The above cartoon depicts awhite police officer with a USA badge holding a dog representing racism. It is attacking a black man, and the police officer is acknowledging that racism still exists within society. This relates to the video Race: The Power of an Illusion, Part II, The Story We Tell. It also realtes to Takaki's chapter 3 "The Giddy Multitude" in his book A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Both show how racism was developed into a social system by elites in order to keep the blacks down, and the elite whites in power.
The cartoon only depicts a white man in a position of authority. It is reinforcing of the image of an elite white America, represented further by the USA badge the officer wears. Takaki talks about on p. 55 how the white elites wanted to keep the rest of the populations down and explains further on pp. 55-60 how they passed laws and implemented a social construct of racism in order to keep their authority and power. The cartoon does well to depict this aspect by only showing a white officer in control of racism, represented by a police dog. The video relates because it showed how white society began to view the black populations as lowly and unworthy of being integrated and were always suspicious of their behavior. The cartoon does well to depict this as a black man seems to be doign nothign wrong, yet the white society surrounding him are unleashing the dogs of racism in order to assert their power over the man.
I thought that the cartoon was thought-provoking because most people don't see racism as a problem in society today. But the cartoon shows that it still exists, and the phrase "It's still going strong" by the police officer in the cartoon shows this. It leaves to be asked how far society has really progressed to achieve racial equality.
Image citation:
Thewychefamily.com. Online. Available: http://www.thewychefamily.com/images/racism.jpg (July 15, 2007).
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