Colorism In The Film School Daze, Directed By Spike Lee

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Externally Black America has faced many adversities regarding systems, laws, and institutions that are unjust and influences the everyday lives of African Americans; however, internally the divisions of Black America mentally restricts men and woman daily. The two major divisions that Black America fails to overcome is colorism and classism. The HBCU environment serves as a foundation of the clash of colorism and classism due to the fact that there is a majority of African Americans, but all stemming from different backgrounds. Spike Lee emphasizes how Black America is divided through the depiction of colorism and classism in his film School Daze released in 1988. The film shows through the HBCU environment how detrimental colorism and classism can be to African American’s daily lives and …show more content…

The history of Black America shows generations of oppression as well as a glass ceiling with a majority of black families unable to break free from lower class. The only hope for Black America to break the oppression during the time period of School Daze is to attain a college degree in order to climb the class ladder, but that is if an African American is fortunate enough to go to college. In the film school daze the students are socially conscience of their class, “this movie identifies the conflict between the campus and those of the town where the university resides, and allows viewers to openly see both sides,” (The Orange & Blue Stories We Carry page 3). This quote is referring to the scene in which the students of Mission College encounter the men who reside in the town but do not attend college. Spike Lee purposefully places this scene in the movie in order to show the viewers the different perspectives African Americans have of classism in the black community. On one hand, the problem of classism is detrimental to African Americans because those of lower class have embraced the ideology that the black community will always be less than when compared to the rest of