ENTRY 10: The American Dream in Black and White cartoon

(From The Black Commentator http://www.blackcommentator.com/8_cartoons_black_and_white_amer_dream_pr.html)

This is a cartoon titled The American Dream in Black and White. On the left hand side it features characteristics that are classified as “white” and on the right side, characteristics classified as “black”. It is evident that whites get more privileges than blacks: new subdivisions vs. new prisons, economic growth vs. cancer growths (and asthma), white flight vs. black blight, and so forth.

I picked this cartoon because it shows how people classify whites and blacks, and how they classify them in the wrong way. Not all whites and blacks are what the cartoon represents, and it gives people the wrong impressions. It may be funny to see this cartoon at first, but it further exploits blacks and further oppresses them in society.

This cartoon features many of Howard Zinn’s ideas in “Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom”. In this article Zinn says that even after the inception of the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks were still not free. They were still treated inferiorly, and looked at as savages by whites. This modern day cartoon shows that some people still see blacks as inferior. “Black Blight” shows that blacks are seen as impaired people who will contribute to the world’s diseases and afflictions. “New Prisons” shows that blacks are seen as criminals and people who will never ascend in life. Why are these characteristics still popping up in the modern world? Many years after the Emancipation it is still evident that blacks are not treated the same, and will probably never get as much recognition as whites.

According to Allan Johnson’s “Capitalism, Class, and the Matrix of Domination”, whites developed the idea of whiteness and defined a privileged social category where they were above everyone else who wasn’t like them (46-47). This is also evident in the cartoon: new subdivisions and economic growth show that whites are the only ones who can live better lives and contribute to the health and growth of the economy. To them, blacks aren’t civil enough to live in suburbs, and blacks would only further cripple the economy because they are not as smart as the whites. “All the best public schools!” shows that whites only see themselves as the ones who can experience an education because blacks would probably just drop out, and turn to the “school of hard knocks”. This white privilege has given whites so much power to say, “Hey, I’m the dominant race, and I always will be.” Many of these characteristics are not true and whites are not always the ones with the privilege.

I picked this cartoon because it is another case where I first look at it and think it’s funny, but after actually thinking about it, it isn’t that funny anymore. While most will say that a lot of the things on this cartoon are meant to be jokes, some will also say that they believe in everything this cartoon says. There are still whites out there who see blacks as inferior or even less than inferior. Obviously these type of cartoons won't ever go away, but the real messages behind them go all the way back to the times of slavery in America.

Johnson, Allan G. Privilege, Power, and Difference. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.

Zinn, Howard. “Chapter 9: Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom.” A People’s History of the United States: Teaching Edition. 129-160.

ENTRY 9: The Color of Friendship

(Picture from DisneyChannel.com, http://tv.disney.go.com/disneychannel/originalmovies/index.html)


The Color of Friendship is a 2000 Disney Channel Original Movie starring Lindsey Haun (as Mahree Bok) and Shadia Simmons (as Piper Dellums). The movie is set in South Africa and Washington D.C. during the apartheid era. Mahree is a white South African whose father is a policeman, and an overjoyed man after finding out that activist Steven Biko has been caught by South African authorities. Piper is a black American living in Washington D.C. as a daughter of US Congressman Ron Dellums, who extremely opposes the apartheid system and oppression of black South Africans. Mahree has been chosen to spend a semester abroad with the Dellums family, but is surprised to find that the Dellums are black. Piper and her family are also surprised to see that Mahree is white. At first there is tension between Mahree and the Dellums, but they soon get to know each other and get along. It is during this time that Mahree realizes that blacks and white can live together without fighting all the time. But when Steven Biko is killed by the South Africa police mass protests around the world take place, and employees from the South African embassy take Mahree away from the Dellums family. Congressman Dellums hears about this and threatens the South African embassy of kidnapping Mahree. Things settle down and Mahree returns to the Dellums, with a new realization of the happenings in her home country. With the apartheid abolished and blacks liberated, Mahree returns home with a better knowledge of everything she just experienced.

