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Mirrors And Windows By Patricia Williams Summary

578 Words3 Pages

Mirrors and Windows is an essay by Patricia J. Williams, whom speaks about society’s views of racism towards African-Americans in the mid-1990s. She starts off by describing how people overlook and deal the idea of racism by providing several examples of real occurrences in the United States. Williams discusses the events of officers luring a hundred African Americans to a fancy event, a teenager’s rape case, and Mike Tyson’s domestic violence case. Her examples enable the readers to see what society is doing wrong. People simply do not want to get involved, and if they do, they will cause distress to the victims. So the question the author ask of readers is: how would we deal with these issues if we are told to laugh it off and not make a commotion by our peers? Williams provided readers with detailed events and little feedback of her own only for readers to fully comprehend the situation at hand. …show more content…

It allowed me to understand that the media plays a huge role in influencing peoples views. The only way we know what is going on in our society is by reading it from a newspaper or watching it from a television. The media has to alter the story in order to attract more viewers and this causes several misconceptions. Referring back to the rape case, Tawana Brawley endured a lot of feedback from spectators who did not know the whole story. Most were stereotypic insults, claiming that she was a prostitute that was not actually raped. This misconception came about by the condition she was described to be in when she was found. When she was able to speak up about her situation, the media distracted viewers by digging into her background as well as anybody who was associated with her. Viewers were able to assume what kind of person she grew up to

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