Freedom Writers: Remove Racism through Education

Last night we were watching this 'film for change' - Freedom Writers, which is based on a true story. This is a movie that was not only well-made but also has been timed so right, because of the current situation the world is in right now.
Essentially, it's about a committed teacher with a noble cause who eliminates the visible and invisible racial borders between the students of her class, by educating them and liberating them from their prejudices. There's another kind of liberation at work here, liberation of the creative unconscious, that is, she makes the students write out their stories, their own true stories onto a diary which serves as the way to freedom, the way out of racism, the way out of the inexplicable hatred that they find themselves in. She finds innovative ways to teach the students about the irrelevance of hatred by enlightening them about the Holocaust and does all this at the cost of her own personal loss.
Primarily, a must-see movie for everyone, but otherwise, a excellent study tool for children especially teenagers all around the world. Although overt racism is now supposedly 'outdated', that is, we have legal regulations and the like, it is still very prevalent in more subtler overtones but nevertheless, filled with the bitterness that every form of discrimination engenders. Sometimes, we feel it in the air like a slow poison entering every cell of our body. I can't even begin to get into the heart of the topic, but the point here is, as we are maturing philosophically, we need to try and take that extra step towards eliminating racism. If we don't know how, education through this movie would be a step in the right direction.
For more information about the real-life teacher on whom the movie was made, check out Erin Gruwell at www.freedomwritersfoundation.org/

Racism and Crossing Borders

Here's an excellent article on how racism is still a prevalent practice in the West. Many of us are so used to being subjected to such practices that we tend to overlook how much of a basic human rights violation this is. Read this article by a Black journalist Gary Younge, who is a UK citizen who writes for The Guardian. Although this might seem all too obvious, what are we doing about it?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1995856,00.html