I picked this movie because it was unlike a lot of Disney Channel movies. Most DC movies are about individual teenage issues, but The Color of Friendship focuses on a more serious matter that was discussed globally. The movie didn’t really hold back in their message to viewers, which made the film that much more powerful. I think that it’s important that kids know about this, and the Disney Channel definitely got a hit movie (which won an Emmy in 2000).

Race is more than evident in this movie especially with the surprising reaction from both Mahree and the Dellums when they first meet each other. As a cultural creation over time, race is a concept that puts people into certain groups because of certain characteristics. The grouping of people is merely a creation of humans over time, and is not necessarily true or set in stone. Mahree expected the Dellums to be white, and the Dellums expected Mahree to be black. Mahree classified all Americans as white and when she found out that the Dellums weren’t white, she was shocked. She was not used to do this because she is not used to being black people, or being on the same level as blacks (the only black person she knew was her maid back home, but even the maid was inferior to her). The Dellums were the same way and were surprised to have a white South African in their home. They too were probably not used to this because they thought that Mahree would see them as inferior, like the black South African Steven Biko. Classifying people into races according to their physical attributes only produces harmful effects. In Race: The Power of an Illusion, Part I, The Difference Between Us, Hammonds says that humans created race and used it in so many negative ways, that we are the only ones who can unmake it. This is shown in the movie with abolishing the apartheid and liberating black South Africans.

When I first saw this movie in 2000 I didn’t know about the apartheid and was kind of disappointed that the Disney Channel made this movie. It wasn’t like any of their other movies, so it was disappointing. But as I watched it later on, I was more aware of the issues happening in the movie, and therefore I had a better appreciation for it. It wouldn’t really surprise me if what happened to Mahree in the movie (being taken away by the embassy after Biko was killed) really happened in real life during that time.


Race: The Power of An Illusion, Part I, The Difference Between Us , 2003. http://dvss.bgsu.edu/vss- bin/vss_SR/bgsu/search?location=&query=race
+power+illusion&initialpage=0

ENTRY 8: Slave Auction at Richmond, Virginia (1856)

(Picture from, Eyre Crow A.R.A.: Slavery paintings and sketches: http://www.geocities.com/eyre_crowe/art_slavery.html)


Slave Auction at Richmond, Virginia is a pen and ink sketch by Eyre Crow that was engraved and published in the Illustrated London News on September 27, 1856. This was part of an essay Crow wrote (“Sketches in the Free and Slave States of America”), in which he wrote, “No pen, we think, can adequately delineate the choking sense of horror which overcomes one on first witnessing these degrading spectacles.”

I chose this sketch because it shows that selling slaves was so prominent and so familiar to America in the past. Something so degrading like this shouldn’t be highlighted, but at the same it should be so that future generations realize just how much suffering blacks went through during slavery. The sketch also gives off a feeling of pride for the whites, and fear for the slaves.
Blacks were treated so inferiorly that not only were they bought and sold, but they were also beaten, hunted down, and killed. Whites made money by buying and selling slaves, who would then work on their plantations. Not only did whites easily buy slaves, but they bought them so frequently that it was almost second-nature to them. In Octavia Butler’s Kindred Tom Weylin offered to buy Dana so that she could teach Rufus (91). The way that Tom Weylin approached Dana about this was so nonchalant that it caught her off guard. It was apparent that Tom Weylin was used to buying and selling slaves.

This sketch also display’s Richard Wright’s idea that blacks had to know their place in the workforce. Slaves knew that they had to stay slaves in order to stay alive. They didn’t try to fight being bought or sold because that would result in dire consequences. They had to know their place, and that was working for whites, and respecting them. Slaves that tried to fight against the whites were punished and killed. Howard Zinn tells of these types of happenings in “Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom”. For example, David Walker, son of a slave, was killed after he wrote and printed Walker’s Appeal, which infuriated Southern slaveholders (Zinn 134).

This sketch depicts the buying and selling of slaves as an act that is so second nature to whites. It is sad to know that whites once bought people just to make money for themselves. It is bad enough that they are making a profit off of other humans, but they make it worse by beating and killing blacks. Times are never perfect, and this time in American history shows just how much the country faltered, and how imperfect it once was.


