Jazmine Robinson
English 1020
Analysis paper
Zebrahead
There are many ways to describe racism; it’s not always described as the discrimination against someone else’s skin color. People should understand that in every race there are stereotypes. Racism is a very important thing to deal with, and it also plays a big part in our society life style. When it comes down to relationships, friendships, and pure association with people racism can play a major factor. For years racism has stopped our nation’s different ethnicities from being able to use the same water fountains, and stopped them from interracial marriages and friendships. The movie zebrahead shows racism among people different races. It goes deep into interracial relationships, friendships, and stereotypes. I found this movie to be very persuasive.
Zebrahead was filmed in Detroit. It introduced the city as being a racist place. In the beginning of the movie, they introduced the main characters. Which was Dee, Nut, Zack, and Nikki. Dee was Described a well known nice black guy, who everyone got along with whether you were black or not. Zack a Jewish kid who everyone thought was white, who loved to do something that everyone felt was so out of his culture which was to D.J and was very close to Dee. Nut was a black guy known as the trouble maker. Nikki, who was known as the black girl new to the school and had came from another black area, and a host of innocent other kids that was trying to get along with one another and put racism behind them and others that didn’t associate with anyone else outside their race.
Zack and Dee were best friends. They both looked out for one another and they had a lot of respect for each other despite there different skin colors or what anyone else thought of their friendship. Dee’s parents felt they can never have a perfect friendship because of their skin color and because they backgrounds was so different. The principal was even antagonizing their friendship telling Zack to “stay with his own clan.” Although they parents, peers and a host of other people outside their race that found it to be wired that they were such good friend they still managed to stick together and remain good friends. I found their friendship to be very inspiring simply because they were so different, and although times for them did get rough at home and even at school they tried to show the world what a true friendship is. At school they would be they only two sitting together while everyone else is divided and only eating with their race. I feel they were trying to send a message out. The message I got was even though we are different as far as our skin color we still have a lot of things in common and we still can learn a lot from one another.
Some people don’t try to communicate outside their race. They prefer to stay with their own Gender, sexuality or religious preference and I think that this is wrong. Some people feel that the only ones that would understand them are those of a kindred spirit. And I totally disagree. There are many things that find interesting about other cultures that I would like to learn more about like. They friendship is one of the things that I found very persuasive in the movie. It persuades me to want to meet different people outside my race to learn more about them and the things they go through.
In the movie Zack and Nikki falls into a deep romantic relationship that everyone felt was not cool. Zack father accepted their relationship but Nikki mother wasn’t happy about it at all. She didn’t allow Zack nowhere near their home and wanted to hear nothing about them being together she felt it would only cause more drama on top of the friendship. Nikki mother was making all kind of assumptions about him, based on his appearance.
Bad things come out of racism. It breaks up friendships, and relationships. One of the most common things that come from racism is death. Death affects racism in the sense that usually the person that’s the target doesn’t end up dying, it’s the innocent ones that dies instead. This classic case was shown in the movie Zebrahead Dee gets killed by Nut all because he liked Nikki and didn’t approve of her dating someone outside her race. Ultimately, Dee wasn’t the target but he was simply a victim of the whole situation by him being friends with the Zack and cousins with Nikki it put him in the middle of the situation. Nikki and Zacks relationship got broke up because of Dee’s death. Everyone felt that because of their relationship it was the cause of Dee’s death.
In reality, this happens every day many innocent people are killed because of one’s Racism, jealousy, and ignorance. This can be seen every day when one turn on the world news and you hear about the different militia, and hate groups killing each other because of their prejudice against others who don’t believe in the same religion or cultural values as they do. A perfect example of this would be the genocide of the people in Congo. Militia group was killing in an entire tribe because they didn’t believe in the same cultural values as they did. Life is too short and precious to let petty differences divide us.
I find this movie to be very persuasive, I feel that the author was trying to send out a message about racism, interracial relationships and friendships and how it affect people all over the world. The author persuaded me to want to meet new people and even try the whole interracial dating thing. Before seeing this movie I have never thought about dating anyone other than what’s in my race and I think the reason was because I was going to be afraid of what people think of the whole idea. There is absolutely nothing wrong with interracial dating or friendships. The authors logical argument was to get viewers to go deep into racism and how it affect so many people’s life’s in every way shape and form.
All in all racism has once again been proven to hurt people over and over. Bad things come out of racism. It breaks up friendships, and relationships. Racism is a very negative factor that’s seems to never go away. The movie shows how no matter how any different race try to bring everyone together it only takes one ignorant person to mess it up by being ignorant.