The Color of Fear

In the film, The Color of Fear, a group of people from all walks of life, sit down and discuss the idea of racism. It was awesome and shocking to listen to the stories and experiences shared. This film is very relevant to what we are learning in class. It hits upon the discrimination minorities face but it also hits on how those experiences manifested and became building blocks for society today.

A lot of the film talks about this foreign identity that is an “American” person. They ask the hard question that is, what is an American? Listening to those guys saying they do not identify as American made me think about my personal cultural identity. My cultural identity is not something I think about and work on often. I think part of this fact is that I grew up in Hawaii, where racial diversity is very diverse and white people are not in the Majority. I think because I grew up exposed to different racial groups, I feel more comfortable around different people. I have never really thought much about the differences and history between groups. When I came to Spokane, I noticed there were less Asian people around and I felt like I finally represented the minority. I was not preyed upon or shown distaste but, I just wanted to point out that I did feel a little out of place. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for people of color before my time.

One of the men in the discussion brought up fear of judgement. He said that the “fear is still there because we have seen it happen before.” This got me thinking about the racism many of the Asian immigrants we may have faced on their journey in America. One detail that really stuck with me was when they were talking about finding the white people’s history in textbooks. Before taking this class, I had no idea Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, etc. had so much influence developing America.

While racism isn’t a very easy topic to speak about, I can relate to a quote from the film that says, “talking about it helps. It loses its mystery, its power.”