Butler, Octavia. Kindred. New York: Beacon Press, 2004.

“Chapter 9: Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom.” Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States: Teaching Edition. 129-160.

“The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch.” Wright, Richard. Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, Sixth Edition. Edited by Rothenberg, Paula S.. 2004. p. 22-30.

ENTRY 7: THAT'S SO RAVEN: TRUE COLORS

(Picture from DisneyChannel.com, http://tv.disney.go.com/disneychannel/thatssoraven/index.html)

That’s So Raven is a Disney Channel Original series featuring a Raven-Symone (as Raven Baxter), Anneliese Van der Pool (as Chelsea Daniels), and Orlando Brown (as Eddie Thomas). In the Season 3 episode, “True Colors”, Raven and Chelsea apply for a job at a clothing store in their mall. Raven, a psychic and fashion fanatic, is more than qualified for the job for she knows a lot about fashion. Chelsea, the not so bright character of the show, is not so qualified, yet she was the one who got the job. Raven doesn’t understand why this would happen until she gets a psychic vision: she sees the store manager saying that she doesn’t hire black people. Raven is disturbed to hear this, and with the encouragement of her parents, she, Chelsea, and Eddie devise a plan to reveal the manager’s racist comments. With the help of a local television reporter, they finally reveal the manager’s comments, record it on video, and reveal it on TV.

I chose this episode because I love the show. It’s really funny and entertaining. This episode was shown during Black History Month, and it shows how blacks are still being discriminated against in the workforce, 144 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was passed. Whether it’s in San Francisco (where the show is set), or in New York, or in Mississippi, blacks are still not treated equally, and white superiority is still there.

The struggles that Raven went through during this episode reflect on Richard Wright’s “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch.” Wright talks about how living in a society where being white was special, a black person had to know where their place was in the workforce and outside of it in order to stay alive. While Wright’s troubles were on a worse level than Raven’s they both shared the same characteristics: being looked at as inferior by white people. Even though Raven was more than qualified, she lacked one main characteristic that the manager was looking for: being white. According to Allan Johnson, managers are more likely to hire people that are just like them, regardless of how qualified they are or not (81). That’s why Chelsea got the job instead of Raven. Chelsea didn’t really know what she was doing, but it was more important that she was white. Chelsea has white privilege and it allowed her to move through life without being marked in ways that identify her as an outsider. Johnson also says that in the work force, “whites don’t find themselves slotted into occupations identified with their race, as blacks are often slotted into support positions or Asians into technical jobs” (27). In addition, whites are more likely to be given promotions or second chances when they fail (Johnson 27).

When I first saw this episode and the topic they wrote about, it didn’t really surprise me because blacks are always being discriminated against in the work force. People still see them as the ones who will do the “dirty jobs”, the jobs no one else wants to do. Times have changed and blacks are just as successful as whites, so people shouldn’t treat them this way. Unfortunately, white superiority will never be banished from society, and this type of discrimination won't be disappearing anytime soon. But I liked Raven, Chelsea, and Eddie’s plan to reveal the manager’s comments. It was really sneaky, and very Raven-like.

Johnson, Allan G. Privilege, Power, and Difference. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.
“The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch.” Wright, Richard. Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, Sixth Edition. Edited by Rothenberg, Paula S.. 2004.

ENTRY 6: CARTOON

(Picture from Flickr.com, accessed July 14, 2007)

This is a cartoon from Jeff and Bil Keane with the quote, “I dream I was African American. It was horrible.” It features a white man in bed, and saying this quote to another white man. They both have a sort of sad and distressed look on their faces.

I chose this cartoon because it sends people mixed feelings. It may be funny to read it for the first time, but it really is a degrading cartoon. There are a lot of cartoons like this, and it has become a part of society. Most of us overlook it because we find it funny, but I am sure that for some people it is not funny at all. Someone on the website even commented on this and said, “really, racist...but funny LOL.” I think that we have gotten so used to these types of cartoons (and even television shows or movies) that we are desensitized to its racial slurs.

