White Power

Racism has been alive and well in our country since its beginning. Whites attempting to dominate Blacks is apparant in many media images in our society, as posted in the collage at left. For example, the two police images in this collage are clips from the TV show, COPS. If you notice, the policemen are typically White while the perpetrators are typically Black, as in the examples shown here. This portrays an obvious power relationship biased toward Whites.

In movies, the same power bias occurs. For example, the movie Freedom Writers shown here is just one example of an entire genre in American culture. A middle-class White teacher comes into a failing school to rescue the poor Black students from the inner city. These movies portray a White person coming to the rescue of Blacks; Whites have the power and, if they are nice, they will help the Blacks. This gives a message that Blacks cannot succeed on their own; rather, Whites hold the strings to success and have the power to help Blacks, or not.

The Disney movie pictured here, Beauty and the Beast, also falls into this category. The beautiful princess is White, of course. And it is no coincidence that the "beast" is dark. He is not only dark, but he is huge and scary looking. The beast has to win the love of the princess; the Black person is subordinate to the White person.

The image of the two workers is especially interesting to me. This is an image from a worker's compensation advertisement. Looking at the image, the body language is inescapable. The White man is obviously superior to the Black man: the White man is taller, the White man leans on the Black man, and the White man looks more confident in general.

The advertisement at the top needs no explanation. Scary.