“Higher Learning” film by John Singleton is about the racial and sexual biases in the college environment (the fictitious Columbus University). Even though the movie was shot in 1995 the issues shown in it are unfortunately still in existence. What got my attention was the film title: Higher Learning. Not a Higher Education but higher learning. People have to learn about each other and accept the differences (provided they don’t harm the others), and “unlearn” the hate and racism (which was the final message in the movie). Also, the way the college students and staff were forced to learn was at a “high price” – innocent lives were taken – another addition to the title interpretation, in other words: ultimate (higher) way of learning: learning through the mistakes. One of the main character of the movie was Malik Williams, a black athlete student who seems to struggle at school academically, financially, and in term of adjustment. The very first scene in the movie fascinated me: Malik and another student (a white girl named Kristen, who soon will also be belonging to the diverse group on campus) meet in the elevator: Kirsten automatically tries to protect to purse (Malik sees that, and shakes his head as he understands why she is doing it): unfortunately, incidents like that happen; one of our classmates was sharing quite similar story that took place in the supermarket. Another important character in the movie is professor Phipps: conservative, educated black man who himself breaks the stereotypes and, despite Malik’s blame that he sold himself out, tells him (and everybody) that he is not going to give any credits in term of treating anybody differently, just because they are black, or Asian, or belong to any other minority group: “Without struggle there is no progress” – is his motto.
Kristen (a white freshman who got raped after one of the students parties) has her own struggles and issues: after the accident she joins the anti-sexist group on campus. When meeting one of the members of the group who happens to be a lesbian, she gets the idea that she might be one too; not everybody (even Kristen roommate who was quite sympathetic to her after the rape) supports such an idea of identifying oneself : being a gay openly is not officially recognized. What caught my attention though, was that fact that even when Kristen’s roommate was showing the care and concern to what happened, she only got upset and got help from another group on campus (afro-centered) when Kristen’s rapist called her names.
One more character who plays a tragic role in the event that tried to unite everybody on campus (as it was shown at the beginning of the movie, it was a lot of different groups on campus) is Remi, a white male student, who seems to struggle with fitting in. He gets involved into one of the most aggressive and racist groups on campus: skinheads. Remi is simply brainwashed and used by Nazi group. He ends up suiciding but a minute before that he apologies to Malik whose girlfriend he kills.
Fudge (played by the famous american rapper Ice Cube), who is a college forever senior (at the end of a movie he finally graduates but refuses to wear the college hat and smile for the camera) points out the separation that takes place at college (segregation of different ethnic groups). Most likely, we won’t see that on a modern college campus that obviously, but it might be undercurrent.
What’s remarcable is that each ethnic or identity group on campus is shown as racist or disciminative: the feminist activists group is not tolerant to males (which conflicts with their own views as they are proclaiming anti-sexism); the Afro-centered group is in fact Afro-Centric: as they don’s see that many changes since Martin Luther King’s era (people are still very prejudiced), they are shifted toward segregating themselves from everybody; in opposed to them there is a very aggressive group of white males that thinks that their noble mission is to follow Hitler’s philosophy; unlike other groups, the Nazi one exists secretly, they “recruit” those students whom, they notice, can’t fit in and therefore can be easily lured in to their group.
One of the solution about uniting everybody was offered by Kristen, who organizes the Peace Fest. Everybody seems to contribute in to the attempt of bringing everybody together. It is an interesting detail to my mind: what we are used to seeing all the time now (multi-cultural events, recognition and respect of the different personal identities, different student clubs on campus, ctr.), just a couple of decades ago was a new concept.
At the end I would like to conclude that I do believe in a Post-racial society. It should become a reality not a utopia. I don’t understand why the mankind spends time, strength, nurves or even sometimes lives in attempts to prove that one race is better and more significant than the other, one group of people desrves to be treated one way while the other – different. Why we only believe in Heaven but don’t want to make our life here a little better? If one needs to go to college to get a higher education, everybody can get a “higher learning” from life. But sometimes we also need to ”unlearn” something too: prejudice and hate, harm and discrimination.
olgamartinez1977 