DiAngelo Discussion

Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” revolves around the racism towards people of colored not being understood the way it should be by white people. I think this is the central argument because DiAngelo mentions how white people don’t fully understand the issues that are happening towards people of color because they are being protected by their white privilege and also that most of them have not been taught about racism. Perspectives also plays significant part, whites don’t see themselves as part as a racial group, and they also don’t like to be categorized because they believe in individualism. But that is also part of the issue at hand since people of color do not really have that choice, to consider themselves as unique or as an individual, since they are usually viewed as part of a racial group. When it comes to race being a social construct, it often refers to humans not being able to stop categorizing people by their race and often saying things that targets a certain group of people. This only happens because humans made it happened and gave some meaning to it and people have just gone along with it. DiAngelo states, “but all-white spaces as ‘pure’ spaces- untainted by race vis a vis the absence of the carriers of race (and thereby the racial polluters)- people of color” (“White Fragility”). This shows how humans judge people because of race and anything related to them such as places.  This goes back to race being a social construct because humans are the ones to put labels in order to identify it.

Lebron Discussion

Christopher Lebron’s article “‘Black Panther’ Is not the movie we deserve” is an opinion editorial article because the writer is sharing what their perspective of the article was and how it could be perceived by people of color, specifically black people. Lebron wants to show his audience, black people, that even though Marvel has come out with a movie that revolves around powerful black heroes, there is still some racist aspects within the movie that should be shown light upon because it devalues them. Lebron compares two villains, Killmonger and Loki, Loki who is a white villain is given more chances to live and was not killed off, but then with Killmonger he was not given many chance as he should have. Lebron wants the audience to look more deeply into details because there is a lot that they are missing, and they should be overlooking the details of the movie. In the movie there is great representation of the power that black women have, and Lebron points that out but then recalls one of the characters from the movie, Nightshade, and points out that she was “disposed of by black-on-black violence” (Lebron) in which should not have happened because the comics say otherwise. Lebron wants the audience to understand that they, the black community, should deserve a better movie that actually represents the power that the black community has and that they shouldn’t be okay with what was brought to the table, they deserve better. Lebron wants his audience to realize that and to not be gullible with what Marvel has given them when clearly there should have been some improvement with how they handled the movie.

Asian-American Hate Crimes

In The NYT article “Asian-Americans Are Being Attacked. Why are Hate Crime Charges So Rare?” by Nicole Hong and Jonah E. Bromwich the rhetorical situation revolves around people from the Asian community being attacked because of who they are during this pandemic, these attacks are not being registered as a hate crime and this issue is not getting as much attention as it should. The authors want to let the audience know that when the hate crime occurs, investigators don’t see it as a hate crime because there has to be racial slurs said  or a motive that the person has against that race in order to actually define that attack as a hate crime. But with the number of attacks rising up against the Asian community during these past months they should be able to realize that it is because of a hate crime. This is an informative article and it tries to inform the audience of a few of the attacks that have been committed such as the four teenagers that attacked an elderly Asian woman with an umbrella. The elderly woman wanted the girls to attend an educational program that was based upon hate crimes also and she believes that they won’t commit a hate crime again. But then in some cases it does not seem to be racially motivated. In one example a Yemeni man attacked an elderly man but he seemed to have mental health issues. The audience would be at the general public because we all need to be aware of what is going on towards other communities and we need to understand that this is not alright and that we need to stand up for them as well because this pandemic is not their fault, we need to educate those who believe the opposite.