The Great Debaters': Summary Essay

When Pangaea or Pangea, a supercontinent that existed during the Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras, began breaking apart about 175 million years ago, the broken pieces of land started forming positions and now are believed to be existing as the continents in the world. After years of settlement, today we humans stand divided within these continents. The ironic part is that we humans haven’t been separated by these continents and the ocean, but by the walls of racism and made each other such distant strangers that we find animals like dogs and cats more lovable and closer rather than humans. There is an Igbo word, called nkali, a noun that means ‘to be greater than another’. If Power can have killed millions and billions in the two World Wars, can’t it simply rift apart the humans for the greed of who is more powerful?

Racism, the worst of the worse things the human mind created has been echoing the cries and shouts of millions of sufferers over the centuries. What is Racism? The prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people based on their caste, color, race, religion, gender, or any such characteristics which segregate them into groups is racism. In simplest words, the prejudices of people making them believe that a particular category or sect is superior and the rest are inferior are Racism. Who decides whether a group of people is inferior or superior? On what grounds? These questions have been raised for centuries and centuries but none has had an answer. This essay is depicting the theme of Chapter 3 (Finishing School) of the book Reverberations. It is an essay written by Maya Angelou. The chapter depicts the theme of skin color discrimination, also known as ‘Colourism’ which means segregating people into blacks and whites, where blacks are considered inferior and the whites are considered the superiors. The chapter revolves around the protagonist whose name is Margaret, a young black girl working as a help at a white’s house, as she finishes school talks about how sophisticated the whites live and how she and others like her being inferior are not provided with the means and ways of life. She talks about her mistress having a lavish life with the perfect particulars for everything. Here, Maya has displayed as to how the protagonist Margaret looks in awe at her mistress’s lifestyle filled with luxuries and plenty of fineries, yet feels pity for the sufferings and sad life, where the lady has to accept stepdaughters because their mother is fairer than her. The setting seems to be a bit of the 19th or 20th Century, where the mistresses would meet in the ‘longue’ for tea parties, ‘balancing the teacups perfectly on their knees’.

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About the theme of Racism, a movie that quite perfectly fits in is ‘The great debaters’, Directed by Denzel Washington. It was released in the year 2007. The movie ‘The great debaters’, is a real-life story of Melvin. B Tolson, a professor at Willey College in Texas. Denzel Washington himself is a part of the cast, where he portrayed the character of Melvin. B Tolson. The movie depicts the discrimination faced by African Americans or the “Blacks” as they were called, during the era of the Depression. The film depicts how being considered low and inferior by the ‘whites’, the Negros face difficulties in getting the basic facilities. Even education is divided where the blacks and whites have separate colleges. The protagonist, Melvin. B Tolson inspired students to form the school's first debate team to challenge Harvard in the national championship. This was the first time when a Black college competed with the whites and defeated a White college, thus winning the debate competition. The Willey College team defeated the Harvard College of the whites. However, in the real life, they had defeated The University of Southern California. Melvin.B. Tolson formed a debating team of four debaters. Henry Lowe is the first debater who fools and drinks around but is undoubtedly intelligent. Next is Hamilton Burgress who is a wonderful debater. James Farmer Jr. is a 14-year-old and the youngest debater and the last is Samantha Booke, the only female debater on the team. Melvin Tolson trains and grills them into the finest of the debaters. He feels that debating will bring out the true hidden Skills of the blacks and a possible way of showing the world that being black doesn’t change intelligence. A very famous dialogue of Melvin Tolson from the movie (The Great Debaters) is, “Debate is combat, but your weapons are words.” He is also a renowned poet and other than the academia, is secretly the organizer of a national sharecropper’s union. Therefore, he also has a political angle in this movie where the local whites believe him to be a dangerous radical. The most fascinating part is that he also includes the poor white and not just the poor blacks. He takes the debaters to out-of-town debates, which help them develop themselves into better debaters. In the end, the debaters defeat the Harvard University of whites, thus triumphing over the victory of the first black team.

The movie strongly portrays the protagonist, Professor Melvi. B Tolson is a determined person who is not cut off easily. The struggles he has gone through are beyond appreciation. And the most significant part is that he is secretly helping the poor people for justice, who include not just the blacks but also the whites. A small but impactful approach stating that the blacks have never segregated the whites or considered different, even though they had been. They have always accepted them and strived for unity whenever possible. Here, Melvin includes the poor whites also in his organization.

Although this movie portrays the Depression era, when the actions were taken violently, even in today’s world though every nation proudly celebrates its independence, we still haven’t come out from the cage of Colourism and Racism. Non-violent ways have been proven so effective today, that the anti-racists are helpless and can’t do anything. The best example to follow is Cosmetics. The advertisements portray ways to become fairer and perfect shot at dark-skinned people for a decade and yet stand safe and unharmed.

