Hung 1

Wei-Ting Hung
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TannisNielsen
VISA 137 001

Racism: A Good Education from Family Not from Media

Racism issues have been around the world for decades. Although scholars have tried hard
to advocate enforce the concepts of racism in textbooks and advertisements, the power of
education and the basis is still due by the family. Children learn things first from parents then
their teachers. Family education becomes the most important thing to shape their characteristic
and what the responses are to others (McDougal, 34). Education is not only for achieving a
diploma, but it also teaches us, and all the future parents, the concepts of treating other races.
People should value the importance of parenting and teach the children the proper ways to talk to
other races.
Movies have the most potential to influence kids. Hollywood movies shape the white
privilege and the racism to Arabs. As a result, more than 300 movies produced in the United
States contain stereotype of Arabs. For instance, movies like Death before dishonor (Leonard,
1987) and Network (Lumet, 1976) shows the characters from Arabic countries are rich or
ruthless. The biggest shock is in Disney movie Aladdin (Musker, 1992) which describes the
Middle Easterners as stereotypes of thieves, terrorist, rich and killers. When these ideas and
images are transmitted into childrens mind, its hard to change in the future. Hollywood or
American movie industries bring these images of racism because of the wars between countries.
These ideas lead our kids and our future world to racism and discrimination. Parents become a

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huge role to change the situation by letting their child watch stereotypical movies or teach them
the right way to seeing other races.
Due to the American movie industry being mainstreamed towards the world, Asians, as
well as Arabs become one of the main races people make fun of. In the United States, Asians are
mostly blue-collar such as Chinese food cookers, Kung Fu trainers or house cleaners. Likewise,
people can find Chinese described as small eyed wok delivery people in newspapers comics. On
the other hand, when they speak to the presidents of Asian countries, westerners sometimes call
them as emperor from these history fictions. Most westerners have 6 fictional ideas about
Chinese (Xiao, Travel wire Asia). The most common one is Chinese are really good in math. In
fact, as a self-reflection, it is not true at all. In Asia, mathematics is intense as a subject. Teachers
restrict students from using calculators for any assignments or exams. Although the way how
Asian teachers teach, doesnt mean that all the students can be shaped as good math students.
Second, Chinese knows how to play Kung Fu. Indeed, Kung Fu is part of the traditional
culture in Chinese community, but it does not mean everyone have the ability as Bruce Lee or
Jackie Chan in the movies. Third, Chinese is hardest language in the world. There are more
than 50,000 characters in Chinese but the actual using characters for daily reading and writing is
around 3000 words. Also, the grammar is very much easier than those of German, French or
Finnish. Forth, Chinese all sounds like chin chung chong In this case, not only Chinese is not a
language that people speak but also is a bad stereotype for Asian. Mandarin, Cantonese and
Taiwanese are the real languages that people in Chinese community speaks. Chin chung chong
started from 1917 a ragtime singer named Lee S. Roberts intercepted the sounds of Mandarin
(Chung, Mercury News). Nowadays, westerners still use this sound to tease Asian when they are
speaking to each other. In an exchange student readme, a French friend of her mimicked when

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she was talking to her boyfriend. At that time, she felt hurt and disrespected when others were
making fun on my language. Although this had been four years ago, she can still remember the
feeling and situation at that moment (Hung, 72). Racism can stay with people for their lifetime.
Racism not only is harmful to your own self-esteem but also hurts your feelings toward what you
belong and believe in. Fifth, There is only China and Japan in Asia. When people asked me
Where are you come from? People often guess you are Chinese or Japanese. There are more
than fifty countries in Asia, but what people think are always big images from media about China
and Japan. Sixth, The Chinese culture is continuing to be the same today as it was thousands of
years ago. It is traditional and conservative. On the contrary, modern China is very much like
other developing or developed countries. Major cities in China such as Beijing, Shanghai and
Hong Kong are much the same as other metropolises around the world. However, in the movies
people mostly picture China or other Asian countries as poor, undeveloped and out of time.
Meanwhile, the history between Asia and Western countries will make the text look worse than
the reality. Directors of these movies normally base these on the history and continuing the
image of a typical Asian. Therefore, Western film makers often make the Asian society look
undeveloped and seem as if theyre being ruled by a ruthless emperor. People get their
information by mass media more than from textbooks or newspapers these days. If we arent
being cautious on what we see, our brain will automatically input what we listen and what we
watch. Also, there are artist who try to make a different nowadays.
Jatti made a panda image with powerful words which made thousands of young people support
and share his artwork project panda, anti-racism on internet and to real life. It became a pop art
on T-shirt, mugs and every kind of art form. He starts this artwork because of the funny
illustration and text is easily reach to young people on Internet. Since Internet is the most

