MovieChat Forums > The Secret Life of Bees (2008) Discussion > Whites were evil and blacks were all goo...

Whites were evil and blacks were all good?


I liked this movie, but it followed the typical whites are evil narrative. Racism and violence towards blacks no doubt happened, but not as often as movies like these portray them. In fact some whites and blacks got along well. Of course this would muddy the waters that whites were/are evil. I would have liked to see a few more whites in this movie portrayed as good and at least one black as bad. Instead this movie made blacks out to be all good people that were victims and whites as all evil with the exception of the lead charicture.

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The reason this movie and many others portray the different races this way is that it really WAS like this. I'm not saying there is no bad in blacks or good in whites there is good an bad in all humans. However people need to accept that in earlier times people were more ignorant and the average human is very susceptible to following norms. Pre 60's it was very "normal" to be racist. Of course if it wasn't for the non racist white people we wouldn't have seen equality prevail. However being good or bad in this film is not determined by the colour of the persons skin but more their motivations. Hey look I think June is one of the least likeable characters in this film... What colour is she?

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