Eyes On The Prize

So after watching this film i have not really found any of my views to be different about the past and present forms of racism and segregation. I feel that Martin Luther King Jr. tried his best to try and end segregation and did a very good job of overcoming the inertia that had white Americans stuck in a deep rut. I have had history classes where we have talked about Dr. King and we discussed some of the main events, but we never tried to penetrate the gut of the matter. We were not shown the extent of the violence that this video shows and I knew it was bad but i had no idea how much of a war zone it really was. It is images such as these that sometimes make me question if humans are inherently evil, inherently good, or just inherently fearful?

It also surprised me that there was more violence towards African Americans in the North than the south during the marches. They said that in the south only 75-100 people would protest the marches while in the north even women and children would come out of their homes to protest and join the riots. However I think I can understand how this was an outcome. The North at the time was more industrialized so there were more cities and people lived closer together while in the South their economy was built on farming and there are less people per square mile. So it was easier in the North for people to riot against the marchers in a larger number.

Another thing I found interesting that doesn't have a direct link to the film, but to the situation in general; it is the conditioning of people from when they are young to when they are older. In those times white children were told to hate African people and treat them badly so they grew up with this mentality that they are better than dark skinned people. But in the same way African children were probably told to hate the white people because they suppressed them. And because children are impressionable they keep this mentality as they grow older and these older children are the ones starting these riots in the video. Earlier this week i watched part of film called A Class Divided that talks about this conditioning to hate people different than themselves. A teacher came up with the idea to take a class and tell them that blue eyed people are better than brown eyed and gave special privileges to blue eyed kids. Then she switched it the next day and gave special privleges to the brown eyed kids and it was interesting to see the result of how it affected these kids and it helped them to understand how the African Americans felt during those times. here is the link to the film if anyone would like to watch it. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02s42cq66&continuous=1