Artifact in Socio-Cultural Context -- Research Paper

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Among the ironies evident in the film, the hardest-working people in the community seemed to be the black women employed by white families. That obviously conflicts with some of the most common racist themes about African-Americans: that they are "lazy" or, in the vernacular of the era, "shiftless" (Healey, 2008). Racial bias was the societal norm in Mississippi in the 1960s; in fact, both stereotyping and prejudice were actually codified into laws that criminalized the promotion of racial equality. Blacks were still prohibited by law from using the same facilities as whites when the movie opens. One of the white employers devotes her community improvement efforts to enacting a new law requiring separate bathrooms in any home employing black housekeepers.

The characters in the film exhibit a quiet dignity and attitudes that contradict another typical racially prejudiced stereotype: namely, that American blacks are secretly seething with hatred toward white people.

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Some of the characters do express intense anger and resentment, but it is always perfectly understandable, always directed at specific individuals who provoked it, and it was always very long overdue by any objective standards. All of the black women had endured countless horrifying circumstances of racism and experienced shameful cruelty in various forms on a very regular basis. Still, they maintained the very ability that seemingly all members of southern white society lacked: the ability to perceive and judge other people as individuals whose values and behavior define their character and not their race or ethnicity. Unlike their employers, the black women in the film were able to recognize the elements of individual character......

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"Artifact In Socio-Cultural Context --", 29 December 2012, Accessed.4 May. 2024,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/artifact-socio-cultural-context-77229