Despite the early devotion of white patriarchy to construct an ideal country, the topic of equality has always been a difficult thing to manage in the US. With women and African-Americans seeking the privileges white men have, the demand for equality has slowly, but surely been met over time.
However, racism and discrimination still linger in the world today. To counteract this, many movements started along with creations such as Donald Glover’s “This is America” released on May 5,2018 on Youtube. This satirical criticism of America’s tendencies analyzes what America has come to.
Donald, otherwise known as Childish Gambino, has used his fame to create a song that not only embodies the harsh reality of America, but uses it to help people focus on important subjects such as racism, police brutality, and gun violence. This is done through Donald’s nihilistic view on the world. He expresses this view through the choreography and lyricism of the music video.
One example is in the video where it begins in a very light tone, with repeated lyrics while Gambino contorts his body towards the man playing guitar. Donald dons gold chains, raggedy pants and an untrimmed beard. This alludes mostly to how slaves looked. His sporadic movements into smooth movements, induce a feeling of discomfort that African-Americans feel living in America while police brutality and racism exists.
At the 0:53 mark, the character Gambino plays pulls out a firearm from his back pocket and shoots the man playing guitar. This immediately catches the viewer off-guard. It completely juxtaposes the tone of the beginning of the video into something much darker. The pose he does while this occurs is believed to be reminiscent of a Jim Crow drawing.
Right after the first killing, Gambino places the gun he used carefully into the arms of a young African-American youth holding a red cloth. Two more young adult African-Americans then drag the dead body away from the camera’s perspective. This entails that whoever is doing the killing, which I believe to be America itself holds guns to be of more importance than the deaths they cause. America consistently has protected the rights of guns despite the amount of destruction they are able to do and as shown via the dragging. The youth of the country are then forced to deal with the burden and clean up the messes America makes.
Something really important to take note of after each killing Gambino is responsible for is that there are no consequences. Taking the character of America as a whole, it shows the power it holds in creating destruction and never facing no repercussions in return.
The crimes he commits result in no consequences, making him invulnerable and above the law. This is because Gambino represents white America. In the video, white America is free to kill any black man, woman, or child. It is the grim surrealism that African-American men and women have to face while living in an America where white men control almost everything happening in it.
Also showing what America has come to is the lyric, “you just a black man in the world you just a barcode”. This line references how people gain profit from barcodes. They scan them with the gun and then pull the trigger. It represents that no matter how much wealth or power an African-American may possess, white America will find a way to profit off of you whether it be through music, media, and more.
“This is America” pays homage to the insolence of white America and how the country’s foundation is built on systematic oppression of other races. We all live in the same nation, yet discrimination occurs no matter who you are. Gambino perfectly depicts this rift between races by showing the targeting of black Americans by eloquently orchestrated choreography and lyrics. The country’s alarming rates of inequality is why it will eventually implode.