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02 July 2023

Affirmative Action cannot be a solution

US supreme court ruled the affirmative action which sets racial quota in college admission is unconstitutional.  

I, myself think it is not a bad ruling. 

When a college chooses who is qualified for its students, why does race matter? Grade Point Average, entrance test scores do matter. Race matters only when an interview is conducted. 

As for diversity thing, 

As Justice Thomas Clearance said, 

"I'd like you to tell me expressly when a parent sends a kid to college, they don't necessarily send them there to have fun or feel good or anything like that," Thomas said. "They send them there to learn physics or chemistry or whatever they're studying."

Yes, school is for nothing but studying subjects to get education. 

Discrimination is a problem when the college rejects a student only because of his/her skin color. 

Even college admission solely based on scores and ability to study, results in racial or gender bias, this does not mean it was an unfair judgement.  

Selecting someone based on his/her trait by birth cannot be a good way to remedy society. 

Thomas Clearance nominated by Bush administration era was a good example. He's made several rulings against his own people so he was not liked by his people as I recall my college days, a Black professor in Black Studies course said "Just because he was Black, this works better for Black people. No!"

America is a fundamentally white dominated racist society. So, such fundamental cannot be easily fixed. 

04 July 2021

Film: Black "Annie" Diversity Casting?

A famous classic musical film was remade using a protagonist with a Black skin. Traditionally the protagonist was played by a white girl. 

Is this part of Hollywood's "Diversity Casting" campaign? 

Sounds good. Good musical play. Actors sing very well. I was not bothered by the Black Annie. What I was still bothered was a rich man who adopts Annie was a Black man. 

Maybe a white man adopts a Black girl is not politically correct? 

But how many of white audience enjoy this film? Wasn't it for Black audience?

In the last scene of the film, a Black man kisses a white woman. Is this widely acceptable in U.S.? 

Wasn't this too much of liberal twist?  

I am not being racist but I am realist and view the world from realist perspective. 

Look who was the President of the United States last year. 

I just don't think this casting really fits the current social trend of that country. 

28 February 2021

Film “Hidden Figures” breaks the stereotype

It’s been thought women are not good at mathematics and not suitable for engineering jobs. But that kind of notions were proved to be nonsense a long time ago. The film “Hidden Figures” described three Afro-American women working for NASA rocket engineering department as mathematicians, in Jim-Crow era, 1950’s to 1960’s.

 

I learnt about the film by Voice of America article on NASA’s International Space Station program. NASA named the supply ship to the ISS Katherine Johnson after one of mathematicians in the biopic film.

 

They were not only being woman but Black women, who had to sit down on back seats in public bus and could not share the same bathroom with their white co-workers. But they did contribute to the very difficult space programs by calculating the orbit and designing rockets.

 

If they were white male, this story cannot be a film.

 

Breaking stereotype is the most important factor to counter racism or other type of discrimination such as gender, and sexual orientation. Stereotype is the origin of discrimination. Prejudice is biased view on others using stereotype images. Then people discriminate others based on prejudice.

 

Stereotype is baseless information about others. Like all Japanese can do Karate, which I don’t. You cannot generalize others based on such stereotype. The sad thing is people judge others by these stereotypes and then sometimes treat them badly.

 

In the film, NASA officials found the women very useful to the organization’s projects so they accepted them equally. If they hadn’t accepted them as legitimate staff, NASA would have lost such great assets and wouldn’t have succeeded in historic space missions in those days.

 

Stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination undermine progress of our society.

 

Let’s get rid of such things from our world.

20 February 2016

Disney's film "Song of the South" Not as racist as thought to be

The film's portrayal of the 19th century South was unrealistic. Although the story took place after the Civil War, portrayal of Blacks was not bad.

Until civil rights era, the old South was wrongly portrayed as if Black people were happy serving white people.

In that film that was the way they were portrayed. Funny thing was they had friendly relationship with their white family. In the first scene, a Black servant woman sat right next to a white boy facing his parents in a carriage. That woman was played by the same actress who played Mammy in the film "Gone with the wind." However, that thing never happened in the old South. Blacks were supposed to sit in the back of a carriage. "Gone with the wind" has the same portrayal as well. Mammy was like mother to white family's daughter.

Maybe that was the problem. The film depiction of the old South was wrongly better than real history.

Great thing about the film was combination of real scene and animation. It is as good as modern time computer graphic technique.

The story of rabbit gives us lesson of how to handle troubles. Even you get away from some troubled place, you never can get away from troubles in life, so you have to deal with it and be smart.

I think that was the core message in the film.

23:44 Posted in Film, Media, Society | Permalink | Comments (0) | Tags: afro-american, racism

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