UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES,

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

FINAL ASSIGNMENT
AMERICAN STUDY

INSTRUCTOR: PhD. Ngô Tự Lập

STUDENT’S NAME: Nghiêm Thị Phượng

STUDENT ID: 21045292

STUDENT EMAIL:nghiemphuonghpu2@gmail.com

DUE DATE: 10/2/2023

Table of Contents

FINAL ASSIGNMENT......................................................................................................................1

AMERICAN STUDY..........................................................................................................................1

1. INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................1

2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND..................................................................................................2

2.1. Racism and Movie..................................................................................................................................2

2.2. The Character in BlacKkKlansman movie............................................................................................2

3. THE DIALOGUE...........................................................................................................................3

4. ANALYSIS OF THE FILM............................................................................................................8

5. CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................................11
 POWER AND IDEOLOGY OF AMERICAN

RACISM IN THE FILM “BLACKKKLANSMAN”

1. INTRODUCTION

There have been worldwide breakthroughs in attempts to fight against racism throughout
the previous few decades. The April 27, 1994 election gave blacks a new freer and more equal
life and marked a turning point; however, racism still exist worldwide, especially in the US.
Because black people have historically been subjected to slavery and racial prejudice by white
people, they must fight for independence and equality. Despite the fact that the black people
have been a number one person in America, racism and discrimination against black people
persist in several areas, such as employment and educational opportunities. This racism is also
reflected in the cinema industry as a huge number of movies and films remain stuck in their
racism bias. That is to say racism needs to be taken seriously and much work needs to be done to
remove stereotypes about racism in films and in real-life. In our analysis, we look at the film
“BlacKKKlansman”. As a result, in my analysis, I focus on racism in the movie reflected
through language-related elements.

BlacKkKlansman is adapted from the book Black Klansman by author Ron Stallworth,
based on his true investigative activities in the late 1970s. The film follows a black Colorado
Springs police officer assigned to infiltrate into a branch of the anti-black Ku Klux Klan. But
then the fate of his life began to change from then on, he became the number one leader of the
organization. The Ku Klux Klan, commonly known as the KKK or simply the Klan, is the
collective name of three movements of three periods in the United States with predominantly
white male members who support extremist views, such as white supremacy, racism, anti-
immigrant, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism.

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2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

2.1. Racism and Movie

Lumiere Brothers invented and developed the first movies in the late 19th century, when
the content offered were still very limited. Nowadays, there are different themes of movies,
including drama, horror/thriller, comedy, action, documentary, mystery, musical, and historical
drama; however, memoir relates to racism is the theme that can convey cultural and political
values play an important role in forming national identities.

In the movie BlacKkKlansman, racism is depicted as prejudice towards Blacks and Jews
by the White race, which demonstrates a race's supremacy, or the idea that members of a certain
race are better and more superior than members of other races.

2.2. The Character in BlacKkKlansman movie

In BlacKkKlansman, there are certain characters that demonstrate racism.

1. Ron Stallworth: known as the main role who acts as Colorado's first black police officer of
the movie. He pretended to be European American in order to look into the Ku Klux Klan.

2. Flip Zimmerman: a Jew who works in Ron's police department's intelligence department and
he will meet with KKK members in person while posing as Ron.

3. Kwame Ture: a black activist and a VIP member of the Black Panther Party.

4. Jerome Turner: a senior or well-respected man who encountered a lot of racism when he was
a young man

5. Patrice: serves as both Ron's girlfriend and the head of the Black Student Association at the
University of Colorado.

6. Walter Breachway: a member of the Ku Klux Klan who has a strong dislike towards anyone
of African American or Jewish descent, appears in this movie.

7. Felix: a strongly anti-black or of Jewish descent white man who also serves as the leader of
the Ku Klux Klan branch in the Colorado region.
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8. Connie Kendrickson: belongs to Ku Klux Klan, plays as the wife of Walter, Connie harbored
bigoted ideas regarding Jews and African Americans, just like Felix and Walter.

9. David Duke: from 1974 to 1979, he served as the Ku Klux Klan's top official as well as in the
US legislature.

10. Mr. Andy Landers: plays a white Colorado police officer in this movie. He is a dishonest
police officer who frequently treats black people unfairly.

