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This article goes through many examples of discrimination in pop culture. This is an adult audience and a pathos appeal from a secondary source.

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Lost Ones- Lauryn Hill : When thinking of pop culture, my mind immediately jumped to music. Lauryn Hill is a R&B and Hip-hop artist who revolutionized both genres through powerful lyrics and wisdom she shares in her songs. Her debut and only solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is popular to this day for its lyrics, rhythm and acknowledgement of the realities Black people face living in America. The song Lost Ones specifically highlights the discrimination Black Americans face through economic status and institutions.

The most powerful lyrics are spread throughout the entire song. Two in particular were the most significant to me, "My emancipation don't fit your equation" and "Wisdom is better than silver and gold, I was hopeless now I'm on hope road". Bringing up the disconnect Black people faced then and currently when searching for success or even just to survive, especially as a Black woman in the 1990's required courage that many lacked. Her art still resonates with people all over the world today. Not many musicians are as talented and inspiring as Lauryn Hill

IC3PEAK- Russian experimental musicians, Anastasia Kreslina and Nikolay Kostylyov created the duo 'IC3PEAK' in 2015. Their music can be described as alternative, witch-house or dream like music with controversial opinions about life and Russian institutions. I wanted to talk about this duo because of the discrimination they face does not often happen so explicitly in America. Censorship in other countries is often used to hide radical or controversial opinions deemed by the government and is prevented from airing in media. It often hides the realities citizens are facing and paints a facade of a perfect nation. After IC3PEAK's release of their album СКАЗКА (Fairytale) in 2018 they faced public scrutinization and critique from the public for their radical opinions about the government. Specifically the song on the album, Смерти Больше Нет (Death No More) and its music video was the final straw. The music video shows both Anastasia and Nikolay standing in front of a Russian government building, dousing herself in kerosene while Nikolay holds a match shouting "Let it all burn!". Featuring other images of activities that Russia would find inappropriate, Russian police prevented them from going on tour and held them in custody. They currently are only allowed to tour abroad.

Oppression and discrimination look very different from each other when analyzing the cultures of different countries. The government stopping IC3PEAK's tour shows the current social tensions and divide of the people with how their country is functioning. The current generation is seeking for change and I hope they get the freedom to send whatever message they want without fear.

Connor McGregor v. Floyd Mayweather: Microagressions in media and sports is not uncommon in American pop culture. Boxing and Ultimate Fighting are not the most popular sports broadcasted in America, but one fight in particular got the attention of people who did not even consider themselves fans of boxing, Connor McGregor versus Floyd Mayweather. The two fighters had an intense rivalry bolstered through the media and social networks. Everyone began to talk about it and tensions were rising to see the fight. The fighters often would have banter to help excite the audience, sometimes it can be harsh or insensitive. McGregor had made a couple racially insensitive statements about Mayweather, telling him to "dance for me boy!" a term used for centuries to reduce Black people into someone of less significance. He also explained that he was "Half black from the belly-button down"

Whatever his intention was, to build drama and excitement or if he actually meant the words he said, McGregor is an influence to many young people across the world. Seeing someone you admire normalize rude and intolerant behavior and language creates the false sense you can treat other peers like this too. The smallest things often have influence over us when we are young, and the media is one of the largest institution to do so.

New Yorker Cartoon: Political cartoons can give artists/ journalists the opportunity to voice their opinions that could have sparked too much controversy or they felt too timid to share them. This cartoon depicts Little Red Riding Hood at her grandma's house. Instead of the common story with the Wolf as her grandma in bed, the Wolf is wearing and All Lives Matter T-shirt. At the bottom was the caption "Gee grandma, what a blind eye for institutionalized racism you have!". I thought a cartoon like this was relevant because it is a funny take on a serious situation. Laughter often relieves tension and although it appeals more to the left side of the political spectrum, it is important to be able to lighten the mood when possible.

Institutionalized racism is often hard to notice because of how subtly it works its way into our lives. The All Lives Matter movement was created to discredit Black Lives Matter and reduce their motives as being over dramatic and only considerate of Black people. In reality the movement was created to shine light on the disproportionate amount of incarcerated and murdered by police unfairly.

Cal Poly Fraternity: After backlash for a controversial picture taken during a party, a fraternity at California Polytechnic State University: San Los Obispos received punishment for dressing up in 'cholo' and gang inspired styled costumes. There were many varying opinions on them, but it is important to understand the weight it has on the people who dress like this every day. To them it is not a costume to poke fun at, it is apart of their own culture and their upbringing. White people tend to see people dressed like this or other styles (dreadlocks, box braids, Chinese/ Japanese tattoos) and wonder why they cannot be included. The problem lies within the fact that these people in the fraternity get to take off the 'costume' they were wearing, while people who are Latinx will continue to be seen as threatening, dangerous and a 'gangster'. Culture is not a costume and everyone, not just white people should understand this. If you are actually interested in learning about a culture that is or is not your own there's no problem in properly educating yourself to do so. Taking a sharpie to draw on face tattoos, wearing baggy denim and putting foil in your mouth to make a grill is just ignorant and shows the lack of care the fraternity demonstrated.

While the fraternity does not directly qualify as pop culture, the context in which they dressed comes from both accurate depictions of Latino culture and also negative stereotypical depictions. This happens across all cultures in media, characters like Uncle Remus, Long Duck Dong from Sixteen Candles, or Sofia Vergara from Modern Family give inaccurate representations of people of different cultures and backgrounds.

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Lost Ones- Lauryn Hill : When thinking of pop culture, my mind immediately jumped to music. Lauryn Hill is a R&B and Hip-hop artist who revolutionized both genres through powerful lyrics and wisdom she shares in her songs.

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'Hairspray' Is a Revealing Portrayal of Racism in America

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'Hairspray' Is a Revealing Portrayal of Racism in America

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It's crazy to think that even after the Rosa Parks incident they still had such segregation in the world especially in theater. "Black Monday" was the only day of the week that African Americans could go watch this. This has an audience of young adults to older adults with an appeal of logos. It was logical of the discrimination at this time even after the Rosa Parks situation.

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The 1988 John Waters film, newly adapted into an NBC live musical, presents a view of racial discrimination that's by turns naïve and enlightening.

In December 1963, producers at Baltimore's WJZ-TV cancelled the Buddy Deane Show rather than integrate the popular teen dance program. This move would have been a footnote in the annals of television if not for the director and Baltimore native John Waters, whose 1988 film Hairspray offered up an alternate history, with its fictional Corny Collins Show and rose-tinted, let's-all-dance-together ending. Hairspray, which started as a camp film with a modest $2.7 million budget, grew into a popular and commercially successful Broadway musical and movie. On Wednesday, NBC is broadcasting Hairspray Live! as its newest live-television musical adaptation.

Hairspray is firmly rooted in 1960s America, but it offers both sophisticated and (tellingly) simplistic ways of understanding racism today. On the one hand, the story's feel-good conclusion implies that colorblindness is the silver bullet that ends racial discrimination, that good intentions and individual acts of bravery are enough to bring about harmony. On the other, Hairspray Live! has the chance to resurface a forgotten history of how discrimination in pop culture intimately shaped the lives of young people 50 years ago.

From 1957 to 1963, only white teens were allowed to attend the weekday broadcasts of the Buddy Deane Show, with the exception of one Monday each month when black teenagers filled the studio (the so-called "Black Monday"). In 1963, the Civic Interest Group, an student integrationist group founded at Morgan State University, challenged this policy by obtaining tickets for black and white teens to attend the show on a day reserved for black teenagers. After a surprise interracial broadcast, WJZ-TV received bomb and arson threats, hate mail, and complaints from white parents. Facing controversy over the possibility of more integrated broadcasts, the station canceled the program.

