Alanna SimonEthn 585 (M/W)3/23/2019
Blacks, people of a different race, and Jews, people of a foreign religion, have been pariahs of Western society for centuries. With all the differences in the historical experience of these two groups, the Negroes, that is, the Africans and their descendants found themselves in both Americas, survived a three hundred year slavery, which ended only in the second half of the XIX century; Jews in Europe survived the Holocaust, the Nazi genocide, - in the recent history of Jews and blacks in both Europe and America had a lot in common. Both were considered as an alien element in the population of western countries; both were victims of racism in the XIX – XX centuries.
The most important stage in the rapprochement and subsequent cooperation between Jews and African Americans, of course, was the era of the struggle for civil rights. When African Americans began to protest openly against segregation, many Jews readily supported their struggle. As the statistics show, the Jews most actively among all representatives of the white population of the United States participated in actions against segregation. When in 1964 white college students drove to the southern United States, Mississippi, to seek registration for African-American voters, which were one of the turning points in the fight against racial segregation, half of the student volunteers were Jewish. Of course, to say that all American Jewry in a single impulse stood up for the rights of African Americans is not worth it. In this movement, as a rule, radical Jewish youth, who held leftist views, took part. It is noteworthy that the Jewish population of the southern states practically did not take part in the struggle against segregation. However, the contribution made by the Jews turned out to be extremely important: it was they who in many respects provided “white” participation in the struggle for civil rights, without which it would not have been possible to break the racial segregation system.
History
In 1935, Mahatma Gandhi responded to an invitation to come to the USA and meet with the leaders of the Negro civil rights movement, but noted that in his opinion, the idea of non-violence will continue to spread throughout the world, probably due to the efforts of American blacks. Already in 1951, his associate Rammanohar Lohia visited America and called on the movement’s activists to apply the tactics and strategy of their teacher to conduct mass direct actions.
Then it seemed almost impossible. The forces of scattered groups of black activists and the organized racist white majority were too unequal. In a situation of obstruction among the segregationists and the indifference of the majority of white citizens, federal laws and civil rights provisions in the south of the country — this stronghold of American racism — were not enforced. The status of a discriminated and racial minority was a daily reality for many generations of Negroes. The entire South of the United States was literally imbued with the spirit of racial hatred.
Until 1948, a black man could completely legally refuse to buy a house or live in it. Bill Worley showed me an example of such a document drawn up in Kansas City by one of the most famous real estate developers in the city of that time, Jesse Clyde Nichols. "None of these land plots should be transferred to blacks, owned by them or used by them for housing or for other purposes," the contract says. The relationship between American Jews and African Americans is a special page in the history of both communities and has become an important part of American history in general. For a long time, the interests of Jews and African Americans who arrived in the United States almost did not overlap. The first Jewish émigrés from Europe, above all, solved the tasks of integrating into American society, so they accepted the dominant notions about races without particular resistance. True, among the American abolitionists who sought the abolition of slavery in the first half of XIXcentury, you can meet and Jewish figures. But these are rather bright exceptions. Abolitionism in those years was promoted by radical Christian preachers; therefore, most American Jews treated him as one of the manifestations of a religion alien to them, and preferred not to interfere in what was happening. Moreover, one should not think that all Christian fighters for the liberation of black slaves would greatly rejoice Jews in their ranks.
During the American Civil War, Jews fought and died on both sides of the front. Some showed heroism and were awarded prizes in defending the cause of the South, others in the ranks of the northerners. It is unlikely for many that it was a special value choice, they were simply loyal citizens of those states in which they lived, and accepted related duties. In order for the picture to fundamentally change, important changes in the self-consciousness of American Jews had to occur.
