The Color of Fear

I found The Color of Fear to be very enlightening and interesting.  It has changed some of my opinions on myself and others, especially in relation to race and racism.  At the beginning, I was nervous watching this film.  When I saw the group, and the different races that were present I had a moment where I didn’t know who I related to most.  I feel as though it is natural to instantly align yourself with someone who you feel you connect to, and in cases where you don’t personally or factually know the people, I tend to align myself with whoever looks most like me.  My first choice is usually women, because I am a woman myself.  However, with no women in the movie, my next choice was to align myself with someone who is racially like me.  In the case of this group I had trouble, because neither of the Asian men were mixed race.  They were both either 100% Japanese or 100% Chinese.  Because of this, I was unable to see myself as represented in the group; however, reflecting on the video I am glad about this.  I believe that I got more out of the video because I was not automatically supporting one person more than the other. 

In the first half of the film there was obvious tension between one of the white men and all of the people of color.  I felt uncomfortable because it appeared that, whether or not the white man deserved it, those participating who were of color had teamed up on him.  This appeared to be the case because in the beginning, the topic was more focused on white-minority relations. The focus was more on the relationship between the two groups, and that was why that split formed.   The discussion mainly circulated around the idea that most white men don’t have to think about something like race, because it has been ingrained in their minds that it is not a problem that they have to worry about fixing.  One of the white men even stated that the barrier that one of the African-American men felt was put up himself.  That it was an unfounded notion that the African-American man needed to get over, to overcome himself in his mind because it did not really exist.  This strongly supported the conclusion found by many of the group at the end of the discussion.  Most concluded that everyone needed to deeply reflect of their opinions and thoughts, and do what they can to educate others on the issue, especially white people. 

In the second half of the film, the discussion took an interesting turn as it started to focus more on relations between minorities rather than relations between minorities and whites.  This problem has also been brought up a couple of times in Takaki.  One example would be the discrimination and hatred that Korean-Americans had for Japanese-Americans.  This hatred was because of the Japanese Occupation of Korea.  Many first generation Koreans in the U.S strongly hated the Japanese, but this hatred faded in the second generation.  "They had not even been to Korea.  They had difficulty feeling the painful loss of the homeland and understanding the indignity of Japanese domination.  They did not harbor a hatred for the Japanese" (Takaki 292).  The relationship between Korean-Americans and Japanese-Americans in the U.S shows some racism between different minorities. Also, in an interesting debate between the Chinese man and the African-American man it was expressed that the model minority myth was a big problem.  The African-American man felt as though intellect, something Asians were praised for, was something that African-Americans were never praised for.  In this case, the model minority myth influenced those of other minorities, and made them feel inferior when they aren’t.  They also came to the conclusion that whites use some races to push other races farther down.  The example was the story from the Chinese man about his father’s restaurant.  It was shared that the father used to say they had to keep out the blacks, because if there were blacks there than white people wouldn’t eat there.

In general, I found the whole film to be extremely helpful when it came to figuring out what I thought about the discussion.  It was moving to see people’s opinions change, and the groups struggle to respectfully and clearly share their opinions and thoughts.  One part that really stood out and surprised me was when someone said that being “American” is to give up your ethnicity.  It is not its own ethnicity, one must separate themselves from their own ethnicity and heritage in order to call themselves “American.”  I plan on taking this, as well as other trinkets of knowledge, from the film and using them to reflect on my own opinions of race and well as my daily actions.  I think that this film is going to help me be more aware of racism and race in the world.