Nelson Mandela Movie Commemoration Day Reflection

For Nelson Mandela Commemoration Day, I attended both the "White Like Me" documentary viewing and the keynote address by Tim Wise. The "White Like Me" movie was very interesting and honestly, quite eye-opening for me, despite me being an African-American. While I am already well aware of the racism that non-whites experience every. Day here in the United States, as well as how things came to be. And why there is still racism, there was a lot that I learned in just over an hour from this documentary. The movie went on to explain how there is plenty of systematic ways that the government has oppressed black people.

In the documentary, there are a few white students asked about their knowledge on racism and white privilege. Every single student responded that they knew that racism happened, but they do not think about it often because it generally doesn`t affect them. One girl even said that she tends to get slightly disappointed when applying for a job to see that the employer is "an equal opportunity" employer, and that she assumes that there will be "affirmative action" used to pick employees.

After the viewing of the documentary, there was a discussion panel between the viewers and a few members of the staff of the University of Southern Indiana. One student mentioned that she was aware of her "white privilege" but insisted that there was also "black privilege", citing the actor Will Smith and his family, and how well off that they are.