School Daze By Spike Lee

School Daze is a 1988 African American film that was written, directed and starred by Spike Lee. The movie starred other names such as Lawrence Fishburne and Tisha Campbell-Martin as students at the historically black college, Mission College. This movie was based off of Spike Lee’s experiences at Morehouse College, Spelman College and Clark Atlanta University as a college student. The story follows the pledging process of the Alpha Chapter of Gamma Phi Gamma and more widely is about fraternities and sororities clashing with other students on the campus. The story actually touches on certain topics that are real in the African American community, such as skin tone bias and hair quality. The life of the characters in the movie can be compared

There is a large problem with skin color and can be seen as the root problem of all other problems students face. The problem is highlighted by the feud between the Black Nationalist group lead by Dap and the Gamma Phi Gamma Fraternity and Gamma Rays. Dap shows many ways in which he is against light skinned blacks as he believes that they aren’t pure and that he is. This makes him dislike the fraternities and sororities (namely Gamma Phi Gamma Fraternity and Gamma Rays) as they are of lighter skin. Also, the problem is highlighted when the Gamma Rays and other female students had a disagreement. They called each other names like “jiggaboo” and “wannabes” as they the darker skinned “jiggaboo” girls felt like they were better than the lighter skinned “wannabes” and vice versa. These problems are problems that are faced today as African Americans make it seem like light skinned and dark skinned are two different races and tend to judge each other based on hair type, hair style choice, skin color

Personally, I believe his statement was meant to the members of the African American community. This statement was to tell people to stop the judgment and somewhat racism towards each other. Telling us to stop tearing down each other and attempt to bring each other up. As the problems faced in the movie, such as skin color prejudice, hair type prejudice and other racisms that we place on each other are problems that people face in reality, Dap’s statement was meant to tell us to wake up and stop placing persons on a pedestal because of skin color and other physical features. His “Wake Up” statement is a wakeup call to the African American community that we should uplift each other and stop tearing each other