A devoted fan of the Buddy Deane Show, Waters drew on this history to write and direct the original film version of Hairspray. Unlike the tensions that followed the real integration of the Buddy Deane Show, Waters's Hairspray ends with the protesters triumphing. The television news reporter covering the Corny Collins Show in the film sums up the climactic scene: "You're seeing history being made today. Black and white together on local TV. The Corny Collins Show is now integrated!" Waters himself commented on the film's revisionist history, "I gave it a happy ending that it didn't have."

Hairspray's happy ending gave the story an arc that appealed to Broadway and Hollywood producers. NBC's Hairspray Live! maintains the basic of Waters's story, but like the Broadway version and musical film, it features more than a dozen songs that help to convey the hopeful narrative. "You Can't Stop the Beat," for example, is an upbeat dance number that resolves the issue of segregation on the Corny Collins Show. "What's great about the choreography in ["You Can't Stop the Beat"] is that, subtly, the black dancers and the white dancers have the same choreography," the executive producer Neil Meron said in the DVD commentary for the 2007 film. "All the choreography in the movie prior to this was segregated by race, and now it's all together, which is a very, very subtle reference to the theme of this movie."
Hairspray's history of race in America suggests that racism is an issue of attitudes rather than policies.
This sentiment carries through to the song's lyrics. Motormouth Maybelle, a fictional black deejay and civil-rights activist played in the NBC version by Jennifer Hudson, sings: "You can't stop today as it comes speeding down the track / Child, yesterday is history and it's never coming back / 'Cause tomorrow is a brand new day and it don't know white from black." In the film's narrative, this utopian vision of a colorblind future solves the problem of segregation and racial injustice.

The Hairspray Live! producers hope this story of interracial unity will be appealing to television audiences in 2016. "People already were excited about it, but after the election they were saying, 'Boy, do we need this now,'" Meron said while promoting the new television musical. With the nation in a "divisive place," he argued, viewers are looking for entertainment "that can be really healing." The New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani saw a similar dynamic at play when Hairspray, the musical, debuting shortly after 9/11, won over fans: "Hollywood and Broadway producers have decided [what] Americans want is nostalgia-the logic being that people in times of trouble will gravitate toward comfort entertainment that reminds them of simpler, happier times [such as] ... the candy-colored Broadway musical Hairspray.'"

Hairspray's history of race in America suggests that racism is an issue of attitudes rather than of policies. In its version of 1960s Baltimore, teenagers sing and dance their way past race. The story also locates racial prejudice in a single character, Velma Von Tussle (played in the live musical by Kristin Chenoweth), which enables the other white characters to remain largely innocent bystanders to the discrimination faced by the program's black teenagers. It suggests a way of understanding race that allows viewers to disavow bigotry-framed in the story as the belief that white and black Americans should live in separate spheres-without acknowledging, confronting, or seeking to overturn the actual structures of discrimination. This sort of nearsighted, if not disingenuous, framing persists today, whether in affluent parents in New York City insisting their opposition to school rezoning proposals is not about race, or in arguments suggesting that the best way to address racism is to stop accusing people of being "racists."
Perhaps the last thing 2016 needs is a star-studded musical endorsement of colorblindness.
Still, as an historian of the television era that Hairspray so lovingly recreates, I believe the story also presents a more nuanced vision of how popular culture helped to educate white and black teenagers about racial hierarchies. Seeing Hairspray as more than simply a post-racial American fantasy requires taking the story's teen dance show setting seriously. In his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to what it meant for young black people to be excluded from entertainment spaces like the Buddy Deane Show. In a long list of reasons why "we find it difficult to wait" for freedom, King writes:

When you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky ... then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

King's mention of "Funtown" is preceded by references to lynch mobs, police brutality, and the "airtight cage of poverty," and followed by references to hotel segregation and racial slurs. The "Funtown" reference is powerful because it captures one of the ways that Jim Crow segregation and white supremacy played out for children and teenagers. For many young people, being blocked from swimming pools, skating rinks, or dance shows like the Buddy Deane Show would be one of their first exposures to what King calls the feeling of "forever fighting a degenerating sense of 'nobodiness.'"

The Buddy Deane Show was a highly visible regional program that asserted a racially segregated public culture. And it was not unique: Dick Reid's Record Hop in Charleston, West Virginia; Ginny Pace's Saturday Hop in Houston, Texas; John Dixon's Dixon on Disc in Mobile, Alabama; Bill Sanders's show in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Dewey Phillips's Pop Shop in Memphis, Tennessee; and Chuck Allen's Teen Tempo in Jackson, Mississippi, were all segregated dance shows. In Little Rock, white teens went from protesting integration at Central High School to dancing in the afternoon on Steve's Show. Nationally, American Bandstand blocked black teens from entering the studio during its years in Philadelphia, despite host Dick Clark's claims to the contrary. Every weekday afternoon, in each of these broadcast markets, these shows presented images of exclusively white dancers and rendered black youth as second-class teenagers. This discrimination was explicitly or tacitly supported by an array of advertisers, television stations, music producers, city authorities, and federal communications officials.

By representing this reality-in bubble-gum, technicolor clarity- Hairspray does something that pure documentation, at times, can't: It makes a difficult part of a nation's history accessible (and entertaining) to millions of viewers. Hairspray encourages its audience to take the fight to integrate a teenage TV show seriously, but it does so through songs, dances, and costumes that celebrate and satirize the '60s. The film's executive producer Craig Zadan argued that what makes Hairspray work is, "you never feel like we're on a soap box, or we're preaching to you, or we're saying this is a lesson you need to learn ... and yet, hopefully, you come away from it with something serious to talk about afterwards." There is no guarantee that viewers will take up these discussions, but Hairspray offers plenty of material for those who choose to do so.

Perhaps the last thing 2016 needs is a star-studded, light-hearted musical endorsement of colorblindness-though, viewed holistically, Hairspray is more than that. Its fairly neat, commercialized, and revisionist portrayal of 1960s Baltimore sharply contrasts with the current messy, national discussion of identity politics-a disjunction that could prompt new audiences to reevaluate their assumptions about how racism operates. But Hairspray also resonates for at least one of the same reasons it did in the '80s: It shows how seemingly innocent moments in popular culture were also sites of struggle over who was worthy of being a counted as a somebody in America.

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'Hairspray' Is a Revealing Portrayal of Racism in America

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The 1988 John Waters film, newly adapted into an NBC live musical, presents a view of racial discrimination that's by turns naïve and enlightening. In December 1963, producers at Baltimore's WJZ-TV cancelled the Buddy Deane Show rather than integrate the popular teen dance program.

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Regular Christians are no longer welcome in American Culture

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Regular Christians are no longer welcome in American Culture

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First, who are we to decide who is welcomed and who isn't? Christianity has always been the root of religion. Plus who decides what we believe. This article focuses on a doxa appeal and has an audience of young adults to adults.

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Regular Christians Are No Longer Welcome in American Culture

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This is the way of the new fear of the faithful

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How Pop Culture embraced sexuality 'without labels' 

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How Pop Culture embraced sexuality 'without labels' 

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Who says we have to label everything? Why do we have to identify ourselves on everything we apply for or for questionnaires. In this article it describes the reality of Sexual discrimination. This is a primary source and has an doxa appeal which focuses on young adults to adults.

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It may be superficially obsessed with virtual realities, but the best episodes of hit Netflix anthology series Black Mirror are ultimately more concerned with very tangible emotions. Such is the case with Striking Vipers, the clear stand-out episode from the most recent run, which launched on the streaming platform a couple of weeks ago.

Telling the story of two apparently heterosexual men who find themselves having an affair via their avatars (one male, one female) in a VR beat-'em-up, it offers a beautiful expression of love unconstrained by established gender and sexual identities.

If there is one aspect of the story that may come to date, however, it's not the computer game technology, but the fact that, back in the real world, this liaison causes the 'straight' duo involved so much evident angst. That's because current statistics suggest more and more people are understanding themselves as having no fixed sexuality.

