Race and the divide between the races

Race and the divide between the races is either the subject or the subtext in many films. The theory of the creation of "the Other" as delineated by Bell Hooks applies to these works and helps illuminate how they handle the issue of race. In terms of film, this concept may apply differently according to the era in which the film was made and whether the film was made by blacks or whites. The issue can be considered in terms of specific films from different periods, using Soul Man from 1986, and Waiting to Exhale from 1995 and made by a black filmmaker and Jerry Maguire made in 1997 by a white filmmaker.

Hooks notes how race is used not merely to discriminate against one group or another but to make that group discriminate against itself:

Though systems of domination, imperialism, colonialism, racism, actively coerce black folks to internalize negative perceptions of blackness, to be self-hating, and many of us succumb, blacks who imitate whites (adopting their values, speech, habits of being, etc.) continue to regard whiteness with suspicion, fear, and even hatred (Hooks 338).

Hooks sees blacks as beset by the contradictory longing to possess the reality of the Other, in this case the other race, even if that reality is one that wounds and negates. As Hooks describes it, racial division produces in a given racial group a sense of otherness, that there are real differences between the realities of themselves and the differing racial group. Similarities between grou

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Category: Foreign - R