One concept that this cartoon shows is white privilege. According to Allan Johnson and his book, Privilege, Power, and Difference, whites developed the idea of whiteness and defined a privileged social category where they were above everyone else who was not like them (46-47). Having this white privilege makes whites believe that they possess certain values and characteristics that blacks do not have because of their skin color. Blacks were unlike whites so they could not have any sort of privilege. This is a part of social construction because in the 18th and 19th century humans developed race, and from then on, gave it an importance and significance in society. It let’s people believe that things like race or gender have clear-cut definitions, and cannot be changed (Johnson 20). Race is a cultural creation over time that puts people into certain groups because of certain characteristics. The grouping of people is merely a creation of humans over time, and is not necessarily true or set in stone.

I know that when I see a cartoon like this for the first time, I laugh. I think in the back of my mind that it is rude to laugh at something like this, but everyone else is laughing, so why can't I? Race has become such a big part of our society that it is a part of many sectors in the world. Whether it is with the government, schools, work, or the media, race always plays a role in it. This four letter word has transcended into so many discussions and debates. Thomas Jefferson probably would not have thought that his discussions and “Notes on the State of Virginia” would be the basis for race in the future.


Johnson, Allan G. Privilege, Power, and Difference. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.

ENTRY 5: RACE, INTELLIGENCE, HISTORY… OLD TRICKS WITH NEW TWISTS

Race, Intelligence, History...Old Tricks With New Twist.

By David H. Strassler

There is a long history of intellectual and scientific racism in the modern world that became a basis and support for governmental racial policies. In Nazi Germany, the destruction of European Jewry was made easier by the 19th century racist theories of Joseph A. Gobineau and Houston S. Chamberlain. While the centuries of Christian anti-Semitism and the conspiracy theories about Jews in the forged document "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" played a role in Nazi anti-Semitism, the crowning and defining feature was the notion of race, which meant that even a minute Jewish ancestry resulted in the individual being doomed to death.
In the United States, volumes were written justifying slavery and later Jim Crow legislation on the grounds of alleged Black inferiority--genetic and immutable.
Therefore it is astonishing that in 1994 a book - "The Bell Curve" by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray - would appear that introduces the concept of genetic inferiority of Blacks back into the public dialogue. Yet since its publication, Charles Murray has sought to play down the issue of race in his book. If his object were simply to try to assess the connection between I.Q. and genes and their connection to success in society, why in the world the need to introduce the concept of race at all into the analysis? Would it not have been sufficient to study I.Q.s of individuals regardless of race?
Considering how racial theories have been used in this century, one should address such issues with the greatest trepidation and sensitivity. Not Mr. Murray. He draws conclusions about race and I.Q. that are questionable at best. He pretends to have made a serious study of the impact of various social programs on Black I.Q.s. He concludes that they have had relatively little impact, leading him to say that this lack of progress demonstrates the overwhelming influence of genes and race on I.Q. Why not argue that those policies may not have been sufficient in themselves, that matters such as prenatal care, family culture and the like have never been properly addressed, thereby leaving untested enormous areas for improvement?
Moreover, as social critic Stanley Crouch recently pointed out, Murray and Herrnstein have accepted the definition of the Black race as it was designated by a racist America in the 18th and 19th centuries, which defined a Black as anyone having some Black blood. Of course, there was and is nothing genetically accurate about that definition. Thus when I.Q. scores are measured along racial lines, they are based on false assumptions and inevitably produce questionable results.
This is only one of many weaknesses of "The Bell Curve" analysis which make it insidious for the authors to draw broad conclusions on race and intelligence. Murray's denial that his assumptions need result in any derogation of Blacks, or that Blacks themselves need not feel offended by the analysis, or that Blacks need not be discouraged about their prospects as a result, or that school administrators might not inevitably feel complacent about the lack of progress by their Black students. is disingenuous. Suggestions by the author that "realism" on this subject could produce more constructive social policies goes against the entire history of politics in the modern era.
As noted, there is a long history in our country of books and articles portraying Blacks as genetically inferior in intelligence. For most of our history these works received legitimacy from an intellectual climate dominated by white racism. With the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, however, such racial approaches fell into disrepute. When in the 1970's people such as Arthur Jensen and William Shockley authored modern versions of the old racial inferiority hypothesis, they were met with widespread rejection.
Unfortunately, recent trends within the Civil Rights Movement ironically give greater credibility to a book like "The Bell Curve". A new respectability has emerged for thinking in terms of groups, rather than individual rights, this time coming from some within the Black community. It manifests itself in a focus on quotas, race-based redistricting, and extreme forms of multiculturalism. Moving away form Martin Luther King's focus on judging people "by content of one's character rather than the color of one's skin," the group became all. And so when Murray and Herrnstein chose to resurrect the concept of race and intelligence, they could be emboldened by this new legitimacy for thinking in group terms, coming from those who should have an interest in weakening this thrust that has been so destructive to Black life in America.
If any good can come from the publication of and attention of a book propounding racist theories, it is to remind all of us of the moral and practical power of the message of equality and dignity of Martin Luther King.

