a maid for the upper crust. This was viewed as acceptable by the majority, but Gordon Parks’s work shows the African-American population as virtual slaves, entrapped by their immobility in both the social and career arena. By placing Ms. Watson between the cleaning tools and in front of a blurry backwards flag, Gordon Parks used his camera to shed light on the inherent suffering and second-class citizenship of African-Americans. He touched upon a lifestyle accepted by blacks at that time as all they could do, and by whites at that time as what miseducation taught as “justice for all.”For my final example about the inherent miseducation of the American masses, I’d like to recollect a scene viewed in class from Spike Lee’s movie “School Daze” which provided a much more recent (1980s) visualization on the influence of white miseducation on African American females. In this dramatically staged scene of dueling groups of young collegiate women arguing over who has “better hair”, I believe that Spike Lee sought out to portray a much deeper point than simple vanity. With the girls with supposedly “good” hair sporting gray sweatshirts with giant “W”’s on them and having long and carefully styled and colored heads of hair, he attempted to show how the white influence has miseducated these girls into thinking that these looks (inherently stemming from the styling used by white females) are to be considered “better” than their counterparts with the “naturally” styled or “kinky” African American hair. This bold statement by these women in turn prompts the other rival group of girls to poke fun at these girls as white “wanna-be’s” who should want to show the natural beauty of their hair without extensions, styling products, or artificial color. The scene basically pits one racial stereotype of “better...