More like this

A YouGov survey in the US last year, found that three per cent of 18 to 24 year olds identified as 'completely homosexual', but more than a third identified as something other than totally heterosexual.

Meanwhile, in an equivalent UK survey, up to 55 per cent of 18 to 24 year olds identified as not wholly straight. Dr Nikki Hayfield, a senior lecturer in social psychology at the University of the West of England and researcher into LGBTQ+ sexualities, says that it's in the last decade that there has been a surge in people turning to sexually fluid identities: "[in that time] we've seen an increase in the percentage of bi people as part of the LGBTQ+ grouping."

But bisexuality is only one manifestation of this new fluidity: increasing numbers of people find even that classification is restrictive. Instead they are embracing what Hayfield calls "multidimensional understandings of sexuality". Pansexuality, in particular, has become an increasingly favoured term for those who reject a gender binary when it comes to attraction. In part, its popularity is a matter of people wanting to be inclusive of all gender identities, in societies with increasing numbers of trans and non-binary people. "One of the most common descriptions that people have given for how they define pansexuality is it's about 'hearts, not parts' which I think captures it really succinctly," says Hayfield.
Making sexuality stress-free
But beyond that, classifying onself as pansexual can simultaneously be a statement against pigeonholing. "Young people are understanding [it], in particular, as being an 'anti-identity' identity," says Hayfield. Indeed, in turn, there are also increasing numbers of people who would rather not put any label on their sexuality whatsoever.

When it comes to popular culture, meanwhile, what this means is that there's a new frontier in the battle for LGBTQ+ representation. Where gay and lesbian people may have been the focus in the past, even if they are still very far from adequately depicted, a corresponding issue now is: is enough being done to give voice to those outside those distinct categories?

The Canadian stand-up comedian Mae Martin is one artist leading the way when it comes to championing a non-binary approach to sexuality. Her new book Could Everyone Please Calm Down? A Guide To 21st Century Sexuality is a funny, non-preachy sex and relationships primer for teenagers that, above all, aims to take the pressure off young people when it comes to defining themselves. "These days I think sexuality and gender can be so highly politicised, and heavy," Martin tells BBC Culture. "And it's so important that people remember we're talking about love, which is a positive thing, and sex, which is a positive thing. I hate to think that for young people the joy of those early experiences is marred by stress around identity."

Martin herself has been attracted to both men and women, and would generally rather not have to categorise herself at all - though, from the moment she started doing gigs aged 13, that hasn't stopped people doing so for her. "Everything that was written about my comedy [when I was younger] was like 'gay Mae' or 'lesbian comedian' - a lot of putting labels on me based on my appearance, or the fact I said I was in a relationship with a girl. So I found that frustrating."

She still has to contend with wilful misunderstanding in the media and elsewhere: in the book, she recalls the excruciating instance of a male interviewer who was fixated on her providing a conclusive answer as to whether she preferred men or women. "He thought I was being obstructive...so many people are like 'we read that you don't necessarily like to label your sexuality so please could you...''"
The rich history of fluidity
Such apparent bafflement is itself baffling, given that sexual fluidity is as old as time itself - something Martin emphatically points out in her book, informing her young readers about ancient cultures that celebrated sexual diversity, while also highlighting non-Western cultures that have always happily ignored the gender binary too. "Labelling sexuality is quite a recent phenomenon," she says. "And a lot of that labelling came out of people identifying it as a mental disorder, so it's kind of a negative history. And there's such a rich history of [fluidity] and multiple genders, it would be good to remember that. Because you can so easily feel 'oh maybe I'm part of this new fad'".

Indeed, the idea that sexual fluidity is somehow 'fashionable' has been a depressingly stubborn strain of prejudiced thinking - and a cornerstone of the well-recognised phenomenon of biphobia, alongside the other common belief that bisexual people are being dishonest or are in denial about being gay.

But recently, there seems to have been increasing acceptance, not only for bisexuality, but also for those who idenify as pansexual or 'without labels'. Well-known pansexuals include pop stars Miley Cyrus, Janelle Monae, Héloïs e Letissier (aka Christine and the Queens), Brendon Urie, and the comedian Joe Lycett. Meanwhile those who have demurred from categorisation altogether include the singer Lizzo and the actresses Kristen Stewart and Sophie Turner, who in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, declared: 'I love a soul, not a gender'.

It's noticeable that the reaction to such disclosures is, in general, much more uncomplicatedly supportive these days, without the kind of sneering or scepticism that may have been depressingly common in the past. It helps, certainly, that a non-binary sense of identity is so core to some of these stars' work. Stewart has regularly explored androgyny and sexual ambiguity in her screen performances, including most recently as the gender-fluid literary impersonator Savannah Knoop in JT LeRoy, and she is set to make her directorial debut with an adaptation of The Chronology of Water, a cult 2011 memoir by bisexual writer Lidia Yuknavitch.

Meanwhile both Monae and Letissier's work is euphorically chameleonic. Monae's last album Dirty Computer was, among other things, a bold testimony of sexual exploration, whose Prince-like lead-off single Make Me Feel was accompanied by a video of her vamping with both male and female partners. And Letissier has been most recently presenting as Chris, a simultaneously masculine and feminine, sexually assertive funkster.
Bisexuals on screen
Thanks to the likes of David Bowie, Prince and Madonna, pop music has always revelled in sexual fluidity, to some extent. But as for the wider representation of it in mainstream culture - chiefly in film and TV? The picture has traditionally been much more regressive. Bisexuals have been even more disparaged than gay and lesbian people by Hollywood and its ilk. For a long while, the most frequent type of bisexuality depicted, in films such as Basic Instinct, Cruel Intentions and Wild Things, was female, hypersexualised, and very clearly the product of heterosexual male imaginations.

On the small screen, meanwhile, it was invariably exploited as a clunky plot device: an 'experiment' for hitherto straight characters. Such storylines could provide laughs (as with Samantha's three-episode relationship with a stereotypically 'fiery' South American female artist in Sex and the City, best remembered for a comedy scene of female ejaculation) or, again, some dramatic titillation (as with heroine Marissa's same-sex fling in teen drama The OC) before the protagonists were returned to heterosexuality, their momentary excursions quickly forgotten about.

In the past few years, though, the landscape has been changing; more and more, we are being presented with characters having relationships with more than one gender in a way that feels both organic and unsensational. And where many of these characters would have previously been defined as bisexual, they are equally as likely now to be coded as either explicitly pansexual or as 'label-less' in their sexuality by the actors and writers behind them.

Notable pansexuals have included Game of Thrones fan favourites Yara Greyjoy and Oberyn Martell; Annalise Keating, Viola Davis' brilliant law professor in potboiler How To Get Away with Murder; and Sabrina the Teenage Witch's warlock cousin Ambrose in the new Netflix reboot. But perhaps the most gladdening depiction of pansexuality so far has been the cult sitcom Schitt's Creek and its portrayal of David, the son in the family of four down-on-their luck socialite New Yorkers who have ended up in a Canadian small town.

Played by co-creator Dan Levy, David is a camp fashionista, who was initially assumed to be gay, only to surprise viewers, as well as female friend Stevie, towards the end of the first series when he revealed his more diverse attractions, and ended up in bed with her. The show made an effort to describe pansexuality at that moment - "I'm into the wine, not the label" is how David explained it - and treated it, from thereon in, as entirely unremarkable; the character is now in a same-sex relationship with his business partner Patrick.

Another comedy that was even more progressively casual in its treatment of fluidity was the recently-ended Broad City. Epitomising the new age of sexual mores, both its BFF heroines had encounters with both men and women - a conscious expression, its creators and leads Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, have said, of their producer Amy Poehler's quip that "everyone under 30 is gay". But, in the same interview with Flare magazine, Glazer commented that her character would never define herself as pan or bi because "that definition is so futile."
The revolution is spreading
Reality TV is also getting with the programme. The UK sex-and-sun jamboree Love Island, currently in its fifth series, has been heavily criticised for its rigidly straight casting, a coupling-up of two women in series two aside. But a response to that came last year in the form of The Bi Life, a dating show with a cast of bisexual, pansexual or questioning bright young things. In the US, meanwhile, long-running MTV dating show Are You the One? has announced an entirely sexually fluid cast for its upcoming eighth series, which begins next week.

