked him to put his hands up because white males are less threatening then African Americans. He explains that this is why the officer shot first and asked questions later all because he was an African American male. This not only demonstrates power but also injustice. This movie is nothing but white privilege and injustice to the point that every scene would be a great example. This movie portrays Starr and Khalil as this “otherness” that De Beauvoir explains in this text. A great example of otherness in this movie is when Starr goes to school. She explains that she is treated differently than everyone else because she is black. They try to “act black” and she explains that she has to watch the way she acts and talks to not be considered ghetto. She explains at the beginning that she has to be two completely different people when it comes to school and at home. Her father also treats her white boyfriend Chris like this “other” when Starr brings him home to meet her father. This movie is a great example of everything that we have been learning in this class and I recommend seeing it because it is a great movie especially for this class. I think this director wanted the audience to take away from this movie that there is still racial injustice going on to this day due to someone’s color of skin and that we need to speak up to end racial discrimination and injustice.

Systemic Injustice in A Disney Movie? You’re Joking Right?

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By Alyssa Suarez

No, I’m not joking!

I was watching “The Princess and The Frog” the other day on Netflix when I notices that there was some systemic injustice in the movie. In one scene, Tiana just got done raising enough money to buy a place that was going to be her father’s restaurant. At her best friends party, she ran into Mr. Finner, which is who she bought her place that was going to be her restaurant from. She then found out that someone offered more money then her for the place. After the Mr. Finner told her this, he then said something to her that was an example of systemic injustice. After Tiana told them how long it took her to save that money up, they said “Exactly! Which is why a little woman of your background would have had her hands full trying to run a big business like that. Your better off where your at.” This is an example of systemic injustice because they are assuming because she is African American that she can’t or would struggle running a big business even though they didn’t exactly come out and say that. They just sugar coated it all though I also think they did that due to this movie being meant for children. I never really realized this until I began to watch this movie again.

When looking at New Orleans’s background, the African American population began to grow. Some slaves were able to earn their freedom there, and others came to New Orleans from present-day Haiti, fleeing a slave revolt there and bringing along Voodoo and other traditions. (New Orleans) If you click on the link, you can learn more about New Orleans’s history. New Orleans’s history is important when understanding Tiana’s background, as Shannon explains her background in the video below. If you fast forward to 7 minutes she begins to talk about Tiana’s background.

 

Tiana deals with hardships as an African American woman who is taught that working hard is the only way she will pursue her dreams. When Mr. Finner made that comment about her, that was systemic injustices. That caused Tiana to fall into the category of Otherness. As Simone de Beauvoir explains in her article, Tiana falls into the category not only due to being a woman but also as an African American. Which is an example of intersectional identity, as we talked about in week six.

When watching The Princess and the Frog not many notice that their is racial discrimination because it is systemic injustice. By making this comment, this demonstrates an example of Otherness, which Simone de Beauvoir talks about in The Second Sex “Introduction”.

I think it is important to understand what systemic injustice is because if you pay attention, you will see that it is everywhere just like I notices in my favorite movie “The Princess and the Frog”.

Controversies about Adoptions of Chinese Babies By Non-Chinese American Families

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In the United States, many Chinese children are adopted by non-Chinese Americans. According to the New York State Department, 64,043 Chinese children were adopted in the United States between 1999 and 2010, far more than from any other country (Leland). This is due in part to child abduction and trafficking which has become a huge issue for other international adoption programs.

In China, the One Child Policy was enacted to help reduce the population. This policy only allowed couples to have one child and in their culture, and having a male was preferred so they could inherit the family name, property, and were responsible for caring for their parents when they are older. Since couples were restricted to one child, having a daughter was undesirable, causing the number of female Chinese children to be abandoned or put into orphanages to rise. The policy was later modified to where exceptions were made to minority people or for those whose firstborn was disabled; those measures included allowing rural families in some areas to have two or even three children and permitting parents whose firstborn was a girl or who both were only children to have a second child and if they ended up having two daughters, the firstborn was kept while the other was abandoned.

Due to this policy, children who were abandoned were often taken and placed in or sold to international adoption programs. Some families however dealt with their babies being taken away by coercion, fraud or kidnapping. Sometimes they were even taken by government officials who covered their tracks by pretending that the babies had been abandoned. Babies were being seized from their parents and sold them into a lucrative black market in children (Leland, LA Times). Chinese children are still being taken from their parents and sold for trafficking and international adoption programs, which is why there are so many Chinese children, majority little girls, being adopted in the United States.

Note from Caroline: This is an important twist on what most American adoptive parents understood about adopting from China in the 1990s and early 2000s (which, as you see if you look through the LA Times or New York Times articles, was that adoptions placed children who could not be raised by Chinese parents who were poor or had given up their kids). 

 

Citations

Andrew, Anita M. “China’s Abandoned Children and Transnational Adoption: Issues and Problems for U.S.-China Relations, Adoption Agencies, and Adoptive Parents.” Journal of Women’s History, Johns Hopkins University Press, 21 Mar. 2007, muse.jhu.edu/article/211693/pdf.

Custer, Charlie. “Kidnapped and Sold: Inside the Dark World of Child Trafficking in China.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 14 Apr. 2018, www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/07/kidnapped-and-sold-inside-the-dark-world-of-child-trafficking-in-china/278107/.

Leland, John. “For Adoptive Parents, Questions Without Answers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 Sept. 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/nyregion/chinas-adoption-scandal-sends-chills-through-families-in-united-states.html.

Pletcher, Kenneth. “One-Child Policy.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 13 Feb. 2020, www.britannica.com/topic/one-child-policy.

“Stolen Chinese Babies Supply Adoption Demand.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 20 Sept. 2009, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-sep-20-fg-china-adopt20-story.html.