Blog 3: Awakening to Injustices

Aleah Murji

  Despite the fact that we believed racism had been resolved after slavery ended, it persisted through the next generations and is ongoing in the 21st century. The movie “Get out” by Jordan Peele and the text “The Skin We’re In” by Desmond Cole give us a glimpse of the type of inequalities that African Americans are faced with in today’s generation. The main ones being explored in these pieces are:  being put through dehumanization for the benefit of white supremacy; being dismissed or overlooked by others when being discriminated; and having to deal with police brutality.

Police brutality is something that we know is very present in our society, however not much is being done by the institutions to educate, train and sensitize police officers on proper behaviour and approaches in dealing with different races.  Police brutality isn’t always a physical act; it can also be giving punishments or passing « innocent » comments just because of the color of their skin. Peele gives us an example of this in the scene where Rose and Chris were stopped by the police after they had hit a deer with their car. The police officer asked Chris for his driver’s license after seeing that he was black even though he was the passenger. He had already suspected him to be a criminal and wanted to pass a background check on him «just in case. »  This demonstrates that police brutality has many faces, beyond the physical, where it manifests in other equally harmful and unjust ways, including through racial profiling.  Police brutality was also experienced in the text by Desmond. The narrator tells us of the incident of the young black artist, John Samuels who had been tasered and sent to jail for no valid reason.  Police brutality has only been brought into light at a more global level after the George Floyd US incident in 2020 where Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, literally chocked George Floyd to death because a convenience store worker suspected he had used a counterfeit 20$ bill. Since then, we can see that more and more people are fighting for this cause and trying to stop police brutality. Therefore, by bringing attention to the problem of racism and its negative effect on individuals, families, communities and humanity at large, we can change society’s view on racial groups.

A lot of minority groups are being dehumanized by groups like the white supremacist for self-benefit. For example, the whole idea of slavery was for black people, who were removed from their homelands, to do the intense labor work to develop the new lands benefiting solely the whites. This was the case for the African Americans, who were also treated poorly and given little food or compensation for their hard labor and who lived in very poor conditions. It was as though they were treating them like animals, as said by Cole, “In particular white supremacy designates black people as less than full human beings as disposable labor as chattel placed on earth for the benefit of white people” (Cole 8). This is a clear demonstration how white supremacists were dehumanizing the slaves because they saw them as animals that were created for the sole purpose of carrying out tasks and were distinguished from society by the color of their skin. This type of behavior was also seen at the end of the movie “Get Out” where Rose’s family attempted to hypnotize and perform brain transplants on the body of Chris so that they could replace the brains of their dead relatives in his body. This makes it seem as though Rose’s family thought the purpose of black people was to act as disposable vessels. Once a white person dies, they need to give up their body for that person to live a longer life. By doing so they are stripping the identities and lives away from the innocent African Americans. Making it seem as though they are tools to be used whenever needed by white people. This idea was also seen in the text “The Skin We’re In” where the main character talks about how the Indigenous had been stripped of their land and natural resources so that the British could benefit from it. The British felt entitled to take indigenous land since they were minority groups and were not respected. Throughout the entirety of history, little has mentioned how Indigenous have also suffered a lot. It was only in the late 19th century that this issue was brought to people’s attention. Nobody had questioned the British when it came to taking land from the indigenous people, and the Americans with using black people as slaves, stated by Cole ‘’Both were oppressed by a group whose legacy is so unquestioned today that we usually don’t even name it.’’ (Cole 13). Through these examples, we are shown how injustices that different racial groups have faced in the past are ignored and denied basic human dignity and rights.

Most of the time when people are racist or make racist comments, they do not acknowledge them. For example, when you ask a white supremacist if they are racist, they become defensive even will try to justify their actions. This proves to us that they see no issue in their acts, and it does not bother them when they make comments that discriminate against others. The movie “Get Out” demonstrates this when Chris was at the family party and everyone that came up to him either made racist or stereotypical comment about his physique or was asked about his athleticism since he was compared to Tiger Woods due to their similar skin tone. This points to how Rose’s family focus on his skin color and the associations with other people in the black community, rather than on trying to understand and appreciate who he really was. Desmond Cole also speaks about this topic in his text, when he tells us “People who refuse to acknowledge the fact that Canada has its race problem compare is a lot to America” (Cole 3). Through this he means that we are so brainwashed with the fact that Canada is a peaceful place, we accept any race or culture, and America is the bad place where all the racism and harm happens. Behind this stereotype there is the reality that nobody wants to acknowledge Canada also being a racist place and having its faults. As we see now, Indigenous groups are speaking up about the harm that has been done to them and how they have been stripped from their identities and land. Canadians have overlooked this part of history by saying that “Someone had to compel indigenous people here to sign treaties to “share” their land and resources” (Cole 13), meaning that indigenous were sharing their land because they wanted to and not because it was not stolen.

                  Multiple scenes from “Get Out” and “The Skin We’re In” introduce the idea of racism and how it is experienced by minority groups in many ways. By analyzing these works we’re confronted with the uncomfortable truth to our history and the enormous number of inequalities and racism in it. They show us the urgency of creating social awareness and need for change in societal norms through the examples of police brutality, being dehumanized and ignored when being discriminated against.

Bibliography

Cole, Desmond. “‘Negro Frolicks (January).’” The Skin We’re In, Doubleday Canada, 2020, pp. 1–17

 Peele, Jordan, et al. Get Out. Universal Pictures, 2017