What is America?
Singer/ song writer Donald Glover, also known by his stage name Childish Gambino in his song “This is America” published on May 5th 2018 addresses the topic of racism and discrimination, and argues that discrimination and racism along with mistreatment is a large issue within the united states. He supports this claim inferring black males in his song multiple times. Glovers purpose is to get people to see the mistreatment and discrimination towards African American people in order to Raise awareness and potentially stop or get people to stop doing it. He adopts an aggressive tone, for his audience, the listeners of this song and others interested in the topic of stopping racism/mistreatment and discrimination. Glover uses an aggressive tone and repetitive statements to get his point across and explain what he is talking about.
Glover created this song to raise awareness for police brutality, racism, and discrimination. In the song he addresses all of these topics some of it he addresses in his singing one main thing he addresses in his singing is that African American people can be just as successful as White Americans. The main reason the song and video were created are to address and raise awareness for the topics I stated earlier, he does not exactly refer these topics in his singing though, he does it more through the video. I say this because in the video while he is singing, in the back ground there is more going on, there are African American people causing riots, violence against African Americans by white Americans, Discrimination towards them showing them get yelled at and abused , Mistreatment and police being unlawful and brutal to them by showing police throw them on the ground and being unlawful towards them. There are some scenes where he shoots a person and acts like everything’s fine but right he shoots there is white Americans and police running towards the bodies and African American people running away because they are scared of what will happen, all through the video this is happening, the end of the video he shows himself walking then a mob of police and white Americans come running towards him and chase him just because he is an African American man.
The emotional tone he putting towards and in the song is a very angry and aggressive but I also think is can be a somewhat remorseful tone in the video because, once someone sees is they could be angry that all of this is happening but then after one really thinks about it they would feel bad that all of this is happening to one or all of the races that are not white Americans and people are singling them out and attacking just because of their skin color . Before this Song and video got published people knew these were an issue but they did not realize how big of an issue it really was, once the video got published it was a reality check for people, they then saw what was really happening in the united states and how African Americans were really being treated by white Americans, police and law enforcement, and anyone who is not a person of any color other than white.
A big advantage he has
on touching and putting this topic in a song and video out to the world is that
he is morally and ethically liked as a person and he has possibly run into
these experiences himself as well. Glover made the song and video because he
has seen how bad of an issue all of this. As a singer and song writer and also
a comedian and actor he knew he could make an impact on people if he did
something about it because he is a very well known and admired person, his
advantage is that he is an African American male, this being said he could have
been singled out during his youth or he could have been discriminated at some
of his concerts or performances, He has most likely seen and or experienced
some or all of these acts himself in his past or event his present.
Works Cited
Julian Writing 101S 