This revolution in sexual mores is having an impact on popular theatre, too. On the London stage, two major West End revivals at the moment have reconfigured the original texts to allow for more romantic eclecticism. In former National Theatre head Nicholas Hytner's new take on A Midsummer Night's Dream at his Bridge Theatre, he switches things up so that it is the Fairy King Oberon, rather than his queen Titania, who falls in love, under a spell, with the dopey tradesman Bottom; meanwhile the quartet of lovers also now get involved in some same-sex shenanigans.

Then down the road, at the Old Vic, a new production of Noel Coward's classic comedy Present Laughter starring Andrew Scott, aka Fleabag's 'Hot Priest', as playboy actor Gary Essendine has been changed so that the previously heterosexual Essedine now has male and female lovers. But while many such 'updates' of classic plays are geared towards provoking conversation, it seems that this particular alteration is intended to be the opposite of newsworthy. "I don't think the genders are particularly interesting..." Scott told an interviewer for the Sunday Times recently, when asked about the change. "Sexual fluidity is something I'm much more interested in. Just take out the labels."

And there seems to be the nub of it: the broader effect of this spate of sexually fluid characters is to help make the whole issue of sexuality less of one. Martin is among those who welcomes more stories featuring LGBTQ+ characters but where "sexuality is not [their] whole identity. When I audition for things, which is rare, but so often the character description is just 'gay'. I'm like 'But what are they like? What's their personality?' and they're like 'well she's gay'."

She herself will be contributing to this new wave of sexually fluid representation with a semi-autobiographical sitcom, a joint commission between Netflix and Channel 4 in the UK, which is due to start later this year. Provisionally titled Mae and George, it will centre on a young woman and her new girlfriend, who are "both bi I guess, but they're struggling with fluidity and labels and that kind of thing."
A world beyond labels
But is there a tension between this increasing desire to move 'beyond labels' and old notions of LGBTQ+ community? In a world hostile to LGBTQ+ people, after all, labels have been used as a means of affirmation and resistance. "I think some of the turn to fluidity and not wanting to name identities is a reflection of what is seen as an equality climate, where [people] are assumed to be much more accepting and we have equal rights and so on," says Hayfield.

Yet of course, prejudice and violence against anyone perceived to be non-heterosexual is still alive and kicking, even within supposedly liberal Western democracies, and so labels still have a function. Martin, for her part, recognises the complexity of the situation: she emphasises she is a proud, visible member of the LGBTQ+ community and says she would identify with a label in certain contexts in aid of the greater political good. "Sometimes it is important to be vocal about [that]. But I guess what I don't like is having a label imposed on me."

As it stands, the carefree attitude to sexuality that can comfortably exist in the sitcom fantasy land of Schitt's Creek or the metropolitan millennial milieu of Broad City may seem overly idealistic when applied to other imagined scenarios. Then again, a bit of wishful thinking, among all the other more painful stories LGBTQ+ audiences still bear witness to, is not something many of us would begrudge.
Can Everyone Please Calm Down?: A Guide to 21st Century Sexuality by Mae Martin is out now

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How pop culture embraced sexuality 'without labels'

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It may be superficially obsessed with virtual realities, but the best episodes of hit Netflix anthology series Black Mirror are ultimately more concerned with very tangible emotions. Such is the case with Striking Vipers, the clear stand-out episode from the most recent run, which launched on the streaming platform a couple of weeks ago.

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Using Pop Culture to Defeat Gender Inequality

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Using Pop Culture to Defeat Gender Inequality

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As females we have always had discrimination towards our gender. As Mallika Dutt stated in the article "Violence against women and girls is "the single largest human rights pandemic on this planet,"". It will continue to be our fight! This article focuses on woman audience and sexist. This is a primary source and has a pathos appeal.

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Violence against women and girls is "the single largest human rights pandemic on this planet," says Mallika Dutt, founder and CEO of progressive human rights group Breakthrough. Dutt had made it her mission to end violence and gender inequality by taking a fresh approach to addressing the issues. Breakthrough uses a combination of mass media, pop culture, technology, high-level partnerships and grassroots initiatives to try to transform the social and cultural norms that promote violence against women. Her campaigns have reached tens of millions of people around the planet. Breakthrough was recently awarded the University of Pennsylvania's annual Lipman Family Prize, which recognizes exemplary, innovative organizations operating in the social sector. Umi Howard, the director of the Lipman Family Prize, sat down with Dutt to discuss her work, her inspirations and her hopes for the future. An edited transcript of the conversation appears below.
Howard: Mallika, in your career you've been a lawyer, a human rights advocate and the CEO of an international NGO. In 2000, you founded Breakthrough. Tell us, what compelled you to start this organization?

Dutt: Breakthrough was really an accident. I was working at the Ford Foundation in India as the Human Rights Program Officer and was thinking a lot about what we were doing in the human rights movement. I felt like we were in an echo chamber: We were talking to one another, as opposed to talking to the people around us who we were trying to transform. I started to think about outreach methods, [and] pop culture really stood out. This was during a time in India when television was becoming privatized. Previously, it was more controlled by the government.

I started to formulate the idea of producing a music album with a music video that addressed violence against women. The idea started rattling around in my head. While I had lots of experience in law, philanthropy, human rights, legal service and public policy, I didn't know anything about music production, video production or media. So I started to talk to people and got the ball rolling. I met with people in Bombay's entertainment industry at Sony, BMG, Virgin Music and MTV. As those conversations went on, this album started to take shape.

"I felt like we were in an echo chamber: We were talking to one another, as opposed to talking to the people around us who we were trying to transform."

But I had many doubters. Many people said, "Album? Violence against women? Women's issues? Really? This is not going to work."

At the end of 2000, I launched the album and music video, "Mann Ke Manjeere", which means "Rhythm of the Mind: An Album of Women's Dreams". I partnered with Virgin Records on the launch. Lo and behold, the album and music video went through the charts. The musical director, lyricist, main artist and myself were inundated with media requests. All of a sudden this album and video were out there in the public space, leading a conversation about violence against women in India.

When this happened I was faced with a choice: Stay at the Ford Foundation or pursue this new idea. I chose the latter. That's how Breakthrough was born.

Howard: It's fortunate you made that choice. Can you tell me about why the issue of violence against women and girls is so important?

Dutt: Violence against women and girls is the single largest human rights pandemic on this planet. Violence against women and girls takes place in homes, on the streets, in schools, in work places and in conflicts. Women are subjected to it everywhere. It can start with you being terminated because you happen to be a female fetus. You can be killed because you're a female child. You can be subjected to incest and all kinds of sexual violence and abuse through your teenage years. You can also end up in a situation involving domestic violence. In the workplace, women are subjected to sexual harassment and all kinds of other forms of abuse. And even as a widow, many experience discrimination.

I believe violence against women underlies many other human rights issues. It's the place where we learn to disrespect one another. Twitter It becomes ingrained in all of our cultural, political and social institutions, and can manifest itself in unequal pay and unequal access to health care. If we don't take on gender-based discrimination as a core issue, then many other important problems really cannot be solved.

Howard: What model does Breakthrough use to approach this issue? How does Breakthrough use the media to accomplish its goals?

Dutt: Breakthrough aims to transform the social and cultural norms that promote violence against women. We want to stop these problems altogether, not just deal with them after they happen.

I've found that using culture to change culture is an effective way of engaging people.  Twitter When I say "using culture," that includes social media, television, radio, print, short animations, documentaries, street theater, traditional theater and comic books. We're not focused on one form of storytelling. We use all storytelling forms to bring people into the conversation.