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information young people get it from, he started to post this picture all kind of social websites
and got huge amount of good comments after all.
On the medias we can found that the biggest discrimination in America is toward to
African-American. Though there are no more slavery laws in America, there are still white
privilege exist and discrimination to all kind of black people. European colonization of countries
around the world has its roots in Portuguese exploration. There were financial and religious
motives behind this exploration. By finding the source of the lucrative spice trade, the
Portuguese could reap its profits for themselves (Scott, 36).
(In 1880-1900: Viciously Racist Songs: Never trust a nigger with a gun)

Because of the colonization, white people thinks and being

taught to discriminate black people over decades. In United States,
there are hundreds of news and experiments about racism between
black citizens and white police. For instance, there is a society
experiment of a white man and a black man brings the AR-15, a
type of gun, towards the police in open area with no threat actions.
The police gave a verbal warning to the white man, but when the
black man walk through in the same way, the police took out the gun and asked more support to
arrested the black (SoFloComedy, YouTube). During the process the black man did not do any
action to defend or violate to
the police officer. This is
exactly what racism is. Being
black is not a crime, and so do
white should not treat black in
a different way. Nevertheless,

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another common example is white police officer shot black
people for no reason. The latest shock to all over the world is on
April 4th, 2015, at South Carolina a 33 years old white police
officer Michael Sager shot at the back of a 50 years old black
man, Walter Scott to death for no specific reason. If people been
through the education of anti-racism since young age in family
not from hateful history or medias, will these innocent black
people have a different life stories?
Love is not a color, no hue, neither a race. All of our blood is the same, that runs deep
within our veins. If we could lift up each other, and know that we all care. If we help our sisters
and brothers, theres a bond that well share (Honestly JT, One World). Poet Honestly JT is a
black man who live under the pressure of racism. He uses his power in words to tell the world in
a peaceful way and tried hard to eliminate the racism in the society between white and black.
Also, an anonymous makeup artist used the art of makeup and face expression on photography to
shows her support to anti- racism. The reason why he/she made this series of artwork is because
seeing racism language between models on the backstage. She pointed out that there is no
difference between races, colors or even religions. We are all human being and share the same
world together.

For instance, a 15 years old Taiwanese girl was an exchange student for a year in Alberta,
Canada. During the year of exchange, she learns the multi-culture in different places and meet
other exchange students from 18 countries. They became best friends and understand each other.
The most touch thing was a Japanese boy, Hayate Sato, stood up for his country apologized

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toward people from America, Taiwan for the mistake Japan made before (Hung, 198).
Meanwhile, In Canada, there are hate speeches advocating genocide and inciting hatred against
any "identifiable group" are indictable offences under the Criminal Code with years. An
"identifiable group" is known as "any section of the public distinguished by color, race, religion,
national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, or mental or physical disability". It makes
exceptions for cases of statements of truth, and subjects of public debate and religious doctrine.
Also, in British Columbia, complaints can be filed directly with the province's human rights
tribunal. Under British Columbia's Human Rights Code, an adjudicator must order a violator to
cease contravening the Code, and may order inter alia that the violator pay to the complainant an
amount that the adjudicator considers appropriate "for injury to dignity, feelings and self respect
or to any of them" (Sampan, 129). One small movement could make countries, races, people
have a different expect to you. What made you become who you are today all started from your
education in your family. How you speak, what your actions made can all source back to what
you been learned.
To sum up, people should look up the issue of the importance on parenting and teach
their child the proper ways to talk to other races in a young age. Choosing the right movies to
watch, caring the social life children have and giving the knowledge between races will all make
different to our future world. What parents do may infect what kind of a kid will be like in the
future. Parents should choose the right thing to let them know the good relationship between
different races. A good family education not only will make a person have a better life, but also
decrease the problems of racism.

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Works Cited

McDougal, J., A. Gettys, and JS Hagood. "Child Family Education."PEDIATRIC

ALLERGY IMMUNOLOGY AND PULMONOLOGY 23.1 (2010): 87-90. Web.

Chung, L.A. (16 December 2006). "'Ching-chong' joke spreads ignorance".San Jose

Mercury News.
Xiao Xiao, Top 10 incorrect Chinese stereotypes. 20 August 2011. Web.

http://www.travelwireasia.com/2011/08/top-10-incorrect-chinese-stereotypes/
Scott, Barbara Gail (1993). Viking Colonialism: Contact and Interaction Between
Viking/Medieval Norway and the Northern Isles. University of Minnesota. Retrieved.
2012-08-26.

SoFloComedy, YouTube Black Man vs White Man Carrying ASSAULT RIFLE in

Public (SOCIAL EXPERIMENT) - This is NOT a "Prank" (2015) Web.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXrh6wAxJlw

Sampat, Mike "Expose hate speech to the light". Toronto Star. 28 April 2013. Web.
Jatti, https://www.facebook.com/ProjectPandaMovement
Honestly JT, http://www.poetrysoup.com/poems_poets/poems_by_poet.aspx?ID=25669
Feyannie, Hung. A Different 15: Make Dreams Fly Taipei: Digi-Choice, 2013. Print.