American Violet - Essay

There are many sociological concepts portrayed in this video. One of them is ethnocentrism.
Calvin believed that all whites were superior to African Americans and that all they did was cause trouble. He forced that one african american man to write out a list of random names so that they could go and accuse those innocent people of dealing with drugs. Dee Roberts was one of the people wrongly accused. Another concept was deviance. Dee’s oldest daughter got into a fight with another little girl outside their church because the little girl told Dee’s daughter that her mother was a drug addict. One more example of a sociological concept is culture shock. When Calvin found out that his daughter was with a black man, he beat her and kicked her out of the house. He just automatically had an assumption about all blacks in his head and even took it out on his own daughter.
Before this movie, I felt that racism and prejuding people based on where they come from is a very ignorant, and negative thing to do. My feelings have not changed whatsoever. After seeing this, it just showed to me how bad things really could get if people just listened to what everyone else says about a certain group of individuals. Noone would get the chance to know a person for who they were if they simply prejudged them. You have to get to know someone for who they are and not their skin color, religion, ethnic background, etc. This movie is very insightful and I liked the issues portrayed in it a lot. This movie is relevant to sociology because it shows how society acted towards one another just based on skin colors. The blacks were all in their own little area and the whites stayed in their own area as well. The two groups didn’t really mix and the blacks were mostly looked down upon. When the police first went to the apartments that Dee and her family lived in, they didn’t care who they hurt. All they cared about was getting the blacks and punishing them. They really had no proof that any of them really did do drugs, they just took the letter from the African American man and automatically took them. It was not fair in any way and should even be allowed.