Post on Racism and Ethnocentrism in Modern Media A recent television advertisement for Coca-Cola aired for the first time during the Super Bowl. It was intended to be a recognition of multiculturalism and to tie in the product to one of the quintessential American values: namely, the melting-pot element of American society that enabled all of our ancestors to immigrate and begin new lives in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. Instead, the commercial inspired a nasty reaction from the so-called "conservatives" of the radial and extreme Right Wing of American politics and punditry. The ad was very simple in concept but important in its message: it featured individuals from many races, cultures, ethnicities (and even one gay couple) all singing along to the song America the Beautiful. In the 21st century, one would think (and hope) that such a commercial would be well received and appreciated...
Specifically, throughout the late 19th century and well into the 20th century, American shopkeepers and rooming houses routinely posted signs saying "No Irish Need Apply" or "Jews Get Out of this Country" or "Speak English in America!" Or "Italians Not Welcome Here" or "No Service to Negros." During World War II, we rounded up and imprisoned Japanese for nothing more than their national origin; and we learned after the war how dangerous such attitudes of prejudice and ethnocentrism can be when we discovered the evidence of the Nazi's attempts…
Lifestyle is Dangerous There are numerous health dangers associated the modern lifestyle, such as environmental agents, drugs, and sexual promiscuity. The history of humankind has been a slow progress from a physically demanding but simpler lifestyle to a "hot-wired, high-stakes game of mental challenge and response that is played at breakneck speeds" (Gorman pp). This has become daily life for many in the United States, and it seems to be making
Racism in America: Where do we stand? From the time of the New World's discovery in the year 1492, racism has remained at the forefront of U.S. history. Even in the present day, it is reported that in America, one Black man dies from police confrontations every 28 hours. A majority of these incidents even fail to show up in local newspapers and news channels. It is only occasionally that these
Question 3: In some regards, the idea of 'culture' is highly mutable and subject to widespread variations in characterization. Quite in fact, the concept of culture is highly implicated in the weaponzation of words that may be used by one nation to subjugate another. Ideas about how cultures interact, about which cultures are superior and indeed about whether or not the practices of some peoples should even be called 'cultures' have
C. By Michael Shively (June, 2005), the first hate crime laws were enacted during the sixties, seventies, and eighties. The first states to pass hate crime legislation were Oregon and Washington in 1981. The first federal hate crime legislation, Shively explains, was debated in 1985, and the first federal statute related to hate crimes was the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, passed in 1990. Subsequent to that Act, other pieces of
It should be noted that this risk of becoming simply an "ethnocentric fantasy" is something that not all filmmakers are worried about. Indeed, it might well be argued that the creation of an ethnocentric fantasy might well make an ethnographic film more popular and more profitable. Indeed, an ethnocentric fantasy is one of the storylines that fits well into the narrative expectations of Western audiences, who will not be surprised by
We can see that minority status has far less to do with population size, and instead seems very much to be inclined by race, ethnicity and political power instead. This label of minority status is in many ways used as a tag by which certain groups are detained from political unity or effectiveness. To a large degree, this is a condition which relates to the nature of the Hispanic demographic,
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