11. Chief Bridges: a white police officer who serves as the chief of Colorado Springs' local
police.

3. THE DIALOGUE

Data No Dialogue

1 Duke: “No, I can always tell when I’m talking to a negro.” Ron: “How so? Duke:
“Take you, for example, Ron.” Ron: “Me?” Duke: “Yeah” Ron: (Speechless)
Duke: “I mean, I can tell that you’re a pure Aryan white man from the way you
pronounce certain words.” Ron: “Can give me any example?” Duke: “Yeah, take
the word ‘uh’, ‘are’, pure Aryan like you or I would pronounce it correctly, ‘are’.
Negro pronounces it ‘are-uh’. Did you ever notice that? It’s like, ‘are-uh’. (give the
example) ‘you gonna fry up that crispy fried chicken, nigga soul brother?”

2 Duke: “Just look around, that’s right. Everyone just look around. Today we are
privileged to be among white man and white women. Such as yourselves, real
warriors for the real America. The America that our ancestors fought and died for.
The true white America race. The backbone from whence came our great Southern
heritage. And I want to thank you to Jesus Christ. I want to thank you so much for
never putting your country second. That’s right America first.”

3 Connie: “Get ‘em out there!” ……: “Go get ‘em!” …….: “Go!” ( “The trial”)
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 …….: “Hey” ……..: “Send him to hell!” ……...: “String him up!”

4 Ron : “1813 South 21st Street. Come by sometime. We’ll have a beer.” Walter:
“and you know what? That loudmouth black Student Union bitch that’s been in the
papers complaining about the police. She was there” Ron : “ That fu*kin cunt?”
Walter: “I Like to close those monkey lips permanently.” Ron : “ Hey! Don’t say
that” Walter: “Not until I get her lips around the head of my dick.”

5 Ron : “I knew a coon once.” Duke : “Did you?” Ron : “Yeah, that Negro lived
across the street from us. I must have been six or seven. His nickname was Butter
Biscuit.” Duke :“How’d he get that nickname?” Ron : “ He loved his mama’s
butter biscuits.” Duke : “Hahaha yum yum”

Ron : “Me and Butter Biscuit played together every day. One day my father came
home early from work. He told me I couldn’t play with that little spook anymore,
because I was white and Butter biscuit was a nigger.” Duke : “Hahaha that’s so
rich. Well your father sounds like a terrific man.”

6 Ron : “Ron, Ron sir. Can you take this picture of us, please?” Flip : “ All right,
don’t touch me.”

7 Mr. Andy : “I could do to any of you any time, any place. That’s my prerogative. I
could even bust a cap in your black ass if I feel like it, and nothing will be done
about it. I wish the two of you been blow up. Instead of good white folks, get it?”

8 Duke : “That is why we need more people like you and me in public office..get this
country back on track.” Ron : “Amen.” Duke : “For America to achieve its uh, the
greatness again.” Ron : “Absolutely.”

9 J. Turner : “Today, you’d call him mentally retarded. They claimed Jesse.raped and
urdered a white woman by the name of Lucy Fryer. They out Jesse on trial, and he

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 was convicted by an all white-jury. After they deliberated for only four minutes.”

10 Chief Bridges: “I need you, Ron Stallworth to destroy all evidence of this
investigation. We prefer that the public never knew about this investigation. Cease
all further contact with the Ku Klux Klan.”

11 Police man: “I need a file on a toad.” Ron : …… Police man: “you deaf? I said I
need a file on a toad.” Ron : “No toads here” Police man: “excuse me?” Ron : “I
said I don’t have any toads. I do have human beings, you give me their names, I’ll
get you the file” Police man: “I heard you think youre hot shit, but you ain’t
nothing. But a cold fart. The name is Steven Wilson.” Ron : (give the document)
Police man: “was that respectful enough for you, officer toad?”

12 Police man: “I don’t want to see nothing but black ass and black elbows spread
em! You that so-called big shot panther nigger, aren’t you? I heard you was in
town Stokely.” Ture:“My name is Kwame Ture” Police man: “I don’t give two
shits what you nigger name is! Black b*tch you get this Black Panther out of
Colorado Springs before sunrise, you hear me?”

13 Felix: “You for the white race, Ron? Ron: “Oh, hell yeah. Benn having trouble
lately with these local niggers.” Felix: “Ah since the civil war it’s always trouble
with niggers.”

14 Walter: “You know, I’ve had my own share of run-ins with niggers. Matter of fact,
it’s what led me to the organization.” Ron: “ Is that right?” Walter:“Oh, its become
my salvation. See, I was uh, shot and wounded by a couple niggers. Then, my wife
was savagely raped by a whole pack of them.” Ron: “God..” Walter: “That’s right,
and not a one of them went to jail, huh.”

