AP Literature Midterm Research Paper: The Impact of Systemic Racism Illustrated Through Literature and Film

 It is a fact that racism exists today in the United States. A person would have to be blind not to see it, such as that police brutality victims are far more likely to be black than white (“Black people more than three times as likely as white people to be killed during a police encounter”) and that immigrants of Hispanic heritage are considerably more often deported than those of any other ethnic background. However, modern discrimination is not as obvious in most cases, because it is no longer backed by society and law as it was for most of American history; it is instead an imprint left by norms and mindsets cultivated during an era of more clearly defined racism. Countless novels and films explore the effects of historical racism on the lives of those that lived it, but what many viewers fail to realize is that these stories and tragedies are windows into the foundation of contemporary racism. Through the many struggles their characters must face, many significant works of literature and film explore how institutionalized racism negatively impacts the mental clarity, stability, and health of both majority and minority citizens of the United States, which inhibits their ability to form accurate judgements of and maintain meaningful relationships with people of other nationalities, or even feel a sense of belonging within their social communities.

In “Recitatif”, two girls of different ethnicities bridge the racial gap of segregationist 1950s and become close friends and essentially grow up together, but drift apart almost immediately after they leave their orphanage and develop some race-based tension during occasional encounters as adults. Once near-sisters were forced apart simply by the American political environment of the time. The individual reader’s interpretation of the piece itself serves as an example of the negative influences of cultural racism. Morrison’s audience members will assume the races of the two girls differently based on their own racial identities: “Black readers seem to place the characters' race according to economics: Twyla is lower middle class and Roberta is wealthy by the late 1970s; therefore, Roberta is the white character,” (Rayson). The fact that interpretations of character in Morrison’s work are influenced by individual racial backgrounds is proof of the fact that internalized racism distorts a person’s mental clarity, even if they don’t realize it. What the reader experiences when they assume a character’s race upon reading Morrison’s “Recitatif” is implicit bias: a subconscious attitude or emotion you feel due to prior knowledge or experiences that affects your judgment and actions. Volume Two of Implicit Bias and Philosophy references a classical example of this psychological phenomenon: a rat can be conditioned to be afraid of a sound if it is electrocuted every time the sound is heard (216). The rat in this anecdote is an allegory to the audience of “Recitatif”: they have been conditioned to subconsciously assign various traits or conditions to people depending on their race due to social pressures or stereotypes, which can lead them to make unfounded assumptions about the characters in the novel, thus being mentally biased by subtle, deep-rooted racism within their communities and themselves. If these biases can be made to such a degree in works of fiction like “Recitatif”, it is painfully evident that they can be made in reality as well, which poses a significant threat to the well-being of innumerable citizens and countless communities throughout the United States.

The Leavers, a heartfelt yet depressing novel about the treatment of immigrants in the United States and the effect of deportation on families, disturbingly encapsulates institutional racism with a truly horrifying segment about the US immigration police’s treatment of one of the characters. Although the story is fictional, the injustices that Polly, the Ko’s secondary protagonist, undergoes when she is detained in an illegal immigrants’ camp reflect the experiences that undocumented immigrants must suffer in real life. In addition to being deprived of reasonable amounts of sunlight and suitable living space, the judge at her deportation hearing, the man solely responsible for determining whether she gets to stay in the United States or is forced back to China without her son, condemns her to exile simply because she tries to correct him when he said she couldn’t speak English, with no impartial witnesses or jury to check him. In addition to disrupting her life, this wildly illegitimate deportation shatters the security and confidence of her son, who spends the rest of his life with abandonment issues as a result. In comparison to American citizens, this treatment of undocumented immigrants is notably substandard, which is a clear violation of the rights they are federally granted — rights to reasonable living accommodations and due process — due to racism. Many forms of contemporary systemic racism are a result of decades or centuries of discrimination and segregation (Braveman). The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882-1943 prohibited immigration into the United States of any laborer whose country of origin was China. After more than fifty years of nationality-based discrimination, it is certain that entrenched systematic racism exists against Chinese immigrants in some form. This tendency to discriminate against a nationality simply because they have been discriminated against before is an obvious breach of mental clarity caused by racism which, as demonstrated in The Leavers, can have catastrophic effects on the livelihoods of those on the receiving end, resulting in the splitting apart of families and the ruination of innocent lives.

These themes of implicit bias and embedded racism are reflected in film as well as literature; the 2019 Academy Best Picture film Green Book explores the true story of a black pianist, Dr. Don Shirley, and his white driver, Tony “Lip” Vallelonga on a concert tour through the segregationist Deep South in 1962. Aside from the racial discrimination Dr. Shirley must suffer at the hands of white Southerners — being denied service at white restaurants and tailors, forced to stay at colored hotels, and beaten bloody for accidentally wandering into a whites-only saloon — he is also shunned by the African-American community because he is well-educated and plays primarily for a white audience. As a result, he lives mostly in sad solitude before he meets Vallelonga. Dr. Shirley had taken such great strides in the advancement of the civil rights cause by refusing to adhere to the racial norm of the time and taking a “proper colored” career: he specifically chose to hold concerts in the most segregated, racist areas of the United States during his tour to prove to the country he could play the piano just as skillfully — even more so, in fact — than any white man alive, that color did not dictate ability or intelligence and therefore should not be a factor in social status. Unfortunately, for this he is ostracized by his own people just because he didn’t speak like them, dress like them, or act like them. Their judgment of him was clouded by his stark contrast to the role of the servant they were forced into by the institution of racism and white supremacy in the United States, and he had to pay the price for it.

These books and films don’t just offer their audiences entertainment; they scream stories of pain and prejudice to them and beg them to hear their message. There is a lesson to be learned from these stories: racism can be very transparent, but it can also be very opaque. Keep in mind that what feels normal can in fact be ruinously oppressive and that which seems mentally clear can be subconsciously laced with racial bias. Be sure that you aren’t unknowingly assuming qualities of people, or being more or less likely to agree with or believe them simply because of the color of their skin.