Better Days to Come
In a perfect world, discrimination and racism would not exist, but unfortunately the world we live in is far from perfect. Society, whether they mean to or not, still heavily places stereotypes on different religions, races, and ethnic groups. The media in particular does so through television shows and movies. Feminist writer Dorothy Roberts argues that African American women are portrayed in such a poor manor. One example of a show I can think of that supports her argument is Orange is the New Black. There are many parts of the show which one may argue is a negative depiction of African American women. I do not personally agree with Roberts’ argument for media and society as a whole, however I can see some truth to her statement.
Roberts is well known for her book Killing the Black Body which is about the inequality that exists of black women, specifically those who are poor, in relation to the control of their bodies’ autonomy and their freedom to have and raise children. In her book she discusses how society’s portrayal of the female African American community as a whole is completely wrong and unjust. She says they are portrayed as poor mothers and unable to take care of children properly. One thing she talks about in her book which I found interesting was her talking about how people pressure African American women to get abortions. I took some time to look up statistics about abortion percentages in the United States through the company Planned Parenthood, and found that there were much more abortions in the white community than that of the black in 2014. I can not say that this invalidates her argument because the population of whites is significantly higher than blacks. In proportion, the African American community would have a much higher percentage of people who got abortions. Roberts wrote about how society also blames African American women for black poverty. This is confusing to me because it is hard to blame a group of...