Freedom Isn't Free:You Can Get It At Wal-Mart, Though

After watching Freedom Writers (2007), I came away with a crisp, feel-good attitude. A group of kids come together and become a family, even though they each belonged to a society that told them they were not allowed to associate with anyone other than their own. This film showed kids who made their definition of "their own" mean more than skin color or ethnicity; "their own" means human beings. They chose change-change from what they had been taught about how things were supposed to be, how things are, and how things are going to be. They rejected the mold that was being forced over them. They chose opportunity.

This film is powerful because viewers get to witness a miracle that occurred. Yes, I said miracle. Because what is a miracle: a situation is altered through means unexplainable and unrepeatable to change those involved for good. This is what happened to those kids. And rich, tame, protected white people like me get to feel the joy.

I do feel somewhat guilty for that. I mean, I am sitting in a house that can hold three times its current occupancy, eating food that, if it doesn't get eaten, will probably be thrown away, watching a film on an unnecessarily large tv screen. I have every means for success, and I didn't even have to work hard to get them. I live in a neighborhood of people just like me. I live in a city of people just like me. We say we have ended segregation, but it still exists when cities are filled with people who make the same amount of money, thanks to the education they received that was given to them because they are white.

Why are neighborhoods created with similar size houses, anyway? Why can't there be a large house next to a small house, and the people living in each do not resent each other but become neighbors (Well, I could then ask why don't even I know my neighbors when they live in a house similar to mine)? Would jealousy overtake the owners of the small house and compel them to steal from or break into the larger house? Or would disdain commandeer the minds of large house owners, forcing them to move to a different neighborhood? Would this happen, or has it already?

Everything is slanted towards the white. Entertainment, education, opportunities. If you're white, you have the upper hand. An important question to ask is, did whites work to deserve this massive head start? Actually, the question to ask is, is this unacknowledged yet understood edge held by white people actually right for anyone to have?

Freedom Writers was about forgotten teenagers rising from the pits that had once held them captive. And we can sit and enjoy the movie, and not even realize that we ourselves are in our own pit of isolation and faux-protection, a pit that keeps the rest of the world out as it keeps us trapped inside.