http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge7i60GuNRg
Since African slave trade began in 1600s, racism and discrimination have been ingrainged into our society and it becomes one of the most serious problems in today’s society. Even though slavery was formally abolished about a century and a half ago, Americans are still struggling with the costly political and social legacy of slavery. Nevertheless many people in general may believe we are living in a just society and there is barely racial discrimination compare to the past. However, the video clip I linked illustrates that racism and discrimination are still deep rooted in contemporary society. The purpose of the experiment was to observe public reations to bike theft in public park and the result was surprisingly scary. When a White man tried to break the lock of some’s bicycle with various tools, there were no one actually calls the police or stops him forcefully. On the contrary to this, when a black man did the same thing, many people have reacted with outrage, yelling at him, and some even took pictures for evidence. Why would people react so different? I personally think it’s basically derived from people’s prejudice that created by media. It’s true that many disturbing crimes are committed by African-american, howevere at the same time there are numerous number of crimes committed by White, Asian, latino, and other ethnics as well. The problem is that black people are more likely to be portrayed as offenders in movies, dramas, even in novels and it controls and makes a picture of criminal on our head. Believe or not, most (approx. 80% of) serial killers in the U.S. were White and some cases are still unsolved. Because we are living in the society where mass media strongly influences everyday of our lives, discrimination, prejudice, and quiet racism seem hardly to leave the us unless we all can change our way of thinking regardless of how the media portray the world.
