The Freedom Writers

The film The Freedom Writers is a story of a classroom that visualizes the multicultural classroom in California, and the way a teacher motivates the students - who are involved in a sad state of affairs, especially in dealing with gang violence, resulting in deaths of close people - to make a bad situation good, and to invoke change in order to progress through life. The movie also has good particular examples that run parallel to our classroom discussions and lessons, especially that of the CRT terms and tenets.

One of the first things I witnessed was when Eva, the girl who had grown up involved in gang violence, began discussing a self image, and comparing to people of different races, races that are "accepted." Color imagery is a belief that in order to fit in, one must, shall we say, conform to an image that a majority may see as "acceptable." Which brings me to my next CRT tenet, that of a dominant society racializing specific groups and different times. In the film, as seen through Mrs. G's counterpart and antagonist (I apologize for not remembering her name, but believe me she seemed a cruel women in spirit), there are people who do not believe in assisting specific groups of people, in this case, the majority of students in Wilson High, because they believe that they are all bad people, and could never change. Obviously that is not the full story. The antagonists of the film, to put it lightly, blatantly associate race with violence, as seen with a girl who was in an honors class, but wanted to switch down a level to be in Mrs. G's class, because the honors teacher was indirectly racist. Oh, if you didn't watch the film, Mrs. G is the new schoolteacher who does all the nice things. Good gal.

The last tenet I will address is also the most obvious one from the film. In the story, Mrs. G decides to give all of the students journals, and, I kid you not, she states, "everyone has their own story." Just like the Asian American literature we are reading for class every single night, the students in the movie are writing about their lives, their experiences, and what their heritage is. Each story they tell is personal, and it also helps people, such as you and myself, to uncover the nature in humanity, in regards to how our races all interact with each other.

Now quit your pussyfooting and continue blogging, fellow scholars.