Media, arts and technology have been crucial to Breakthrough's work. We've created several multimedia campaigns, three music videos, three video games and multiple documentaries. We've also won many awards.

"I believe violence against women underlies many other human rights issues. It's the place where we learn to disrespect one another."

One of our most successful campaigns started in India and it called on men to challenge violence against women. The campaign had television ads, radio ads and print ads, as well as street theater and other community outreach elements. It became a global campaign that was adopted in countries including Vietnam, Pakistan and China. We called on men to be part of the solution, as opposed to simply talking to men as if they were part of the problem. There was an incredible response to that shift in our approach.

As part of the campaign, we sent video vans into Indian communities to reach people in small towns and villages. The vans were accompanied by our human rights advocates - people trained to be advocates for women and girls - and this started a conversation about domestic violence at the grass roots level. The approach was very different from previous campaigns.

When you invite people to the table and say, "We've got a problem. It's a problem for everyone. Let's fix it," it's very different from saying, "You are a problem and we need to fix you."

Howard: Yes.

Dutt: The next phase of the campaign was called "Ring the Bell - One Million Men, One Million Promises." This went global last March and involved partnerships in South Africa, Brazil, Sweden, Nepal and other countries. This demonstrates how we use media, arts and culture to tell stories and we turn this into strategic partnerships with advertising agencies, government agencies, companies, grassroots organizations and celebrities. We want to engage the community and transform the societal norms that lead to violence against women.

Howard: The prize committee appreciated that Breakthrough's work addressed this truly universal issue that affects people from all walks of life. It's also very effective at using a bottom-up, grassroots approach and a top-down approach. Can you talk about what you're learning from the blend of those two strategies and how this can lead to change?

Dutt: In my past work I had completed a lot of direct service work with abused women and represented them in court. I also worked at the UN level on addressing women's rights issues and policies. So I had experience engaging at different points of intervention.

At Breakthrough, one of the things that I focused on was the question of scale. How many people can we reach with our resources? At the same time, I also understood that scale is reached through one person at a time. I was grappling with the question: How do you reach millions of people, transform millions of people and change their attitudes? I have found the media space allows you to scale your ideas. It allows you to talk to 30 million people, 130 million people or several hundred thousand people with relatively little in the way of resources.

Of course, you need some resources. A public service announcement (PSA) can cost $50,000. But if my $50,000 PSA reaches 130 million people, the numbers really worked in my favor. That is why mass media, and partnerships, are so important.

Now let's look at the grassroots level. Our motto at Breakthrough is: "Human rights start with you." We want to make sure that our messages become anchored in every single individual, wherever he or she is located. We need people to incorporate that change within themselves, otherwise it's all just talk. That's why the individual engagement work, community work and global constituency building work are all intertwined. And media, arts and technology are critically important to help straddle those multiple levels of engagement.

"At Breakthrough, one of the things that I focused on was the question of scale. How many people can we reach with our resources? At the same time, I also understood that scale is reached through one person at a time."

Howard: Another attractive thing about Breakthrough is your intensive work centered on India and the U.S. As you have previously said, there is no "mother ship" or parent organization. I'm curious about what you learn in India and how that influences your work in the States.

Dutt: Years ago, it drove me nuts that so many international organizations were based in the global North, but would call themselves "international." These organizations often didn't do any work in their "home" country. For example, they existed in New York City but focused all their energy on Africa. I felt that this perpetuated old colonial narratives.

Therefore, when I launched Breakthrough, I incorporated it in India and the United States simultaneously. As founder, I said, "There are no headquarters and there are no field offices. Breakthrough is comprised of two centers that operate out of India and the United States. That's how it is."

Initially, we planned to address women's human rights issues everywhere. But within a year of the launch, the September 11, 2001 attacks took place in the United States. This led to an intense backlash against immigrant communities, communities of color, South Asians and Muslims in the United States. So I decided, as an Indian-American, to be flexible.

We continued to work on the issue of violence against women in India, but in the U.S. we started to focus on the impact of 9/11 on human rights issues, including detention, deportation and developments in immigrant communities. An incredible body of work evolved in both countries and they started to inform one another.

Two years ago, we decided to refocus on our main mission: making violence against women and girls unacceptable. So the India center had 13 years of incredible programming and experience, and this center provided all kinds of help and support to the U.S. team. There was a whole body of learning that we adapted from India for the U.S. market.

Now in the United States we are looking at partnering with [college] fraternities as talk about sexual assault on campus has been gaining more attention. We are trying to figure out how to anchor our work within institutions and locations where this negative culture has been promoted. We are looking to ... transform fraternity culture so that we can really address gender issues and challenge violence against women in a new way.

Howard: When it comes to human rights advocacy and media, are there any trends that you think we should be watching?

Dutt: Right now we're seeing two things happen simultaneously. Firstly, the world is going to hell in a hand-basket. We have some really serious problems, including climate change, conflict, inequality, poverty and an economy that doesn't seem to be providing jobs that offer the quality of life we had imagined. We're seeing a lot of failing institutions and political leaders that don't know how to fix this mess. Many people who are stuck with old ways of thinking are trying to lead us out of our current crises.

At the same time, we have these emerging groups of people around the world who are beginning to understand our shared humanity. They understand that what happens to you affects me, and it's a very interconnected world. I find this mentality is more prevalent in the younger generation than the older generation.

I expect we will see a new, emergent leadership that works to solve these issues. People are thinking about how we can solve problems and use technology to address challenges in new, novel ways. The old top-down, hierarchical model of decision-making is gone. There are still pockets of people, especially men, who are holding on to that old system, but these are the holdouts. You should pay attention to this new leadership trend because the solutions that we need for our planet are going to emerge from this next generation of leaders.

We at Breakthrough believe this is going to be the generation that finally makes violence against women and girls unacceptable. This is going to be the generation that will shift these old norms, attitudes and values and push society to see one another as human beings that deserve respect. This new generation will really think about how we can build a society, an economy and a world where human dignity is central to how we operate and more forward.

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Using Pop Culture to Stop Violence Against Women -- K@W

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Violence against women and girls is "the single largest human rights pandemic on this planet," says Mallika Dutt, founder and CEO of progressive human rights group Breakthrough. Dutt had made it her mission to end violence and gender inequality by taking a fresh approach to addressing the issues.

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A disability is something that no one but God can control. Sadly the people with higher disabilities are usually incapable of standing up for themselves which is where people take the most advantage of. As people with bigger platform we are not using it correctly to help with this kind of discrimination. How often is it when you see a you tuber that is well know with a disability and likes to embrace it? You don't. Why ? Because people are so cruel and always knows what buttons to push. This is a pathos appeal and focuses on all adults who have the power to help those with disabilities.

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Media and People With Disabilities: Are We Represented Accurately?

"So can you tell how I look by touching my face?" I often get that question from family and friends, who undoubtedly got this false stereotype about blind people through the media. Like with all minorities, the media has promoted and reinforced both positive and negative stereotypes about people with disabilities. While exaggerated, negative depictions send the wrong message, Positive and realistic portrayals will help create more awareness and opportunity for all people with disabilities. The following are just some of the depictions I have seen in the media. Although they are in no particular order, it seems like nowadays the focus is shifting more toward creating realistic portrayals, just like with other minority groups.

This is the portrayal I personally dislike the most. Whether in movies, TV shows or news stories, these depictions show people with disabilities as being in desperate need of help or charity. The "Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon", for example, was widely criticized because it portrayed people with disabilities as needing charity and a cure. This telethon has been canceled as of this year.

Previously, the majority of disabled characters on television or movies were depicted using the medical model of disability. This means that the person with a disability was viewed as sick and needed to be cured in order to function and even be happy. Most of us have seen or heard of shows and movies where characters that are blind or use a wheelchair are miraculously cured, and they then live happily ever after.

