#relg102 medium post 2

Before reading these materials, I was familiar with the works of W.E.B Dubois, as I had read him in my American History class in 11th grade. I knew that Dubois was one of the preeminent African-American scholars in the country. However, I was familiar with neither Birth of a Nation, though I had heard of it, nor Pinn’s works before this assignment. I did not know what to expect with either of these pieces.

In the Dubois reading, I was struck by the section in which he talks about the struggle of balancing an African identity on one hand, as he states that black people don’t want to “bleach [their] Negro soul[s] in a flood of white Americanism, for [they] know that Negro blood has a message for the world,” and an American identity on the other. Why would an African-American want anything to do with a country that had given them so little?

Birth of a Nation was impactful for me because of the stereotypes played out in the film. While the fact that blackface and other stereotypes were common in older movies, I was surprised and disgusted by the glorification fact of the Klu Klux Klan. I found particularly disturbing the scene in which they are galloping down the highway, as it resembled images of medieval knights who were supposedly “chivalrous” on their way to save the damsel in distress in the movie from forces of evil.

I saw similarities between the depiction of black men in Birth of a Nation and in the Lebron Vogue cover. The animalistic stereotype stands out in the “shut up and dribble” language that has been prevalent in society for years now: people see black men only as a brute force whose only role is to play basketball and not push for social change, like Lebron does.