Recapping Two Course Documents

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Introduction

During this course, I had the opportunity to watch several documentaries that enlightened men on different perspectives of cultural diversity. These documentaries contained a variety of different methods used to examine several cultural diversity issues within America. Racism, sexism, ageism, and social class were the main topics that were examined in these videos and documentaries. As part of the process, researchers creatively designed experiments that uncovered how people instinctively respond when it is not apparent that they are being watched. Reports such as these must be carefully crafted and presented in an objective manner. If critical steps are overlooked, this kind of research tactic can easily been interpreted as intrusive, dishonest, bias, or unethical. That might ultimately defeat the purpose and distract the viewer from understanding, and that may become counter-productive to the message the researcher is attempting to convey. All documentaries presented were necessary for us to gain a true consideration of the cultural diversity issues this country faces. Some documentaries contained the element of surprise by using hidden camera tactics. It is no secret that cameras have a tendency to change individuals’ attitudes, if they are conscious of the fact that they are being filmed. Though all of the video and documentaries were impactful, the two documentaries that had the most impact on my learning were:

1. “True Colors”, Diane Sawyer, ABC News, 1992

2. “Divided We Fall”, Valarie Kaur, New Moon , 2006

In this first mini-report, I will critique these two documentaries, and show why they had the most impact on understanding of cultural diversity.

True Colors: Racial Discrimination in Everyd...

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...these documentaries used hidden cameras in an attempt to give viewers could get an uncovered assessment of American’s true attitude about race. Valarie Kaur‘s documentary gave a more extreme example of hatred, which involved killing innocent people based on the way they look in an act of so called retaliation. Diane Sawyer’s documentary demonstrated the everyday discrimination that minorities encounter in certain parts of this country. Still the issue that both authors put foremost is racism. The Sawyer documentary took place in the early 1990s and Kaur’s documentary showed the same kind of hatred occurring almost 10 years later. America has made progress in changing the laws and defining the socially acceptable boundaries for racism. But these videos show that we still are far away from eliminating certain mindsets that generate this kind of racial tension.

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