Negative Connotation- Zeba K.

In Bonilla Silva’s Reading Racism without racist the author mentions four different frames, which are liberalism, naturalization, cultural racism, minimization of racism. Although all these frames are essential in understanding how society can play a huge role in affecting individuals through various ways, it is important to understand how we might see these frames affect us daily.  In class we watched a documentary by Tim Wise about stereotypes and racism.  One important fact that Tim talked about was 10 years of excess mortality, where there was empirical research done where millions of blacks lost their life due to toxics in their neighborhood, because of their blackness in the country. However, he claimed that most of the only people that were reading the journals were doctors, or researchers. This is essential because it shows that there is proof that individuals are being affected daily, yet no actions are being considered. 

After watching him talk about this important fact, I linked it to Silva’s reading which discussed “minimization of racism”. It is important to consider that although there was proof that race was the reason for millions of people’s death, most people did not take it to consideration because sometimes when we don’t see thing with our own eyes, we might not necessarily notice the huge impact, especially if it not affecting us or the people we care for. This is one essential reason why minimization of racism affects people daily.  Another important factor that is important when it comes to racism is language and how we use it. In the documentary by Tim Wise, he claims that physician Samuel used the word drapetomania to talk about how slaves had a disorder because they ran away from their masters. According to him slaves should be happy to work for their masters, as it was considered a way of bonding. I find this idea really important because using these types of words creates this point of view for us without having us to really think about it, thus making us believe that it might actually be a real disorder because this “word( drapetomania)” exist, which gives us an explanation why slaves must run away(acknowledging the fact, we now don’t have to think about it). It is important to consider that if the word did not essentially exist, then we would have more reasons to think about why slaves were running away from their masters if we were living in that period of time?. This question and idea can also link to movies and media during that time and perhaps even now, which portrayed slaves as happy people who were jolly cleaning and working for their masters, as if that was their purpose in life.  Have you ever thought how sometimes we watched movies and we do not notice the negative connotation of certain things being shown to us?  I could never imagine why they portray black people in media in a certain way until I watched the documentary in class how black nannies were portrayed in media . Do you think it is important to analyze how certain things are portrayed in media if you keep seeing it being repeated in different ways? Or is it better to acknowledge the fact that we cannot control what media shows us, however we can control how we think about certain things regardless if it is shown  from a negative point of view?