In an article by Jonas R. Kunst and Esther N. Phillibert on Plos One website, they stated the possibility of the origin of Colourism or skin color discrimination. As per the article, it was during European Colonialism and slavery, it steadily got associated that ‘dark skin represents savagery, irrationality, ugliness, and inferiority’ whereas whiteness represents ’civility, rationality, beauty, and superiority’.

A reference to the plight of the blacks during the colonial time had been listed in one of my History textbooks during school time, of which I can still remember a few instances. Like, we were told that the slaves were bought and sold in markets. There were categories of black slaves depending on their age, weight, physically built, etc. The younger the slave, the higher was he priced because he had more capacity to do work. Animals were treated better than them. Some instances were printed that the slaves were not allowed an education, and if they tried reading or writing, they were ruthlessly and mercilessly punished, sometimes leading to deaths.

The white mob sometimes even lynched the slaves. There has also been a similar scene in the movie “The great debaters”, where a white mob had just lynched a black man and had set his body on fire. The Willey team and Melvin are shown to visit the place just then and are barely able to escape with their own lives from the merciless white mob.

Another article by David Olusoga named “The roots of European racism lie in the slave trade, colonialism – and Edward Long” on The Guardian website, is a crystal-clear article on the history of the pitiful black slaves. He also talks about the book ‘History of Jamaica’ written by Edward Long in 1774. The most ironic fact about the book is that Edward Long has written down his racial ideas about Africans when he had never set foot on African soil. The worst part was that his ideas were accepted to be scientific against the fact that he never had any scientific training, and was just a slave owner whose father was also a slave owner. Today his book is considered the classic text of the 18th Century European pseudo-scientific racism.

To the article of David Olusoga, the book ‘History of Jamaica’ written by Edward created a mindset and conception of the people of Europe about the place Jamaica. In a TED Global Conference of 2009, ‘The danger of a single story’, a talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie states how we humans are so vulnerable that we listen, read, and watch stories of a place and build up our prejudices about that place. Build up our own single story and live with that by accepting it as the only possible truth and nothing else. Although the talk was more about the single-story concept, there were some things that she said that make things very clear.

She shared an incident when she went to the US for further studies from Nigeria, her roommate was shocked to see that she could speak English, could operate a gas stove, and listen to English songs, because her roommate ad made her prejudices based on pity and all that she had heard, thus thinking that even the speaker would be an illiterate tribal.

The TED Talk is more on attacking the Stereotypes rather than Racism, it is an equally important and relevant point she refers to in her concept of the single story. Although the Blacks and the Africans have been treated as slaves and have been discriminated against in the past, even today when all the countries are independent, we still look up to them with pity and sympathy because of the many versions of the single story that we have heard about their past. She says that we must seek diverse perspectives, then only will every person be able to write his one story. They had a sorrowful and struggling past, but it’s gone and finished, yet it still haunts them today because of the prejudices of the world.

The movie, The great debaters is a perfect mirror image of how ruthless the world was towards the blacks. It talks about determination and faith in oneself. Blacks have always been looked upon down and have been pitied because we think they don’t have adequate resources. The movie displays how the debating team fought off all the prejudices of society and defeat the ‘whites’ thus proving that they are equivalent to the rest of the world. They have equal talents and brilliance, just aren’t allowed to prove themselves. And when given, they bring out the best of themselves leaving the world shocked.

Discriminating against individuals based on their skin color is the worst of what mankind could do. Skin color is something an individual has no right to, being born black or white does not matter. It’s the person within that does. God didn’t give everybody the same strength and weaknesses, he made each one different, not in the sense of superiority or inferiority, nor prettiness, but in the sense of personality. Being fairer or darker in complexion, being of any religion, any gender, speaking any language or any such thing does not matter. What matters is the inner beauty, the values of love, honesty, hard work, morality, and capability. The stories which we have heard may or may not be true, and solely relying on them is our foolishness.

It’s up to us, whether to stick to the past and keep weeping, or think about the future and start working. There is a beautiful quote that states,

“Yesterday was history,

Tomorrow is a mystery,

Today is a gift from God

Which is why we call it present...”

We need to live in present and for that forget the past. What’s done is done. It’s time to remove the ‘black and white glasses’ and to see the colorful world. Colors don’t degrade the picture, they enhance it. All of us, no wonder of what color have the same heart that beats within and the same red blood flowing through our veins.

Every problem has a solution. Every today has a tomorrow, a better and happier one. We have to create our tomorrow. Our own world.

It’s time to create a whole new world. A world that every suppressed has dreamt of. A world that every human in this world has dreamt together.

Let’s bring ‘The end’ of this ‘Black and white story’ together. It’s time to write a ‘Colourful story’, one written by all of us together. A story that is filled with laughter and harmony.

A story that has ‘no black and no white’. A story that has just colors!

I would like to end this essay with a quote,

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

-Nelson Mandela