Twelve Year a Slave (Movie)

Name

Institutional Affiliation

a. The Problem

The movie, "Twelve Years a Slave," is written by Solomon Northup which recounts his

life story as a free black man from the North who stood kidnapped and subsequently sold into

slavery in the pre-Civil War South. The main problem discussed in the film is racial

discrimination against the black people are kidnapped and enslaved. This is why the author,

(Solomon) presented a horrifically accurate as well as verifiable account of the shared slave

experience in the US in the antebellum South. From the beginning to the end, the basic facts

regarding the time, the people, the places, alongside the practices of the day get integrated,

occasionally in excessive details, into the story of Solomon. Solomon has spoken with authority

on each of the subjects of his own enslavement, naming names as well as pointing out landmarks

along the path. In so doing, Solomon dares skeptics to refute his tale, with the knowledge that the

public accounts and shared knowledge would defend his story. For instances, where Solomon

accused a wicked slave trader of keeping him captive in Washington DC, Solomon not solely

names that slaver, but also names the accomplices of such a slaver, identifies precisely where the

slave pen remains hidden, and further describes the physical slave pen structure

comprehensively. The film is a serving a timeless indictment of the "chattel bondage" practice,

or human slavery. Solomon's detailing all the abuses he endured and such he stood compelled to

inflict-offering a warning to each generation of the moral cost exacted by slavery on the

stakeholders. The slave herself or himself remains degraded, made to deliberately agonize awful
punishments, and robbed cruelly of physical, spiritual and emotional riches. Still, the slaver is

never the solitary person agonizing, since via taking part in slavery, the master remains morally

degraded as well as desensitized emotionally. This film remains typical for offering human faces

to the evil which stood once shared practice, and for sounding a consistent warning of the awful

aftermaths of chattel bondage.

b. Theory Summary

Functionalism Theory of race and ethnicity: In the perspective of functionalism, racial

alongside ethnic inequalities must have served a significant function to exist as long as they

have. Such a concept, essentially, remains problematic. The overarching question is “how can

racism and discrimination positively contribute to society? A functionalist thus looks at

“functions’ alongside “dysfunctions” triggered by racial inequalities.

c. Application of Theory

Functionalism is effective in explaining the racial discrimination against blacks by the

white slave traders that caused Solomon (film author) to be “deceived, kidnapped, abused,

removed from family, deprived of identity, and beaten into a long, weary, unjustified

submission.” A functionalist, Nash (1964) emphasized his argument on the manner in which

racism remains functional for the dominant group, for instance, he suggested that racism is

morally justifying a racially unequal society. Thus, we can take into consideration the manner in

which slave owners justified the antebellum South’s slavery, via the suggestion that black

individuals like Solomon (in the film) stood fundamentally inferior to the fellow white and, thus,

preferred slavery to freedom.

d. Importance of Social Problem

 Racial discrimination is a social problem which is of significance to social work and the

functionalism theory enhances my perspective as future social work. This is because social work

involves working across diverse ethnic and racial groups, and the need to provide a non-

discrimination service. Thus, social work fights against any form of racial discrimination and

hence the importance of this problem to social work. Functionalism theory of race and ethnicity

has improved my perspective as a future social worker because it has helped me understand how

racism remains functional for the dominant group. I will also apply the functionalist viewpoint to

racism to discuss the manner in which racism might positively contribute to the society

functional by strengthening bonds between members of in-groups via the ostracism of out-group

members. This now helps as a social worker to understand why a community could surge

solidarity via refusal to permit outsiders access. I now also understand that dysfunctions linked to

racism might entail the failure to take advantage of the talent in the subjugated cohort and that

society has to divert from additional purposes the effort and time required to uphold artificially

constructed racial boundaries. This now helps me understand how much effort, money and time

go towards maintenance of separate as well as unequal educational systems before the civil rights

movements and hence discourage such practices in my future social work.

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