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Sierra Bugni
Professor Fonash
ENGL137H
22 October 2015

Where Have all the Races Gone?

He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls
the past, controls the future, (George Orwell, 1984). Textbooks are
supposed to act as our portal to centuries of knowledge and learning.
They define populationswho they were and who they worked to be.
They depict learning and progress, even when its hard to see. They tell
the tales of woe and strifebut do they reveal everything they know?
The erasure of history in textbooks out of shame and the intent to
forget is an obstacle that is going to take leaps and bounds from entire
communities to overcome, but we cannot allow ourselves to forget.
Unfortunately (and perhaps not unintentionally), it seems that the
most often forgotten truths revolve around the suffering of non-white
people, as if its unimportant. We allow people of ethnic backgrounds
to be continuously depicted by Hollywood and the media as criminals;
they are dehumanized and made to look like intrinsically bad people
any time a mistake is made. However, when a person of white descent
is in the same position, they are not at faulttheyre merely a tortured

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soul or unsung hero. We must call ourselves to action, for the longer
we sit in the dark, the blinder we become.
For centuries, people of every culture and background have
written down the tales of their woes, of their challenges and triumphs,
of their regrets and mistakes. These tales were recorded because, for
some reason or another, people wanted them to be remembered.
Theres a certain sentimentality in holding onto a pleasant memory;
theres also a certain fear and pleading in the remembrance of tragedy.
And, even though tragedies would be much more easily and pleasantly
forgotten, their depiction is a desperate cry to future generations not
to make the same decisions. As stated before, white people tend to be
labeled as the courageous hero, the undefeatable do-gooder who
always comes out on top. When discussing the removal and relocation
of Native American tribes in the early days of America, textbooks paint
us a scene of loin-clothed barbarians running through the woods with
faces painted, attacking every man, woman and child. They teach us
that people were asked to leave their homes and march along a trail to
a new place to live. The men who carried out the deed were true
Americans paving the way to new frontiers and expanding their great
country; however, in reality they were mass murderers, killing natives
and shoving their bodies into mass graves, just as was done in
concentration camps in Nazi Germany.

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This pattern continues with the buried tales of Japanese
internment camps. Though the living conditions and treatment given to
the inhabitants was nearly, if not completely, equivalent to that given
to Jewish prisoners in concentration camps like Auschwitz. However,
when reading about World War II in textbooks, the Japanese are
depicted as heartless and deceitful people, properly taken care of on
American soil, and effectively scared by soldiers and their atomic
bomb. The suffering of internment camp inhabitants, and the horrors
experienced (and still being experienced) in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
are fleetingly mentioned, if mentioned at all. Is this simply about
ceremoniously brushing the things America doesnt want to be
remembered for under the rug? Or is it about something more?
Perhaps its a feeling of self-importance and righteousness
victories and suffering overcome were important to our country and
our people. Or perchance its a deep sociologically and subconsciously
set feeling of superiority over other races. The subject of civil rights
wasnt even addressed or properly amended until the 1960s and
1970s. In fact, even today theres still a lack of racial equality. The
commonly used argument of, Well, we have a black president,
obviously race isnt a problem anymore, just doesnt work. Yes, we
may have an African American man as our president, but that doesnt
mean there arent racial prejudices against him, and it doesnt mean
we dont still have miles to go. One place to start would be in the

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media. In the case of Michael Brown, we see an unarmed black
teenager shot to death by a police officer. However, the way he was
depicted in the news, one would think Michael Brown was a criminal
and a thug, shown in photographs frowning and looking menacing.
Darren Wilson, the cop who shot him, was a good man who felt like
his life was threatened by an unarmed teenagerhe left the ordeal
with a bruise on the face, while Michael Brown never left.
People of ethnic backgrounds are depicted by news outlets as
thugs and criminals who never did anything positive or purposeful in
their lives except for cause trouble. Yet a white person who walks into
their school or into a church in Charleston, South Carolina and shoots
multiple people is: a straight-A student, well liked by their peers, who
just couldnt handle their stress any longer (this is usually
accompanied by a smiling school picture). The demonizing of people of
ethnic backgrounds for crimes committed or carried out against them,
and the glorification of white people for the same crimes is twisted and
crueland yet it is so often overlooked.
Could it be that it is the arrogance of white people keeping
equality at bay? Maybe its a feeling of egotistical self-pride that we
can do anything, and we dont need others to help usespecially those
of different cultural backgrounds? This can be witnessed in the Old
Ages of Hollywood; instead of merely hiring actors of African American
of Asian decent, blackface and other physical alterations were used to

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keep white people in starring roles. However, this hasnt happened
since the days of The Jazz Singer in 1927, of Othello in 1962, or of
Soulman in 1986, right? Wrong. In the 2008 Ben Stiller film, Tropic
Thunder, Robert Downey Jr. donned blackface to take on the role of a
method actor preparing for his part as a black army general. Although
there are no mal-intentions in this, the use of blackface is intrinsically
and historically a racist symbol, and it should never be used.
In storylines written for Hollywood films, there is a significant
under representation of diverse cultures; when they are written in, the
characters often appear shallow and unimportantthey are simply an
addition made so that the race box can be checked off on the writers
moral checklist. However, writing a character with the intention of
them being ethnically diverse is not always effective. The recent
Biblically based film Exodus, was centered completely around
characters of all Middle Eastern and African/Egyptian decent. However,
the casting was almost completely white, with less than 10
actors/actresses of correct ethnic background being cast. There is also
a reoccurring trend where characters of heroic nature in novels are
more often than not portrayed by white actors and actresseseven if
the character isnt written to be white. However, it should be noted
that when villains are written as people of a different ethnicity, in film
they are almost always portrayed properly. Hollywood films have a

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tendency to demonize non-white races in movies, making them the
villains or the people first to go in survival films.
As people in a society where so much knowledge is hidden and
so many truths are retold, its shocking that there isnt more of a desire
to scrutinize the information given to us and feel free to question it.
Parents teach their children not to believe everything they read on the
Internet or that they see on television; at what point in life do people
stop upholding that ideal? Luckily, this generation is becoming more
politically, emotionally, and socially aware. It is this gradual
enlightenment that will help people to look at the news, to read their
textbooks, or to watch movies and sayThat just doesnt seem
rightand look for the truth. Humans have an intrinsic desire for
knowledge and the truth. That desire can be awoken by the lies
presented to it, if only we choose to recognize them as they are.