David H. Strassler is national chairman of the Anti-Defamation League.

In “Race, Intelligence, History...Old Tricks with New Twist”, David Strassler discusses a 1994 book, The Bell Curve, by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, and how it reintroduces “the concept of genetic inferiority of Blacks back into the public dialogue.” Strassler believes that the book would be sufficient enough in trying to assess a connection between IQs and genes, but it is not necessary to incorporate the idea of race. In the book Murray presents questionable conclusions about race and IQ, and does not consider other possibilities that could lead to connections between IQs and genes. Furthermore, Herrnstein and Murray wrote the book while accepting the definition of Blacks that was developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, a definition that had no genetic accuracy whatsoever. Murray believes that Blacks should not be insulted by the book for it has no degrading statements towards them.

I chose this article because it shows that there is still discussion on scientific racism in the modern world. While this article was from 1994, it was not a year in the 18th or 19th century when scientific racism was first discussed. To some people this is still a highly debated topic even though science has given no evidence connecting genetics and race. I still think that it is shocking that people still make this connection. Race is not set in stone… it is an idea that humans created, altered, and developed over time.

Scientific racism is the idea that science was the only way to explain the difference between blacks and whites. Thomas Jefferson may be the first person to start the theory of race, but he certainly set “American science on the path of trying to figure out what it is scientifically that makes blacks inferior to whites. And of course, if that’s the question the scientist asks, then that’s the question that the scientist will answer” (Race…The Story We Tell). While this idea was more than prominent in the 18th century, it still has not disappeared from our society today. Just like The Bell Curve discussed, people still believe that genetics connects to race. Science has given absolutely no evidence on this. Just like in Race: The Power of an Illusion, Part I, The Difference Between Us, when the students analyzed their DNA to see how different they were from each other because they were of different races, they found no evidence connecting genetics and race. So many people believe that we are all so different from one another, but the video shows that we are all actually genetically very alike. But unfortunately, race is a cultural creation that, over time, has been developed and manipulated in ways that has classified people into certain groups, with certain characteristics.

The idea of scientific racism also incorporates the idea of privilege: “the idea that one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do” (Johnson 35). Furthermore, Johnson writes that whites developed the idea of whiteness and defined a privileged social category where they were above everyone else who was not like them (46-47). Whites probably feel that this whiteness separates them from blacks, and puts them higher on the hierarchy scale. And with this thinking they developed scientific racism to further separate the two races. It does not matter if science does not prove anything because whites have white privilege, and blacks have none at all.

It was interesting to read how Herrnstein and Murray did not think that their book would be insulting to blacks in any way. They are pretty much degrading them, so to say that it is not insulting shows denial at a very high level. No matter how many times people say that there is no connection between race and genetics, it is never going to subside. I think that that is sad because it in a way shows a narrow-minded way of thinking. People in the 18th and 19th century were thinking this way. To still think this way, even with so many advances in science and society, is kind of absurd. Just like we created race, we created scientific racism, and we are the only ones who can get rid of it.