15 Walter: “Tell you what, They are taking over. Hell, its all you see on TV anymore.

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 Niggers selling soap, Niggers selling toothpaste, Niggers selling automobilrs.
Everywhere you look it’s niggers, niggers, niggers. Then, so btiches wasn’t on.“

16 Connie : “Oh, I read something in the Gazette that this nigger named Carmichael
held a rally and that some college nigger girl from the Baboon Student Union was
attacking our police. I mean the girl is dangerous. She is like that Commie, Angela
Davis and I just… I think we should shut her mouth. Here, I cut the article. That’ll
be all.”

17 Ron: “I consider you, a true white American hero.”

Duke: “(smile) Is there any other kind?” Ron: “No, sir” Duke: “I am just happy to
be talking to a true white American.” Ron: “Amen”

18 Duke: “Well, god bless white America.”

19 Walter: “Here, you got a decent bar, turned into a filthy fag bar overnight.” Ron:
“F*cking fags everywhere these days.” Walter: “They’re trying to colognize. You
know, first they get their own bars, then they want equal treatment. Ron: “Forget
those fags.”

20 Duke : “ I want to thank the Jewish people. I love the Jewish people and the Jewish
people are always our friends, no matter what they do, no matter how much they
destroyed our country. It’s just wonderful.”

21 Felix: “We’re cleansing this country of a backwards race of chimpanzees. First the
spooks the the kikes.”

22 Connie: “The nigger attacked me, he tried to rape me. Arrest him.” Ron: “I’m an
undercover cop!” Policeman: “ Show us your badge”

Ron:“ It’s in my pocket, okay?” Policeman: “What are you waiting for? Show us

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 your badge” Ron:“It’s in my pocket, relax.” Connie:“That nigger attacked me, he
tried to rape me. Arrest him! Arrest him!”

23 Seargant Trapp: “The black radical Stokely Carmichael, is giving a speech tonight
at Bell’s Nightingale.” Ron Stallworth: “Yep” Sergeant Trapp: “Carmichael is a
former high-muckety-muck with the Black Panthers. And as far as I’m concerned,
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was dead right when he said the Black Panthers as
the greatest internal threat to the security of these United States.”

24 Duke: “My brothers in Christ, nobel prize recipient, co-creator of the translator and
a dear, dear friend of mine, Dr. William Shckley whose groundbreaking scientic
work ushered in the computer age, has proven through his research with eugenics,
that each of us here has flowing through our veins the genes of a superior race. It’s
a fact and it can’t be dispulated.”

25 Connie: “The ingenuity of white women.”

26 Ivanhoe: “His fuckin name is Phillip……Phillip Zimmerman. Felix: “What his

name?” Ivanhoe: “Phillip Zimmerman. How many times I gotta fuc*ing tell you?”

Felix: “Isn’t that a fucking Jew name?”Ivanhoe: “you can’t go by that, Jews change
their name all the time to non-Jews names. I mean they killed Jesus, right?” Felix:
“Ron Stallworth is a fuc*ing Jew.”

27 Patrice: “How often do you do that to black people?” Mr. Andy: “Do what?”
Patrice: “Pull us over for nothing harass us. Put y`iour hands all over a woman in
the guise of searching her. Call us everything but a child of God.”

4. ANALYSIS OF THE FILM

According to van Dijk (1993:5), racism can be considered as “the everyday, mundane,
negative opinion, attitudes and ideologies and the seemingly subtle acts and conditions of
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discrimination”. Film is one of the forms of mass media that frequently addresses themes of
racism. Due to its function as a medium of communication to send information to the audience,
the massaging of racism issue in a film can be clearly demonstrated, whether purposefully or
accidentally (Effendi, 2003: 58). In the beginning of the movie, Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard
mentioned the Brown decision to show his discrimination about black people.

Beauregard – Klan narrator: “The Brown Decision forced upon us by the Jewish controlled
puppets on the U.S. Supreme Court compelling white children to go to school with an inferior
race is the final nail in a Black coffin towards American becoming a Mongrel Nation”

From the monologue above show the Beauregard’s narration, he used the word “puppets”
to refer the Jewish and “an inferior race” to mention to the Black people. These words show
there is discrimination about the Black, Jews and White people. Obviously, school attendance is
favorable for the whites. The fact that black children attend the same school as white children
seemed unacceptable to him, so black students were considered as inferior race. This favor
represents the racial discrimination is happened in schooling in American. Furthermore, in the
film, Beauregard continued using many words to demean black people.

