Nothing's Changed

I believe that violence not only sends a message out to people on how to view themselves but as society as a whole views a certain type of person. Most of the violence that happened to the African Americans enforced the stereotype that they were weak and unequal. The lynchings and other hate crimes that took place showed how the African Americans could be easily “taken down” and couldn’t stick up for themselves. With the book Passing we talked about how Clare wanted to act white because society told her being black was wrong. People get their ideas of what they should be from what society thinks and violence’s shapes societies views. People often only care about societies views, which is why every girl today wants to look like Angelina Jolie. When society constantly tells you something is right you start to believe it. African Americans were only persecuted or ashamed of what they looked like because other people were wrong. Nobody would have cared about the color of their skin if those around them didn’t care so much. When I saw this prompt I immediately thought of my favorite show Law and Order SVU. This is a show that depicts the lives of detectives who work on sex crimes in New York City. I have seen almost every episode and in the vast majority of them the victims of the crime are women and the perpetrators are men. The rare ones that don’t have women as the victim have gay men or children as the victim. I have never seen an episode where a straight adult male has been the victim of rape. These types of crimes are similar to the lynchings in the fact that nothing comes out of them other than showing that one human has power of another. The show, which is played in today’s society, which is supposed to have gender equality, constantly shows women in a lesser role. By showing that women are physically “inferior” to men because they are often victims that can’t stand up for themselves, the TV show is reinforcing the idea that women are a lesser gender than men. This is the same way in which the Lynchings showed that African Americans were physically “inferior” to the white people. Although these are just simple little acts, they start the whole movement and change people’s way of thinking. If you constantly see something in front of you it sinks into your mind and your thinking is altered. Even if men for example have never committed a crime such as rape if they constantly see men on TV deriving pleasure from overpowering seemingly helpless women, their thinking will start to be altered to think of women as just pleasure objects they can overpower. There was actually an episode where a boy commits rape and his lawyers claim it is because he has seen so much porn depicting rape growing up that he figured that it was something natural. He said he had seen women say no so many times and men kept going that he thought that was a natural part of sex. As ridiculous as this seems his lawyer actually presented a valid argument and he was given a much lesser charge for the rape. Hate crimes and violence still occur today and changes the way people view themselves and how society views a certain group of people.