SAY NO TO RACISM, SAY NO TO DISCRIMINATION

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So back to our blog folks!  We haven’t worked on it for quite a while. 

We sailed through the deep seas of discrimination, we read poetry, fiction dealing with this appalling but still contemporary issue.  We read passages from Mandela, Martin Luther King and Gandhi.  We tried to learn the keys to a peaceful world through the words, eyes and experience of great men who sacrificed their lives in the name of a world dominated by equality.  You are going to watch some challenging and to some extent anguishing films and you are going to do some creative writing that we are going to share by posting your “works” on the blog.  Let’s try to warm-up your “creative muscles” by looking at some videos.  The first one is a video by an Asian girl, famous for her make-up tutorials, who speaks about a painful past experience of hers, an anecdote obviously and unfortunately linked to racism.  Then there are some social ads aimed at sensitizing people towards the problem of wide-spread discrimination in our world. 


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Regardless of the great steps forward and the great achievements in human rights, we still need to fight against racism and discrimination of any kind.  We have started with racial discrimination, but we will proceed with other forms of ghettosising and marginalising people. 


Discrimination

It seems that if on the one hand we have managed (as human beings) to put an end to slavery or discrimination towards women (though not in all countries, unfortunately ) just to mention a few achievements in the field of human rights; on the other hand we can still witness discrimination towards homosexuals

homophobia hurtsdifferently-abled people

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elderly people (mainly in western countries)
age-discriminationchildren (think of child labour in certain countries or think of child soldiers).

child soldiers
Watch the first racist account and think how you would react if somebody threw racial slurs at you for being white.

Watch the following social ads.  Which one did you like the most? Why?  As you can see some were made by students themselves.  What would your anti-racist ad be like? 

Write your first acrostic poem, obviously addressed at freedom.

Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
Really. Sure about it? I still see pain, anguish, anger around me.
Everlasting chains.  Wish our century could see the disapperance of them.
Energy, positive thinking and hope will make those shackles melt away
During my lifetime I have something to say
Ordeal, human ordeal, lift your eyes of dissent
Make all see your wrath, make all tremble with shame till peace has its last say
!

33 Replies to “SAY NO TO RACISM, SAY NO TO DISCRIMINATION”

  1. Since the two videos I liked the most are the first and the second one and since they are very strong and have a big impact on people who watch them, my ad would probably be really impressive.
    I would put together people from different backgrounds and with diferent colour of skin and set between them a strong and striking situation, as in the first video, in order to catch the audience's attention. In fact I noticed that I usually remember advertisements that strike me or shock me in some ways and then I would try to create something that makes people think about racialism and discrimination, hoping that we will someday understand how useless and stupid prejudices are.

  2. Since I really liked the last video, my ad would probably be somehow similiar to it. I would show people coming from different countries and with different skin colours, giving all the same message: "Turn off the light on racism". Moreover I would make them hug one another, in order to show narrow-minded people that, no matter the colour of our skin, we are all human beings and the differences between us make us simply more beautiful. In my ad, I'd put even some images of black and white children, because I believe we should all follow their example. In fact, they don't look at the colour of your skin and they're not interested in where you come from or whether you're rich or poor. They simply enjoy their time together, regardless of the differences there are between them.

    My poem:

    Finally free. If that's what you want to be
    Raise your voice and make some noise.
    Even if it all seems to fall apart, try your best to make them listen to your heart.
    Even though they all seem blind
    Don't ever give up: always try to speak your mind.
    Open the world's eyes,
    Make everyone see how powerful you can be, when you decide to spread your wings and finally begin to fly.

    Valentina.

  3. Foretaste the sweetness of what you gained
    Raise your hand and your voice and let people make the same choice
    Escape from the yoke of the rotten narrow-mindedness
    Extricate the strings of fear that bind you to the past, but
    Don't erase it, don't forget it
    Once-blacks and white, once-men and women, once-omosexual and heterosexual but from now on, simply human beings with our
    Marvellous variety. Different but equal.

    The video that has the strongest impact on me is the last one because there are boys and girls from different countries, with different skin tones, with different backgrounds, all together, making the effort of fighting racism.
    “Turn off the light on racism, and make up your mind because we are of the same colour when we're in the dark” is a powerful message that we have to bear in mind. We are different, it's true, but because our personality and that's what we have to consider.

    Since I've been struck also by the essentiality of the last video, I would make my own ad along the lines of it. That is, I would use people of different nationality in order to let people think about their unsubstantiated behaviour.I think I would involve children because they should be an example for adults that have grown up but have not matured yet. In fact children play all together, regardless of the aspects that make them somehow different.

    Silvia S.

  4. In my opinion the second video brings about in an excellent way one of the messages that regard the racism issue: it makes you become an ugly person, so don’t discriminate just for the nationality and the colour of the skin. Nowadays we are bombarded with the idea of appearing beautiful and stereotypes of beauty are constantly imposed by our society, making us becoming shallow and forgetting what really makes us “BEAUTIFUL”. Racism shows no love, unity, harmony or peace among people, it is ignorant and carries only pain and suffering. We must think about it, we must cope with the reality of discrimination and stop hiding behind a “nice face”…we must see that what is really significant is our inner, our soul, how we behave and our attitudes, how we feel and the thoughts we have. Racism just doesn’t take part in a personality of “a beautiful person”, the more you judge without knowing, the more you hurt someone’s feeling just because he is “different”, the uglier you become…it doesn’t matter how you esthetically are, no cosmetics could help healing your disease of being racist and discriminating.
     
    Fabiola C.

  5. Free? What does it mean?
    Reach a sense of equality, stop feeling inferior
    Escape from the prison of ignorance and judgment
    Enhance the self-confidence, helping our feelings to raise up
    Discrimination doesn’t exist anymore, that is being free
    Only joining our voices and our efforts we can make the difference
    Marvellous will be the sacrifices in order to change this ignorance 

    Fabiola C.

  6. Finding a catching ad in order to involve the attention of a relevant amount of people isn’t easy, but I reckon there are determined elements that in some ways could help us, like the songs and the images. I would choice a sweet melody that smoothes the listeners’ heart, but at the same time I would choice a severe voice that makes the message reaching the minds directly, with short but smart sentences. Moreover I would opt for strong images that represent people from different nationalities and different cultures, staying together, covered by an atmosphere of brotherhood and not caring about their different skin colour or their different physiognomy, because this just can’t make any difference, we are all human beings and we must refuse any form of prejudice.
    ME MUSTN’T DISCRIMINATE IF WE DON’T KNOW, otherwise we’ll show only a bad side of us.

    My God prof, I tried 56 times to add an image, but I really couldn't be able to do it, I'm sorry! 🙁

    Fabiola C.

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