This seems to be the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Disabled characters are shown as extraordinary or heroic individuals because of their disability. Even the terminology used by media outlets like newspapers contributes to this idea. I often read stories describing disabled individuals "inspirational," "brave" and "courageous." The focus is often on the person's impairment rather than the individual. The number of times I have seen or read stories about disabled people who are thought to be exceptional because they do simple things like graduate from college, play a musical instrument or go to work in spite of their disability is impressive! Although journalists are well meaning, the often exaggerated language gives the public the impression that as people with disabilities we should be praised and viewed as heroic for even daring to try so-called normal things.

On the other hand, there is the heroic portrayal, where a disabled person has superpowers and overcomes a disability as a result. Daredevil's Matt Murdock, for instance, has superior senses because of his blindness. Although this might seem as a positive aspect, it also creates myths about people with disabilities. I remember that when the 2003 "Daredevil" movie was released, a lot of my friends in high school asked if I had better hearing like Murdock! As disabled people we don't have super powers and therefore have to find alternative ways of overcoming our challenges.

Reality and Fashion Show Portrayals

Now more than ever before, disability advocates are pushing for an accurate representation of people with disabilities, and the popularity of reality and fashion shows has created the perfect opportunity to do just that. The show "MasterChef" from Fox featured Christine Ha, a chef who has a severe visual impairment. Throughout the show, Ha answered questions about how she accomplished various kitchen tasks as a disabled person. ABC's "Expedition Impossible" featured Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind person to climb Mount Everest. One of the events in this year's Fashion Week featured models with all sorts of disabilities - please check out last Tuesday's commentary for more on this event.

Several shows and movies have realistically depicted disabled individuals. In 2005, "Blind Justice" was a show about a policeman who had been blinded. Rather than focusing on his disability, the show depicted him as a perfectly capable policeman and detective. "The Miracle Worker" is based on the true story of blind and deaf activist Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan. Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft give viewers an accurate portrayal of the struggles and triumphs Helen and Annie face at the beginning of their student-teacher relationship.

While fictional and inaccurate media portrayals create misleading notions about people with disabilities, reality and fashion shows can go a long way in debunking many myths and stereotypes. News reporters can also influence how people with disabilities are perceived by simply focusing on the person rather than their impairment. Changing certain phrases and terminology can help when speaking about those of us with disabilities. The media has the enormous potential of changing the way people view disability, and I truly hope they will take on this opportunity.

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Media and People With Disabilities: Are We Represented Accurately? - The Chicago Lighthouse

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"So can you tell how I look by touching my face?" I often get that question from family and friends, who undoubtedly got this false stereotype about blind people through the media. Like with all minorities, the media has promoted and reinforced both positive and negative stereotypes about people with disabilities.

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TV Tropes and Ageism: How kids' Pop Culture Promotes Discrimination

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TV Tropes and Ageism: How kids' Pop Culture Promotes Discrimination

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Its crazy to think that in a country like Britain hate is established so young and carried out. This article explains the research that the author's research has reveled such ridiculous "tradition" if that the right word for it. This article is a secondary source. The main appeal is Doxa again, it shows the kind of values that are established by parents around the world.

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TV Tropes and Ageism: How Kids’ Pop Culture Promotes Discrimination

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Age-based discrimination runs rampant in the UK. We look at ageist tropes in kids’ pop culture to find out what to change.

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As mothers we face a lot of backlash how we parent, how we discipline, and most importantly how we decide to go about our financial situation. We live in a "man's world" so they say but we are now in 2020 us women are allowed to find financial support for ourselves and not depend on a man for everything we need. This article focuses on mostly woman. This source is a primary. The main appeal is doxa it is trying to establish the values of some woman.

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In a major class-action lawsuit filed last summer, seven high-level female employees of the software developer, Qualcomm, sued the company on behalf of more than 3,000 female workers for gender discrimination, including motherhood discrimination. The women claimed that they were repeatedly passed over for advancement in favor of less-qualified male employees. They believe this explains why women make up only 5 percent of senior management positions at the San Diego-based tech firm, and only 5 percent of top engineering positions. "Qualcomm maintains an unwritten policy of disparately rewarding employees who work late into the night over employees who choose to arrive early and leave at the end of a normal work-day. This policy disparately impacts and causes the Company to undervalue caregivers of school-aged children ... These common policies stigmatize employees with caregiving responsibilities and disproportionately penalize women," they wrote in their complaint.

One of the plaintiffs, a senior-level market analyst and working mother, said that she was passed over for promotions in favor of substantially less-qualified male workers despite her outstanding performance reviews. One top engineer with three school-aged children said she began receiving negative evaluations and fewer promotions compared to less-qualified male peers after she asked to scale back her work schedule to 30 hours per week to take care of her children-even though she says she was just as productive as before. The same month that employees filed the lawsuit, Qualcomm agreed to settle the case for $23.5 million. Of that payout, $19.5 million will be paid to the female employees, and the company agreed to spend another $4 million to ensure equal opportunities for women at Qualcomm. "While we have strong defenses to the claims, we elected to focus on continuing to make meaningful enhancements to our internal programs and processes that drive equity and a diverse and inclusive workforce," a spokesperson from Qualcomm said in a statement.

Cynthia Calvert, a senior advisor at the WorkLife Center, says that caregiver discrimination is one of the fastest-growing areas of employment law. "Employers haven't realized that discrimination against motherhood or fatherhood can be gender discrimination," she says. It's particularly insidious in supervisors' biases about gender roles. With women, she says, a common scenario involves overlooking female employees for challenging assignments because employers assume mothers won't want to travel or handle the extra workload. "With men, they are punished because they want to work more flexibly to take care of a child, and the employer thinks they're not acting the way men are supposed to act," says Calvert, who has analyzed thousands of parental-discrimination cases. While claims filed by fathers are fewer than those filed by working mothers and pregnant women, Calvert says the number of male plaintiffs has increased sharply in the past decade.

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In a major class-action lawsuit filed last summer, seven high-level female employees of the software developer, Qualcomm, sued the company on behalf of more than 3,000 female workers for gender discrimination, including motherhood discrimination. The women claimed that they were repeatedly passed over for advancement in favor of less-qualified male employees.

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Aug 28, 2014 Podcasts Video Asia-PacificIndiaNorth America. “Using Pop Culture to Stop Violence Against Women -- K@W.” Knowledge@Wharton, knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/using-pop-culture-defeat-gender-inequality/.

Campbell, Alexia Fernández. “The Revolt of Working Parents.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 12 Jan. 2017, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/the-new-glass-ceiling/512834/.

Delmont, Matthew. “'Hairspray' Is a Revealing Portrayal of Racism in America.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 7 Dec. 2016, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/hairsprays-revealing-portrayal-of-racism-in-america/509741/.

Eberstadt, Mary, et al. “Regular Christians Are No Longer Welcome In American Culture.” Time, Time, 29 June 2016, time.com/4385755/faith-in-america/.

“How Pop Culture Embraced Sexuality 'without Labels'.” BBC Culture, BBC, 19 June 2019, www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190618-how-pop-culture-embraced-sexuality-without-labels.

Jacob. JACOB MARSHALL, 12 May 2019, wordpress.lehigh.edu/jam322/2019/05/12/discrimination-in-pop-culture/.

“Media and People With Disabilities: Are We Represented Accurately?” The Chicago Lighthouse, 22 Jan. 2016, chicagolighthouse.org/sandys-view/media-and-people-with-disabilities/.

Morris, Wesley. “In Movies and on TV, Racism Made Plain.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 23 Aug. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/08/23/arts/television/white-hot-supremacist-summer.html.

“RACIAL JUSTICE RESOURCES : JUSTICE FOR BLACK LIVES.” NEA EdJustice, 5 June 2020, neaedjustice.org/racial-justice-resources-justice-for-black-lives/?utm_source=neahp&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=J4BL.

“TV Tropes and Ageism: How Kids' Pop Culture Promotes Discrimination.” EachOther, 20 July 2018, eachother.org.uk/tv-tropes-ageism-how-kids-pop-culture-adds-discrimination/.

