Race, Media, History, and Relevance in Ava DuVernay's "Selma"

Abstract

Race, though a socially constructed idea, has been a major part of American history. From slavery, to the Civil Rights Movement, to the modern day Black Lives Matter movement, the African American race has been at the center of oppression, marginalization, and violence at the hands of white America. Contrary to this, however, American general education does not seem to hone in on these very injustices inflicted upon the African American community. Often times African American history is taught through a white lens in which unjust laws and violence towards African Americans are perceivably stopped through the law making of white men. This leads the educated to believe that slavery and segregation, and the violences that came along with them, are isolated incidences. Specifically, it leads the people to believe that these injustices imposed on blacks were fixed with the abolition of slavery and laws such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Rarely are young Americans taught about lynchings, hate crimes, the violent depths of the KKK, commonly held cultural beliefs towards African Americans, etc. Without this kind of education, the American people are left blind to how slavery was only the beginning of the cultural and racist attitudes towards African Americans, and how with every passing decade laws may have changed to better African American social status in this country, but those attitudes towards race persist. It is clear, then, that our educations about racial history in this country must go deeper and must allow us to draw deeper connections between the past and today. Media and popular culture are an immense part of American culture and, throughout history, have helped to shape not only our perceptions of race, but also have drawn the attention of the American people when change is so clearly needed.

Race, Media, History, and Relevance in Ava DuVernay's "Selma" by Brianna Arney is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.