Racial Tensions In Remember The Titans

A couple of films that I watched personally that I feel really speaks to the culture and tensions of the time the film was to take place is Remember the Titans a movie about racial tension as town begins to desegregating schools and the other film is Men of Honor which was a film inspired by the true story of Master Chief Petty Officer Carl Brashear the first african american navy diver. Both of these films deal heavily with racism in the United States. The first film Remember the Titans was set in the 1970’s during a point in time where in the United States was going through a cultural change of the civil rights movements of equality for African Americans. The film is centered around a town that is desegregating its school and allowing black students

to attend a white school. The racial tone of the movie is felt from the start as you see the football players which the movie based on, practicing. All of the players in this scene are white as another player runs up to say there is a riot breaking out about the “colored” boy who had gotten killed. The players react and run after them. You can see at the start how race will be the key tone to the movie. As the movie goes along of course things begin to change slowly for most people in the town as you see the walls begin to come down for the players as well as the folks in the town. I think this is a perfect portrayal of our culture in the country.

Slow as it may be I think that you see how overtime a lot of things have changed in our culture the way they changed in film, from the start of the film from the hatred and unwillingness to allow the changes of African American students in their schools and allowing for the first African American Head football coach in their town, the town begins to relax and accept the changes and move on. The second film shows again the racial divide and the fight for equality in America. The film Men of Honor is based on Master Chief Carl Brashear who fought to become a Navy diver something that was not allowed in the Navy during that time period which was the 1950’s to 1960’s. You seem from the start the parallels of the time by not allowing Carl to even attend the diving school and sabotaging him in every way. You again see the similarities of what the culture was like then in America, and this is honestly the best example as this was based off of a man who went through these struggles. I chose these films because although they both deal with the same issue of racism I feel they do the best job of capturing the true nature of what our culture was like at the

time. However the other tie in for me is how you see things change, the way our culture has changed over the years and has become more tolerant and accepting of everyone regardless of sex, race, religion or sexual orientation. Unfortunately I live in an area that has unfortunately had a hard time allowing these changes and has stayed close minded in Missouri. Not to say everyone in our great state has these issues but I have seen it first hand and continue to hope that over time just like in these films more and more people become tolerant of people’s differences, I know these are beliefs that I place in my daughter.