Racial Discrimination In A Raisin In The Sun

734 Words3 Pages
Before reading the play, a raisin in the sun, racial discrimination came to me as an unfamiliar topic that didn’t hold much importance and interest to me. In my mind, it was a practice that didn’t have much effect, a practice that would come up in my history exam, and a practice that “other” group of people, specifically African American, would experience. Without knowing, ignorance and prejudice grew inside me.
I think that my education, personal experience, and most importantly, mass media have resulted in such narrow and biased perspective. Having been raised in French and South Korean education system, I only learnt about it through history textbooks as an event in the past. Also, I have not yet witnessed and experienced any racial discrimination. This made me underestimate its adverse impact on the people and deluded into thinking that that it’s almost nonexistent now. On the other hand, the mass media kept showing me images of African Americans rioting against it, causing me to assume that it is “their” problem, not “ours”.
However, a story of Younger’s family struck me completely and challenged my previously held ideas and beliefs toward racial discrimination. Unlike other plays, Lorraine Hansberry’s characters and plots were so believable that I could actually identify with them and understand their situation and emotions in their shoes.
As discussed in the class, the characters have similar dreams and obstacles that many of us have in actual life situations. For