The Theory Of Identity In The Documentary's Last Chance Of Eden

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The world that God created is a beautiful place, but it has been corrupt by hatred, prejudice, racism and discrimination. As it relates to each individual, including myself we all have different world views. God created all of us to love each other and to be accepting towards each other regardless of skin color, gender, religion and sexuality. The documentary, Last Chance of Eden, allowed me to view and understand where each man and woman world view consist of in the society that we live in today. Upon watching the film the two people that I would like to discuss are Pat Burson and Tom Burke. While observing and listening to the pain and hurt of Ms. Burson, internally I felt the affliction that she felt. As it relate to Tom Burke, not every …show more content…

The book mentions that the R/CID model proposed here is not a comprehensive theory of personality, but rather a conceptual framework to aid therapist in understanding their culturally diverse clients’ attitudes and behavior (Sue & Sue, 2016, pp.366). While watching the film, I instantly got sad by the way Pat felt. She has developed a lot of hurt and pain internally relating to the experiences that she has to face as a black woman and in the work place. From my point of view I would describe her level of identity being confused and not knowing where to place herself in society. For example when she voiced the statement “I’m trying to figure out who I am? Who you want me to be? Who you see? How not to offend you? How to know how far to offend you, before I lose my job? Because Pat feel this way, she can’t seem to understand why Euro Americans feel as though what has happened to people of color doesn’t exist and has been swept under the rug by most …show more content…

I observed Tom has being a very observing and calm person. Meaning his demeanor at some points in the film were nonchalant. As mentioned earlier in my essay for example, when Pat collaborated on the statement that he made in the work pace, he felt as though he is doing black people and others persons of color a favor. At other times, I view his identity level as wanting to understand and hear what people of color are presented with on a daily basis, their reactions, beliefs and most of all their feelings. For example, when he mentioned to Dennard Clendenin, because they had resided in the same room, he wanted to start hanging out with Dennard. Tom and Dennard begin to get acquainted with each other. Tom wanted to get to know Dennard on a personal level as it relates to him being a black man and the challenges that he has to encounter being a person of color.
Tom and Dennard were able to express what it’s like to be a Euro American and African American males. The attitude that was showed by Tom in the film was eagerness, because all he knew was white identity and never really focused on how people of color felt about the society that we live in. After having conversations with Dennard, Tom came to believe that he didn’t know being a black man was very complex, because he wasn’t in the shoes of Dennard. Tom begin to look at his inner self and hoping to change his world view of what he have

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