Tuesday, February 15, 2011

The Matrix- an analogy of race relations?

Alright, so the movie The Matrix and the two following parts of the trilogy have been viewed from many perspectives, including many religious and philosophical traditions, yet they are also interesting to think about as analogy of race relations in the US.

Since I'm not sure how many people have seen this 1999 flick, here is the basic outline:

Storyline http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/ 

Thomas A. Anderson is a man living two lives. By day he is an average computer programmer and by night a malevolent hacker known as Neo. Neo has always questioned his reality but the truth is far beyond his imagination. Neo finds himself targeted by the police when he is contacted by Morpheus, a legendary computer hacker branded a terrorist by the government. Morpheus awakens Neo to the real world, a ravaged wasteland where most of humanity have been captured by a race of machines which live off of their body heat and imprison their minds within an artificial reality known as the Matrix. As a rebel against the machines, Neo must return to the Matrix and confront the agents, super powerful computer programs devoted to snuffing out Neo and the entire human rebellion. Written by redcommander27  
Plot Summary | Plot Synopsis

So, Thomas/Neo gets a choice between taking a blue pill and reality will keep looking like the computer generated one or he can take the red pill and see actual reality- which is not at all pretty. He takes the red pill. To get to the point about race though you need to skip ahead to when they visit Zion, especially in the second and third installments, where those not in the Matrix live. There are some great scenes in Zion, and if you look around the majority of people there are not white. I mean a visually overwhelming majority are every shade of black and brown. This is not a mistake and it makes sense, who would be most likely not to get to believe in the shiny fake-pretty pre-packaged reality? Does anyone else remember this or being struck by it?

Sometimes I think taking the red or blue pill is a choice some of us have the privilege of making on an almost daily basis, while for most others it is not.

For anyone who is thinking about taking the red option (or always have) and then trying to do something about it, I wanted to point out Tim Wise. He is a white anti-racist activist, which even he admits is because of privilege, yet he is a anti-racist role model and can be humorous too: http://www.timwise.org/appreciation-and-accountability/

 http://www.timwise.org/f-a-q-s/
3. Do you think all whites are racist?
I believe that all people (white or of color) raised in a society where racism has been (and still is) so prevalent, will have internalized various elements of racist thinking: certain beliefs, stereotypes, assumptions, and judgments about others and themselves. So in countries where beliefs in European/white superiority and domination have been historically embedded, it is likely that everyone in such places will have ingested some of that conditioning. I think all whites — as the dominant group in the U.S. — have been conditioned to accept white predominance in the social, political and economic system, and to believe that white predominance is a preferable arrangement for the society in which they live, the neighborhoods in which they live, the places where they work, etc.

However, this doesn’t mean that all whites, having been conditioned in that way, are committed to the maintenance of white supremacy. One can challenge one’s conditioning. One can be counter-conditioned and taught to believe in equality, and to commit oneself to its achievement. These things take work — and they can never completely eradicate all of the conditioning to which one has been subjected — but they are possible.

In other words, we can be racist by conditioning, antiracist by choice. That racism is part of who we are does not mean that it’s all of who we are, or that it must be the controlling or dominant part of who we are. By the same token, just because we choose to be antiracist, does not mean that we no longer carry around some of the racism with which we were raised, or to which we were and are exposed.


Alright, so there are loads of others doing social justice work, carrying on the legacy of the civil rights struggles. Anyone want to share other favorites?

8 comments:

  1. I don’t think that all whites are racist I think that the way you grow up and the people you hang around with determine how you will see and judge other people. Only you can decide what you believe in and if you are around people that are racist you are most likely to become racist yourself or say racist things without knowing it. I’m not saying this is true for everyone but I know people that say racist things all the time and the people around them start saying things to just to be in the conversation. So the people you hang around with have some influence on you and what you believe in.

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  2. Hey Kyle,

    I think between you and Tim Wise you bring up the difference between personal racism and societal/insitutional/structural racism.

    It makes sense that the people you hang around with and their ideas about race will affect you, yet what about at the societal level?

    If your society was built on racism (through taking Native lands), many of the laws, traditions, insitutions (such as schools, many made to assimilate people) are also racist, and you are an inheritor and benefactor of those things, are you really free of racism? Does that make sense?

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  3. I never though of it that way, I actually always figured there skin was darker because they were underground so long. (I know it doesn't make any sense). I think Kyle is right, I feel like the people you grow up with, and socialize with generally share the same views on races as you.

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  4. Yeah, I would think being underground would make them pastier- no access to sun!

    Anyways, I'm trying to say a lack of personal feelings of racism is different from the legacies of racism, structural racism, institutional racism and so forth. Just because you are not a racist and maybe no one you know is, great- that still doesn't mean racism is dead, that you aren't still getting white privilege and/or that others are not suffering the continuing effects of racism. Can you see the difference I mean?

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  5. I think I understand the gist of what you are saying. Just because you don't feel like you have a lot of white privileges because you believe that racism is none existent in your life doesn't mean that its not happening. It can even right under your nose.

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  6. Exactly. Think about the article on Pine Ridge statistics that Kohl sent us.

    We may not have intentionally caused those prob lems ourselves or want the Lakota people or anyone else to suffer, yet those are the continuing effects of racism.

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  7. If somebody say I think all white people have racist, then the sentence is racist or has stereotype itself.

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  8. I totaly do not agree that all white people are racist. (Zexian) good point. But i feel it hapens everyday with out you knwoing it. to another race something you do a certain way, says much more then you think.

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