Sunday, January 3, 2016

Citizen Part 2 of 3

In one part of Citizen, Claudia Rankine introduces the World Cup portion of the script for her Situation video. Phrases of reaction to racial injustice at the World Cup intersected with images of an altercation between players.

"Big Algerian shit, dirty terrorist, nigger."

"The Algerian men, for their part, are a target of criticism for their European countries."

This theme has been heard before, in Albert Camus' The Stranger, which happens to take place in Algeria. While Camus' novel included racial undertones, and pushed other agendas besides race, Claudia Rankine focuses solely on the aspect of race. Both novels mention the degradation that Algerian men (specifically Arab Algerians), face harsh racial prejudices like the one mentioned above.

However, there is a time lapse between The Stranger and Citizen that makes the issue even more significant. While certainly The Stranger covers a power dynamic between people of different races, Citizen exposes a whole new issue- increased fear of terrorism. Many fear those of a certain race, categorizing them with a breed of terrorists where the only thing they have in common is the color of their skin.

While some may claim this is a religious issue, I am certain that it has something to do with race. Their are many instances of Sikh men being attacked by those who fear they are terrorist. Many of these attackers associate Sikh men with those of Islamic terrorists, and while it is attacking of anyone because of their religion is unjustified, it is truly something else to mistake someone for practicing another religion, and use that as a justification for attack. This shows that many categorize people, down to their religious practices, just based on the color of their skin.

No comments:

Post a Comment