Racism And Sexism In Twelve Years A Slave By Solomon Northup
978 Words4 Pages
This documentary is based on a true story based on the book, Twelve Years a Slave written by Solomon Northup. In this video, both racism and sexism is heavily implied.
Racism is defined as hostility towards people of a different race and it usually stems from the belief in the superiority of one’s race (Oxforddictionaries.com 2014). In this video, the concept of racism is represented in a way that the blacks are deemed powerless and are at the mercy of the white people. The slave market is targeted at the whites that owns cotton plantation and 90% of African Americans are slaves. Also, during the transaction, the black slaves are obliged to meet the demands of the whites. Furthermore, it is noted in the video that the slaves were inspected like how “jockeys examine a horse”. This insinuates that the whites felt more superior and they did not regard the black slaves as humans, but instead animals.…show more content… People are categorized inevitably by their ethnicity and race, which may render some races helpless as they are stereotyped and it would take a great effort for them to prove otherwise. For example, in today’s context, the media has influenced people to think that Jews are money-minded and that terrorism is related to the Islamic teachings. This is extremely detrimental to our society as it would lead to unwanted misunderstandings and thus, ineffective communication. To avoid such misunderstandings, we must veer towards non-essentialism and this means that we should not be too quick to judge people base on their ethnicity or race but rather, view them as individuals who belong to a certain ethnicity but they may or may not possess ‘traits’ of such