Race and the abuse of power
Most people would assume this video is about violence in modern America. However, I will argue, it is doubtlessly about race and the abuse of power. The viewer needs to notice what the video is about: nothing changes without us acknowledging the importance of racism and the abuse of power going on in the world. The author uses different ways to pull the viewers’ attention to understand what preceded him to make the video. This video is called “This Is America” it was made by Donald Glover under his musical stage name Childish Gambino and was released on May 15th of 2018.
The author uses identity politics, such as race. As seen in the video, the repetitiveness of the word “Black man.” He is speaking as if he’s addressing the African American race in particular. You could also observe how there are only African Americans in the video.
In the video, you will witness the mass choir shooting. It connects to recent events that were racially motivated, such as the Charleston massacre. When Gambino says, ” This a celly, that’s a tool,” you’ll see the black children with masks on their faces recording police brutality and racial crimes. The repetitiveness of “tell somebody” suggests they can speak up and tell someone what is happening. (Glover)
To furthermore explain the meaning behind Donald Glover, “This Is America,” many were curious as to why he stood the way he did when he shot the innocent man playing the guitar. The reason behind the posture was Jim Crow (Glover). Jim crow were laws that were created in the 1880s to enforce racism, segregation and mock the African American race. His purpose of place the stance in the first part of the video was to grasp the viewers’ attention as to what the video may entail.
Childish Gambino is trying to show the viewer the abuse of power going on as well. Abuse of power in the education system, he has school-aged children dancing with him, being distracted by social media platforms of all sorts, not being educated on what is going on, and the nature of racism or gun violence. In the video you can see after every crime that happens he hands the weapons to a child who takes the gun away in a red cloth, most would interpret the scenes as a reference to Americans’ willingness to protect gun rights over the society, despite the worlds alarmingly high rates of gun violence, they just the gun away as if nothing has happened (Glover). Police continuously abuse their power by committing unjust acts of police brutality against the African American community without any persons successfully pursuing consequences.
Donald Glovers’ argument in the said video is that we let the abuse of power, and other sources distract us from real problems plaguing America. It is important that these strategies are identified because there is so much going on today specifically, hate crimes, many protests, riots, situations regarding police brutality, etc., that some of us may not have realized because we are to absentminded. Nothing changes until we are not distracted anymore. Nothing ought to change until we end the abuse of power, and nothing will culminate until we recognize and cease racism and racially motivated crimes against the African American community.