Tuesday, April 9, 2013


Racism and Tolerance

As everyone knows, racism is one of the biggest problems that we have faced in our history and it is also a current issue in our society. In the past, segregation took an important role in some countries history, such as the case in South Africa with the apartheid. Racism also leads to ethnic conflicts among our worlds history. But, the most important questions about it are about where racism comes from, and what takes to someone to changes his position of racism to a position of tolerance?


A grate way to find those answers is by analyzing the movie American History X, directed by Tony Kaye. In his movie, what really get the spectators attention is the process of changing that the main character Derek, played by Edward Norton, passes through during the movie. It is easily seen in the movie that the racism that Derek had, came from the hate that he developed along his live driven by his father’s death. Another point that made Derek develop his racist ideas was the lack of contact that he had during his life. Bellow there is the trailler of the movie.


After some events in the movie, Derek starts to develop his tolerance with people from different races and get rid of his neo-Nazi skinheads’ concept of life. The major event that happened was the contact that he was forced to have with a colored man in prison. With this contact made, he saw that the only difference between then was the color of their skin, therefore there was no reason for hate to exist since that they were equal.

As seen in the movie, racism came from hate and hate comes from the lack of contact and knowledge. In other words, the way to stop racism and start a culture of tolerance, is by giving properly education and knowledge to people and also put then in contact with different cultures, races, social strata, and costumes. By facing the similarities that everyone has is that people really understand that we are not that different from each other.

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