left0The first step towards this
The "Walt Disney": A Planetary Success and Influence
Several moral lessons are conveyed, but the concept of gender and sex in the Walt Disney is still one of the current issues, which is still not resolved. In addition to being in sub-number, the films also transmit an idea of the kind that places women in a lower rank than that of men. They remain rather passive and flourish only after a male deliverance, leading to marriage. By modeling girls and boys with so-called traditional values, Disney values masculine figures as models of ardor, courage, independence and movement opposed to soft, submissive and passive female figures. Simone de Beauvoir already said it in the 1950s:"The child can also discover [the renunciation] by many other paths: all invite him to surrender in dreams to the arms of men. African Americans interpreted this unequivocally: the whites help their own and try to take the culprit from the scene. It was impossible to explain something to the heated and already for many years hostile to the Jews. The popular refrains bring him dreams of patience and hope ".Even though cartoons are not the only transmitter of stereotypes and they can not handle all the damage of the community by themselves, they remain undisputed and powerful educational tools that reinforce - more or less according to the opinions - beliefs already existing. Strongly inclined to associate fiction with reality, the public refers to a distorted reality. By blaming unique and unrealistic patterns - whether body, image, story or race - Walt Disney is totally paradoxical. Indeed, the wide audience to which the company is addressed is in diversity. Part of the audience can not identify with the characters, feels different, non-compliant and excluded. Mirror of an unequal society, these media must break these belittling and monotonous concepts while recalling that it is crucial to diversify the roles, the corpulence’s, the historical frames and the attitudes of the protagonists: "[...] the fictitious princesses do not all have to look like Cinderella (white, tall, blonde, thin) and be housewives (Snow White, Cinderella) "or even present anti-conformist princesses (Amerindian, Asian, Black) that ultimately only contain clichés additional. This is an opportunity to show an audience that individuals are multiple, with their differences and similarities. At the same time, these same companies seem to be more and more strict about the image. Physical stereotypes remain firmly rooted in reality and in the media: beauty is still very much oriented. So,"The princesses end up no longer fighting, getting married, conceive children and therefore to return to the model consistent with the morals of society." Mirror of an unequal society, these media must break these belittling and monotonous concepts while recalling that it is crucial to diversify the roles, the corpulences, the historical frames and the attitudes of the protagonists: "[...] the fictitious princesses do not all have to look like Cinderella (white, tall, blonde, thin) and be housewives (Snow White, Cinderella) "or even present anti-conformist princesses (Amerindian, Asian, Black) that ultimately only contain clichés additional. This is an opportunity to show an audience that individuals are multiple, with their differences and similarities. Reflecting the evolution of modern and contemporary American society for some, an exaggerated reality for others, Walt Disney's messages are interpreted, understood, explained in many ways and in a subjective way: denounced by the former and defended by the latter. .
Shift in social status and economy in 1940
Pearl Harbor Attack
The attack on Pearl Harbor is a surprise attack by Japanese naval air forces on December 7 , 1941against the US naval base Pearl Harbor located on the island of Oahu , in the American territory of Hawaii . Authorized by the Japanese Emperor Hirohito in response to the oil embargo imposed by the United States five months earlier in response to the expansionism of Japan Showa , it aims to destroy the Pacific Fleet of the United States Navy . This attack leads to the entry of the United States into the world conflict .The annihilation of the main American fleet should allow the Japanese empire to continue to establish its “co-prosperity sphere of the great East Asia " by depriving the Americans of the means to oppose it militarily; it's also a response to the economic sanctions taken by Washington in July 1941against his imperialist policy after the invasion of China and French Indochina. At this point in time there was still a lot of discrimination and segregation; this was often reflected in cartoons as well. Cartoons were more influential than you would think; kids with the means to watch TV were constantly seeing white people on top and black people on the bottom. They often treated black people like the “other” category, showing how impoverished they were, how undereducated they were, and how they look raggedly and unkempt. Throughout my paper, my goal is to show how discrimination was a major influence of cartoons at the time, and also how it affected the black community.
However, Jewish activists involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, protesting against police violence against African Americans, are now demonstrating that the tradition linking the two communities has not stopped. And despite many difficulties, new ways will be met. And it’s hard to say that it would be better to go for a general civil protest or open a kosher bar on a Negro street.
Popular films
Natalie, Natalie, Natalie” - a family drama, the plot of which would be suitable for the television series - in front of us fragmentary and out of chronological order pass scenes from the life of the girl Natalie. Her parents are gradually alienated from each other, and we see how this marriage is destroyed in front of a teenager.
This is more clearly seen in the example of the play "And our ashes will be scattered on the ground." This work is most appealing to Samuel Beckett, because her heroes are two old men in a nursing home. Hans and Joseph are roommates and best friends.
In the play “The Circle”, which is interactive in a modern way and involves the involvement of spectators in the game, Ilya Chlaki, following the statement of Shakespeare “The whole world is theater”, comes to an even more radical conclusion: the whole world is a farce.
References
Journals
Barthelemy, Anthony Gerard. Black Face, Maligned Race: The Representation of Blacks in English Drama from Shakespeare to Southerne. LSU Press, 1999.
Mercer, Kobena. "Black art and the burden of representation." Third Text 4.10 (1990): 61-78.
Morris, Jerome E. "Research, ideology, and the Brown decision: Counter-narratives to the historical and contemporary representation of Black schooling." Teachers College Record 110.4 (2008): 713-732.
Stam, Robert, and Louise Spence. "Colonialism, racism and representation." Screen 24.2 (1983): 2-20.
Bruner, Edward M. "Tourism in Ghana: The representation of slavery and the return of the black diaspora." American anthropologist 98.2 (1996): 290-304.
Gqola, Phumla. "Defining people: Analysing power, language and representation in metaphors of the New South Africa." Transformation 47 (2001).
Books
Hall, Stuart. Cultural identity and cinematic representation. na, 1989.
Henderson, Carol E. Scarring the Black Body: Race and Representation in African American Literature. University of Missouri Press, 2002.
