White Like Me

Today in class, we watched a Time Wise's film, "White Like Me." Tim Wise grew up in Nashville, and was raised by parents who were not, even in the slightest bit, racist He was sent to a historically black pre-school, where he grew up with many African American friends. Although racial bias is still a problem in the United States, Wise grew up with the mindset that blacks and whites are equal. This documentary explores personal thoughts and experiences about racism, and illustrates how racism is still a problem in America. Additionally, this documentary examines white privilege, and Wise's beliefs about racism.

I think the most eye-opening scenes in this whole film include the ones about the 2008 election. There were numerous clips of rallies, some of which included extremely vulgar people shouting things like "kill him [Obama]" or "off with his head!" Another clip showed a man, who identified as a democrat, proudly waving a McCain flag. He was asked, "if you are a democrat, why are you supporting McCain?" He replied with "you don't want to know my true answer." After being pressed for an answer, the man looked directly into the camera and said, "I will never vote for a black man." This scene clearly illustrated how people still think of blacks as unequal, even someone as intelligent as Barack Obama.

Overall, this film showed that the issue of race in the United States is definitely still an issue. Many people believed that the country has moved on, which is not totally true. However, progress has been made through laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I think this film was astonishing in the sense that Tim Wise used his own experiences to explain the fact that not everyone considers blacks and whites to be equal.