Race & Culture - Film Analysis - Movie Review Example

However, her father, Abraham Laing, rebels against this declaration and it becomes an international story. The family receives attention globally and the law has to change their decision under pressure from media. Therefore, Sandra is once again classified as white. Skin looks into the problem of racial injustice in South Africa. It relates the story through such a person’s view who is not even politically motivated yet has to experience the injustice that apartheid’s cruelty makes her undergo.

The movie relates the apartheid system and how unequally it judges people, costing them their family and dignity. Extreme racial discrimination is seen in the film and it is ridiculous the way the system allows one person get full citizenship while his own sibling is denied the same advantages due to them having different hair and skin color and texture as that means racial mixing of some sort. The director, Fabian, has not just touched on the topics related to governmental policies and institutional prejudices but, rather, has also delved into the challenges of Sandra struggling to get a place in such a country where she is not given even her basic rights.

He also does not make the film belittle the white Afrikaners but actually shows that they are also, in fact, victims of such a system where one kind of people are privileged while the others are not given their rights. It is also shown that even though they are against racial mixing, they deny basic rights and discriminate people, they also have a heart and ability to love. Institutional discrimination Discrimination basically means any kind of a distinction, restriction or preference made on the basis of natural factors like race, color, descent or origin, and this distinction leads to the discriminated group not able to enjoy basic rights that everyone is entitled to.

Discrimination becomes institutionalized when the laws and regulations of a country recognize and reflect it. For instance, since 1948, Israel and South Africa are two countries where institutional discrimination has been a practice and has deeply affected the indigenous population in every aspect of their lives. In the film Skin, institutional discrimination has been portrayed very widely. There is a scene in this film where Sandra is not accepted by her new school. They say that she does not belong there and even the parents do not want their children to mix with people like Sandra.

Therefore, she is “tested” by the State officials who declare that she is colored. In view of such a declaration the school officials expel her and she has to leave. This is where institutional discrimination has played a part. The discrimination again Sandra is so high that the laws of the State have decided to interfere in her life and not give her the right of education in her school of preference. That is, the discrimination has become official. White privilege White privilege means to have the privileges that a person of another race may not, due to racial discrimination.

For instance, in South Africa the blacks could not enjoy the basic human rights while the white people were at an advantage regarding this. They can enjoy proper accommodation, and have no restrictions on whichever school they wish to enroll their children in, the places they want to go to and basically circumstances relating to every aspect of life. Blacks were not that lucky as they did not have the “