Beauregard – Klan narrator: “Do you really want your precious white child going to school
with Negroes? They're lying, dirty monkeys, stopping at nothing to gain their equality with
white men. Rapists, murderers, craving the virgin pure flesh of white women”

The quotation above is the description of Beauregard about black people. There is a
prejudice for white schooling when whites don't want to go to the same schools as blacks. They
call black people as dirty monkeys, rapists and murderers.

Beauregard – Klan narrator “And the Negro’s insidious tactics, under the tutelage of high-
ranking, blood-sucking Jews, using an army of outside northern black beast agitators
determined to overthrow the God-commanded and biblically inspired rule of the white race”

From the scene above, Klan narrator continues to use defamatory language about blacks
and Jews like black beast agitators, blood-sucking Jews. As we know, the word “beast agitator”

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refer to animals but he used it to refer to black people. Therefore, apparently it represents a
profound racial segregation against blacks and Jews.

The next scene is in the office of chief bridges, Ron Stallworth, Black, business like but
progressive and Chief Bridges, White, in a Police uniform, a man ready for change.

Mr. Turrentine: “There’s never been a Black Cop in this City”

From this, we can see a fact that there is a preference for white people in choosing a
career in America, especially the police profession when in the city, there’s never had a black
policeman before. This also confirms the inequality between whites and blacks in America.

Walter Breachway: “A fucking jig on our bumper. Niggers selling soap. Niggers selling
toothpaste. Niggers selling automobiles”

The Cambridge Dictionary defines “Nigger” as “a very offensive word for a black
person”. And in this film, we can see the word “nigger” are repeated many times to show
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disrespect to black people. Moreover, from the scene above, black people are not respected and
often have to do low-class jobs in society such as selling soap, toothpaste, automobiles. In the
conversation between Roll and Walter, Roll also gives his opinion about black people and he
said: “Every time I think about that black baboon putting his filthy black hands on her pure-as-
white-driven-snow body... It makes me want to puke”.

Roll insults black people through his voice when he uses the word “baboon” that is used to refer
a kind of large monkey.

Walter Breachway: “I hate Jews. - Huh? Spics and Micks. Dagos and Chinks. I really hate
those nigger rats” …. “A good nigger is funny like that. In that sense, they're like a good dog”.

The character Walter continues to have discriminatory terms against black people such as
“nigger rats”. “Rat” is a word used to refer to a small animal that in the US or an offensive word
for an unpleasant and untrustworthy person; but in this scene, Walter uses it to refer to black
people, which clearly shows the bias towards black people.

5. CONCLUSION

In conclusion, racism still exists today, as evidenced by the data presented above.
Although there are laws prohibiting racial discrimination, these laws do not always prevent it.
Even though the regulations appear to favour the black people, whites can still use them to their
benefits. The author used many words to show racism in the movie, especially toward black
characters. It is obvious that racism is somehow explicitly expressed in the film, which can have
a negative effect on the awareness and behaviour of viewers. With the popularity of the movie
“BlacKkKlansman”, many people may subconsciously absorb misled ideologies about racism.
Therefore, the movie industry should acknowledge their responsibility in societal influenceable
issues, and viewers themselves should critically enjoy any artwork and encourage equality in
society.

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 REFERENCES

BlacKkKlansman. 2018. [film] Directed by Ron Stallworth. America: Broadway Video.

Effendi, Onong Uchjana. Ilmu, Teori dan Filsafat Komunikasi. Bandung: PT. Citra Aditya
Bhakti, 2003. Print.

Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language.Pantheon

Books, New York.

Kurdi, Miraseti. (2007). Representasi Peristiwa Bencana Transportasi dalam Surat Kabar. 2007.

Pascasarjana UPI.

van Dijk, T. A. (1993) Elite Discourse and Racism. Newbury Park/London: Sage.

Van Dijk, T. A. (2006). Politics, Ideology, and Discourse. Encyclopedia of Language &

Linguistics, 728–740.

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 UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES,

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES

MIDTERM-ASSIGNMENT
AMERICAN STUDY

INSTRUCTOR: PhD. Ngô Tự Lập

STUDENT’S NAME: Nghiêm Thị Phượng

STUDENT ID: 21045292

STUDENT EMAIL:nghiemphuonghpu2@gmail.com

DUE DATE: 10/2/2023

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