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It's crazy to think that even celebrities face discrimination while doing their own job and most of the time the people doing the discrimination just get to get away with it. This article is a primary source since it is a news article by the NY Times. It focuses on young adults- adults. The main appeal is Ethos as it establishes credibility through the examples given .

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Clockwise from top left, Lee and Rachel of "Bachelorette"; Will Poulter and Anthony Mackie in "Detroit"; Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather, who are set to fight on Saturday night. Credit... Clockwise from top left: Paul Hebert/ABC; Randy Holmes/ABC; Francois Duhamel/Annapurna Pictures; Francois Duhamel/Annapurna Pictures; Mike Lawrie/Getty Images; Al Bello/Getty Images

We're supposed to be fixated, at the moment, on the shock of a president capable of finding "fine people" among hordes of white supremacists. More than a week ago, Donald Trump spent a lot of a news conference asserting such a thing was possible. According to him, there isn't much difference between the supremacists who were protesting the removal of a statue memorializing the Confederate general Robert E. Lee in a park in Charlottesville, Va., and the appalled folks responding with a protest of their own. And that's despite the murder of one and the injury of dozens of others after a 20-year-old nationalist plowed his car into a crowd.

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White supremacists on a torch march on Aug. 11 in Charlottesville, Va. Credit... Edu Bayer for The New York Times

But to watch the movies or TV - or even to catch the hype for a certain boxing match - is to know that normalized white supremacy has been here all summer. It's to know that the people who manufacture all sorts of popular culture have also, intentionally or not, tossed some racism onto the assembly line. It's to know that whatever occurred in Charlottesville and then at that news conference didn't happen in a vacuum. They were just the gnarliest flare-ups in a season of provocations that seem so business-as-usual that they scarcely feel provoked.

How else could anyone explain Lee? Not the aforementioned hero of the Confederacy but the dunce from ABC's "The Bachelorette." Normally, "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette" feature a gentleman or a lady who leaps into a heterosexual pool of suitors and climbs out with a potential spouse. That was more or less true this season, too. Only, for the first time ever, a black woman took the plunge. And the show, which concluded earlier this month, seemed to be of two minds: It didn't want to make a big deal about it but understood what a big deal it was. So it played games.

Before its official kickoff, in a sort of televised tailgate party, the bachelorette, Rachel, met a few of her suitors. One was a sweetie named Dean, who told her that he was "ready to go black," as if he were preparing to head deep into outer space. But at least he seemed to understand the journey. Lee, a white musician from Florida, was stuck on dreary old Earth. His interest in Rachel went only as far as robbing other contestants of time with her. His primary targets were the other black men on the show, namely Kenny, a charming pro wrestler, whom Lee characterized to Rachel as "aggressive" and about whom he fabricated an altercation that culminated in Kenny's heaving Lee from a van.

None of this was terribly new for a show like this. "Conniving" belongs in any contestant's toolbox. But Lee tarred his black opponents as scary and violent. His tools were hoary. When another contestant - Will, a handsome black sales manager - offered him some context for why calling Kenny (or any black male) "aggressive" might be a problem, Lee rolled his eyes and said, "I don't understand the race card."

He does, however, understand racism. At some point during the show's run, lots of Lee's old tweets surfaced. They were homophobic, anti-Muslim and sexist. His comparison, in one, of the N.A.A.C.P. to the K.K.K. felt almost Trumpian. Apparently, the people who make "The Bachelorette" could envision marrying off a black bachelorette only if in the process it risked a race war, even a banal one.

The week before the final episode, the show gathered some of its contestants, including Lee and Kenny, to rehash their behavior in front of a live audience. The men - and not only the black ones - seemed baffled and truly hurt as they confronted and chastised Lee: What was he doing on a dating show starring a black woman? There was something powerfully novel in seeing a handful of black men confronting a white racist.

But it became fascinatingly fruitless television. They did so much talking about the wrongs of Lee's racism that he was barely required to answer for himself. The show seemed to want us to feel bad for his being singled out, even though Lee only sort of seemed to understand the trouble he was in. Someone even offered to hug it out with him, and I screamed into my pillow. Whether or not the show encouraged him to lie about being assaulted, Lee managed to evoke a whole dismaying history of black men being falsely accused by white people of all kinds of violence. At this point, what would a hug resolve? It's the water pill of racial reconciliation.

It would be a pitiful defense, but the makers of "The Bachelorette" could always point to that live special as an attempt to solve a problem - even one they had invented! Isn't a water pill preferable to whatever Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor got up to last month? They toured four cities together to promote their desperately anticipated, stupefyingly lucrative boxing match on Saturday, Aug. 26, that Showtime will broadcast by pay-per-view.

The tour made a quick descent into a kind of racial taunting that felt aptly vestigial for a sport in decline, and grew only more deplorable as it went. On each stop - in Los Angeles, Toronto, Brooklyn and London - Mr. McGregor would work the capacity crowds into a lather by asserting a particular style of supremacy over his future opponent, who's undefeated and flamboyantly black. Mr. McGregor is a compact and ornately tattooed white Dubliner with no professional boxing bona fides (his championship skills belong to the mixed martial arts). What he may lack in boxing experience, he makes up for in both swagger and the sort of obnoxiously tailored suiting whose flattery extends to his crotch.

"Dance for me, boy!" Mr. McGregor barked to Mr. Mayweather on the first two stops. The tour's ostensible psychological goal was for the men to get in each other's head. But Mr. McGregor, seeking a full-body invasion, aimed to get under Mr. Mayweather's black skin. The culmination came in Brooklyn, when Mr. McGregor - wearing just loafers; snug, patterned pants whose dominant color was pink; and a white fur coat with a giant snake on the back (oh, and gold sunglasses) - rebutted complaints that he's a racist.

"Ridiculous," he said. "Do they not know I'm half black? I'm half-black from the bellybutton down!" He went on, presenting a promissory gift to his "beautiful black female fans": a sex pantomime in which he pumped the air with his midsection.

Boxing has a long history of mixing racism and ethnic pride to sell a fight. The Mayweather-McGregor bout is an especially noxious entry, in which Mr. Mayweather was jeered on principle and Mr. McGregor turned to a kind of racism because the crowds seemed to enjoy the turn. Mr. Mayweather played nasty, too, veering into homophobic put-downs, but he didn't mock his opponent's race - or, amazingly, for the most part, his clothes. But he also never called out Mr. McGregor's strategy either, which seems illuminating, since Mr. Mayweather, as an owner of the company promoting the fight, stands to make a ton of money. Why not turn a profit on the national mood, too?

Nonetheless, everything about the Irishman's performance - from commands that Mr. Mayweather dance to Mr. McGregor's own nonstop nervous shuffling - seemed like something from America's enormous minstrel-show catalog. Mr. McGregor never painted his face black, but neither did lots of early white minstrels. In the mid 19th century, they concocted bigger-than-life heroes that riled up audiences with bravado and vulgarity and simulations of working-class strength, eventually at the expense - or with the assistance - of black culture. Almost 200 years later, here was Mr. McGregor conducting a virtual séance of American ghosts.

The enthusiasm for Mr. McGregor was so high and our comfort with this kind of unexamined racist performance so ingrained that even after that "half-black" business, it wasn't until Mr. McGregor bragged, in Brooklyn, that his fur coat was made of polar bears that anybody booed him.

Not too long ago, men like Lee and Mr. McGregor remained hidden within message boards. They were anonymous Twitter eggs. But now the eggs have hatched and some of those people are feeling free to come out of their supremacist shell.

We saw some of those people in Charlottesville. Hundreds of men - young men - (and some women) marching in the night. Watching the way photography froze many of their faces into a rictus of rage was chilling. Some of that dismay came from seeing how perfectly basic they were - or what, about nine months ago, you might have called "normcore." Almost everyone who walked by any camera looked like a classmate or an acquaintance. Some of them looked like contestants on "The Bachelorette," carrying props from its set.

