So this week my American Studies (AS)
class took a field trip. This included going to the Smart Museum and later
watching the play "Clybourne
Park" at the Steppenwolf theater.
The play was about
the issue of race and how it is not a resolved. The play illustrated the racial
tensions within the neighborhood of Clybourne Park and how it affected the
relationships within the neighborhood. It depicted the "dance around
the topic" of race and how people had things to say but still they tried
to avoid offending anybody.
So I drew a
connection to this dance around race while watching "The Big Bang Theory" on
CBS this week. In the clip below Sheldon's mother (the woman in red) makes a
racist remark about Indians and Leonard (the man with the jacket) corrects her
and tells her "We don't say that either". He then goes on to say,
"I'll make you a list". This got me thinking about the way that
everyone wants to be politically correct and minimally offensive. If Leonard
could make her a list of things that "we don't say" what does that
say about the way we treat race?
cropped with SnipSnip
Similar to the to the clip above
"Clybourne Park" dealt with similar sticky situations pertaining to
race. Nobody wanted to say what they were honestly thinking lest they offend
another, but isn't beating around the bush just as bad? No matter how it is
phrased, a hateful comment always be a hateful comment. Saying unpleasant things
will still offend people no matter the "political correctness"
of the language.
So why do people
go out of their way to mask their hateful comments? I
realize that I've left a lot of questions in this blog so I will try
and come up with more concrete answers to these questions and do a follow up
blog as soon as possible.
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