As a Chinese, I rarely experience so-called racial discrimination in China. To a certain extent, our regional discrimination and class discrimination can be brought up on the stage nakedly and clearly, or we can argue and discuss with each other. But racial discrimination, everyone knows that it is wrong, so no one will approve of it on the surface, but it will always embarrass you and harass you in some details, making you stick in your throat but cannot argue.
I have always read about racial discrimination in the United States, and I feel that the black community is making a fuss. They have been favored too much in education, survival, and social welfare, but they are still not satisfied. From time to time, any disputes can be labeled as racial discrimination, which is really annoying. Are you mentally vulnerable? It was not until I went abroad to New Zealand at the age of 30, an equal, free and friendly country, that I experienced the kind of unspoken but lingering discrimination that I really understood the subtlety of the so-called racial discrimination.
The Don Shirley in the film is popular and respected when he is an object, an object that entertains and gives listeners the label "cultured". Even the super treatment of red carpet paving and applause. But at the same time, as a person, he was trampled on, expelled, ridiculed. This discrimination, because the first role of his identity is weakened, becomes very subtle. People want to resist but have nowhere to do it, want to argue, but can't even find a debater. Really aggrieved.
What's more terrifying is that this kind of discrimination will not disappear because of your closeness to an individual in the group. You think that by getting close to an individual, you understand this group, and you can no longer look at this group with colored glasses, but often ignore the influence of social norms and potential public opinion.
Tony Lip respects, loves and accepts Don Shirley for his talent and personality. But when black decorators came to the house, he would still let the men in the family come over to accompany his wife. What a black man has taken, he may still throw away.
The process by which he accepted Don Shirley was to isolate Don Shirley from the black community and count him as a member of his own people, not because of this one person to accept his group.
Therefore, we can also perceive why black Americans have struggled for so many years, but they are still so insecure in their social identity. That's because discrimination is like a needle, it keeps wandering, and you can't find it, and it's even harder to eradicate it.
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