Last month, HBO announced plans for a dramatic series called "Confederate," which hypothesizes what America might look like if the rebels had won the Civil War. Many people objected to it, in part, because the announcement struck a note of privilege - or cluelessness: What country were the producers living in? You didn't need to see the people with the tiki torches to suspect the show might seem redundant. The war, to many, really doesn't seem over.

That was also some of the problem with "Detroit," a docudrama that opened at the very end of July, and sought to recreate racial violence that occurred in 1967 as a way of seeing the racial violence occurring today. The movie combed the title city looking for a harrowing-enough story upon which to feast its fly-on-the-wall filmmaking, and settled on a motel that became a de facto detention center overseen by racist cops. The police killed three black men, tortured others and were acquitted of everything. Some of the distrust surrounding "Confederate" plays out in "Detroit" - that it might be more interested in death, humiliation and suffering among black people than it ever is in life.

Whatever white supremacy was and is - the murderousness of the K.K.K., the centuries-old institutional bias toward white people, the self-pitying narcissism of the so-called alt-right - it's older than what happened in Charlottesville, older than this presidency. It's wedged in the bedrock of American popular culture. Even when you aren't looking, it manages to find you.

Not too long ago, I was enjoying "Logan Lucky," the new Steven Soderbergh heist movie, when I noticed that in the inmate-visitation scenes, the white characters were put in the foreground while the black prisoners sat in the distance. I really like "Logan Lucky," but I also found myself wondering how many times lesser directors used similar framing in other movies and I hadn't even noticed.

I saw a similar configuration in an episode of "The Sinner," a series that just started on USA, which is all about why Jessica Biel stabbed a stranger to death on a beach. This summer's heist sleeper, "Baby Driver," comes up with a different treatment of incarceration, speeding through a white character's sentence to get to its romantic ending. The crime thriller "Good Time" tries the " Scared Straight " approach, throwing a terrified white character into a jail cell teeming with feral black men. In American culture, white characters visit prison, but anonymous black people tend to live there.

There's no equating the people responsible for any of this work with the people who descended upon Charlottesville in General Lee's name. But the criminal-justice apparatus that preys upon black men has wound up linking blackness and incarceration statistically - and, apparently, culturally. So you're free to imagine a casting situation in which people are trying to make, say, a prison visitation scene with the movie's white protagonists more authentic. How about putting some brown smudges in the frame?

Calling for the removal of statues, street names, even the sitting president might feel right. But doing so is a separate project from truly considering the institutions that led to their installation. For that, you need something more radical than protests. You need real education. You need a kind of racial chemotherapy. You need producers and executives who know better. In the meantime, this is the culture we've got. Those smudges were in the frame long before this president, and they're likely to be there long after he's gone.

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We're supposed to be fixated, at the moment, on the shock of a president capable of finding "fine people" among hordes of white supremacists. More than a week ago, Donald Trump spent a lot of a news conference asserting such a thing was possible.

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Have you ever been faced with racism due to the color of your skin? These past weeks we have faced with reality. Racism still exist, although this was sparked by something done by police brutality people of all colors are focusing on the racial discrimination by the justice system. This artifacts strongest appeal is Doxa it making you rethink your values as a human.
An additional rhetorical concept would be pathos, this is showing the emotions of others to persuade your emotions about the issue. I think this source is primary as it is a article of first hand. The audience is focused on educators and how we could help.

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Recent events in our nation have once again put a spotlight on a long legacy of racism, violence and white supremacy in our communities. As COVID-19 continues to ravage communities of color, the recent murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Aubrey, and Breonna Taylor have highlighted an inherently broken system and illustrated how deep injustice runs through our health, income, housing, education and policing systems.

In her statement on the murder of George Floyd, NEA President Lily Eskelsen García said, "We must examine how white supremacy culture impacts our biases, our practices, and the policies in our own schools and communities. It is our responsibility as educators to create the space for students to explore, by first evaluating our own biases, privilege and collusion".

NEA is committed to working with educators towards eradicating racist systems that keep students from attaining the best public education possible. The following resources can help promote deeper understanding around the issues of racism and violence with colleagues, students and families.

NEA Racial Justice in Education Resource Guide
NEA Center for Social Justice

Why racial equity & justice?

Talking race

Tools for assessment, strategic planning and action

Black Lives Matter at School Week
NEA Center for Social Justice

Resources to help facilitate conversations about race any time of year, including classroom appropriate lesson plans, guides on how to have tough conversations with peers and students, and more.

Read Across America Book Recommendations
Read Across America

Selected by educators, NEA's Read Across America includes books that students can see themselves reflected in, as well as books that allow readers to see a world or a character that might be different than them.

Video "Primers" for Anti-racist White Educators
NEA Center for Social Justice

Inspired by their own experiences working with students, teachers Luke Michener and Terry Jess offer advice to other white educators who are committed to racial equity in education but may not know where to begin.

Marley Dias Video
NEA YouTube Channel

For Marley Dias, the call to activism began with books. Frustrated by not seeing other Black girls as the main characters in the books in her school library, she decided to take action and make a change by launching the wildly successful social media project, #1000blackgirlbooks.

NEA: Visually Speaking Series: The Playlist
NEA YouTube Channel

Visually Speaking is a photo/video social justice project that invites educators and students to talk about the issues that affect them most.

Microcredentials for Educators - Online Courses
NEA.CertificationBank.com

NEA's certification bank includes courses to help educators adopt restorative justice practices, cultivate socially just environments, challenge inequity, examine intersections of race, gender, and sexual orientation, and create classroom culture that cultivates relationships among all learners.

Resources for Talking about Race, Racism and Racialized Violence with Kids
Center for Racial Justice in Education

Teaching About Race, Racism and Police Violence
Southern Poverty Law Center/Teaching Tolerance

Black Lives Matter
Southern Poverty Law Center/Teaching Tolerance

Systemic Racism Explained (Video)

Talking About Racism and Violence with Students: Resources for Educators
Colorin' Colorado

These resources can help promote deeper understanding around the issues of racism and violence. They also can contribute to discussion of these topics with colleagues and students during this difficult time, even at a distance.

Say Her Name Campaign
African American Policy Forum

A movement that calls attention to police violence against Black women, girls and femmes and demands their stories be integrated into the calls for justice, policy changes and police violence.

Reflecting on George Floyd's Death and Police Violence Towards Black Americans
Facing History and Ourselves

TED Talk Playlist
Talks to help you understand racism in America.

Talking About Race
National Museum of African American History and Culture

Talking about race, although hard, is necessary. These are tools and guidance to empower your journey and inspire conversation.

Race Works Toolkits
Stanford Center for Comparitive Studies in Race & Ethnicity

A series of short films and activities featuring the latest Stanford scholarship about how people do race and how to undo racism

10 Documentaries to Watch about Race Instead of Asking a Person of Color to Explain Things for You
DocPlay.com

10 important documentaries about race, racial prejudices and privilege within our society.

White Supremacy & Anti-Blackness: A Covert & Overt Beast
WeAreBeloved.org

Displays a pyramid that describes all of the ways that white supremacy moves, and especially takes stock of the covert ways.

Scaffolded Anti-racism Resources
A working document for scaffolding anti-racism resources. The goal is to facilitate growth for white folks to become allies, and eventually accomplices for anti-racist work.

Resources for Accountability and Actions for Black Lives
A live document compiled by Carlisa Johnson on 5/27/20. Updated daily as more resources and information becomes available.

Anti-Racism Resources
This document is intended to serve as a resource to white people and parents to deepen anti-racism work.

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RACIAL JUSTICE RESOURCES : JUSTICE FOR BLACK LIVES - NEA EdJustice

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NEA is committed to working with educators towards eradicating racist systems that keep students from attaining the best public education possible. The following resources can help promote deeper understanding around the issues of racism and violence with colleagues, students and families.