Writing for Freedom

The movie Freedom Writers left me with adamant feelings of hope and inspiration. However, I know this movie wasn’t meant to be something to just turn away going “wow what a great story!” It was meant to be so much more and I think it is very important to remember that and think critically of how this film impacts us individually and as a society. Soon we will be in the workplace and should be aware of what messages we send out in our daily lives because it does have an impact. Many of the professionals in the movie (teachers, administration, the husband, and the father figure) exhibited a form of unconscious racism. I say this because they often said things that they didn’t identify as racism towards the group of students. They claimed that the students were disobedient, unwilling to learn, that they were unintelligent, and with no future ahead of them.  When giving off these stereotypes they seemed oblivious to the larger impact their words had because they saw it as how things really were in the integrated school. I also found it interesting how the school enacted separatism. The honors class and less advanced class were almost exclusively divided by race. The teachers actually fed this system by the way they treated these two groups. By giving the less advanced students easier to understand texts and less work they are actually hindering the student’s ability to advance. Similarly, some of these characters created micro aggression such as when the junior teacher asked the one student for the “black perspective” on an issue. None of the other students, nor the teacher, realized how offensive it was to ask this question. Similarly, it would often go unnoticed that the lower-level class was given books in poor shape by the honors students. The students receiving these books noticed, however. These ill-suited books prove to the students that those in charge do not think they are competent enough to handle real or new books. Since teaching at an upper level is the career I am perusing, It is very important for me to not make these same blunders but I believe every profession has a similar struggle to treat people in the way they should be.