Johnson, Allan G. Privilege, Power, and Difference. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.

Race: The Power of an Illusion, Part I, The Difference Between Us. 2003.

Race: The Power of an Illusion, Part I, The Story We Tell. 2003.

Strassler, David H. “Intelligence, History...Old Tricks with New Twist.” The Philadelphia Tribune. 111. 105 (1994): 6-A. Ethnic NewsWatch. 14 July 2007. .

ENTRY 4: STANLEY MILGRAM’S SHOCK EXPERIMENT

“I observe a mature and initially poised businessman enter the laboratory smiling and confident. Within 20 minutes he was reduced to a twitching, stuttering wreck who was rapidly approaching a point of nervous collapse… At one point he pushed his fist into his forehead and muttered, “Oh, God! Let’s stop it.” And yet he continued to respond to every word the experimenter and obeyed to the end.” -Stanley Milgram


Roger Hock’s Forty Studies that Changed Psychology features Stanley Milgram’s infamous research on obedience, “the shock experiment” (308-316). This experiment not only incorporates discussions of obedience, but also discussion on ethical research methods. Regardless, the shock experiment revealed how people are capable of carrying out harm to others just because someone told them to do so. In the study, subjects thought that they were participating in an experiment about the effects of punishment on learning, and were then told to deliver increasing levels of shock every time a student gave the wrong answer (Hock 309-310). However, no students received shocks and the subjects did not know this. The results were unbelievable: every subject administered at least one shock and two-thirds gave all the levels of shock (Hock 311). Milgram’s study showed that obedience depends on the situation instead of an individual’s personality, and the nature of the relationship to authority influences someone’s obedience.

I chose this study because it was a breakthrough experiment in psychology that showed unbelievable results. I remember seeing footage of this experiment in high school, and it was interesting to see obedience in a different light. Also, it was interesting to see that there really were not any ethical guidelines to follow during that time, but at the same time it gave great insight into obedience. Obviously we cannot just get rid of ethical guidelines in psychology, but without them, we get results unlike any other.

Once concept illustrated in Milgram’s experiment is privilege. According to Peggy McIntosh, “the idea that one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do” (Johnson 35). In the experiment, the teacher (Milgram) had privilege over the subjects because he was an authority figure. His position as an intelligent university professor studying social psychology gave him authority over the subjects. The subjects probably thought that they should listen to Milgram because he knew more than they did. Milgram possessed the value of knowledge and the subjects did not, and therefore he was able to control them. The subjects saw Milgram as a person with this privilege because they classified him into a group that had the privilege. Their only reaction was to follow his orders even if they knew that they were wrong.

Another concept illustrated in Milgram’s experiment is the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance the most appealing choice one could make as compared to all the other choices we have (Johnson 80). We choose this path because it prevents us from receiving unknown reactions from other people. In this experiment, the path of least resistance for the subjects was to continuously obey Milgram’s orders. They did not do anything else because they were afraid of what Milgram’s response would be. Even though the subjects knew that shocking people was wrong, they still continued to do it because it was the favorable choice to make. They probably thought that since this is an experiment disobeying Milgram would ruin the results. In a way this is a form of denial. The subjects are “getting off the hook” by denying that hurting the students existed. Denial is the easiest way to get off the hook (Johnson 108). Denying the fact that they were hurting others, supported their continuation of the experiment.

After seeing footage of this experiment I always said that I would never give such intense shocks to another person. I know that it is inhumane and completely wrong to do it. But then again, I am not in that position, so I do not really know what I would do. Regardless, this experiment shows just how much of an influence an authority figure can have, even if their orders are wrong. Everyday we see this type of situation. For example, friends giving in to peer pressure even though they know that what they are about to do is wrong. I think that obedience is not something that we think about consciously, so we get ourselves in really bad situations sometimes.



Hock, Roger. Forty Studies that Changed Psychology. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005.

Johnson, Allan G. Privilege, Power, and Difference. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.