Pocahontas and Racial Purity

Racial purity is a topic that has been alive in America since the first ancestors settled. The idea that white represented a notion of civilization and a "rightness," while blacks and other races are primitive in comparison. Miscegenation has always been an issue for whites. The idea of tainting the goodness that is "whiteness" seems unfathomable. You can look back to the first settlers of America, despite being invaders, felt that they had brought civilization to the long time native people of the land. Though their ways differed from that of European whites, it still proved to be a sufficient way of living for them. However, the more civilized whites pinned the natives as savages and pushed them further and further from their lands to gain what was unrightfully theirs. The idea that their whiteness takes precedent over others.

Take a movie like Pocahontas, it deals with idea of miscegenation and racial purity. John Smith is a settler in the New World and falls in love with Pocahontas, the daughter of the chief. However, Smith and his men are there to push out Pocahontas' tribe to get its gold. This movie idea is very popular and was even rehashed in the movie Avatar. The time period may have changed, but the story remains the same. The Englishmen in Pocahontas do not have any interests in befriending the tribe, but look to gain the gold that was believed to be under the tribe, at any costs necessary. That attitude is the similar thinking of many of the early settlers and that their whiteness gave them privilege because their purity and civilized ways.

John Smith acts as a different agent. He represents the idea of accepting others and takes in the new group. Race mixing has always been a sort of taboo, but John Smith breaks those barriers by pursuing a relationship with Pocahontas. What I find interesting is that how Disney portrays the idea of race mixing being opposed on both sides. It seems that both the Native Americans and the Englishmen were against the relationship of John Smith and Pocahontas because these two worlds weren't thought to be able to mix. Were the natives against mixing with whites in fear of something new or because they though their race was superior to the whites?

Either way you see in an innocent Disney movie, that the theme of racial purity is strong. Conversely, the idea of John Smith being the good guy absorbs the native people into the culture and is willing to "mix" with someone like Pocahontas points to the fact that not every white person believes that racial mixing is wrong.

For a story that was supposed to take place in the 1600s, not much changed when the Constitution was drafted in the 1780s. The 3/5 compromise was enacted that allowed for other non whites to be counted as 3/5 of a person. That notion of equality between whites and other races still hasn't reached that ideal point and maybe never will. But a big step was during the Civil Rights Movement, when places no longer were segregated. Mixed schools, restaurants, etc. came to light.

The movie Missippi Burning, captures the ideology of a small southern town when dealing with the desegregation that came to light. in the film, civil rights workers are murdered and two FBI agents are sent to go investigate. The community proclaims itself as an Anglo-Saxon democracy, and has avoided integration, along with having total non-acceptance of other races. The KKK members of the town are aided by the police, in targeting African Americans, brutally torturing them and setting houses on fire. The two agents work to find different ways to investigate the murders because they receive no information from people in the town (black or white). Whites didn't come forward with information because they were against what the civil rights workers stood for and favored a place that separated the whites from the other mongrels. And the blacks didn't come forward in fear of what the KKK would do.

The KKK are represented as having full authority to terrorize. The town sought to keep racial purity and not allow for mixing and backed the methods the KKK used to terrorize the African American community.

Racial purity will always be a sensitive issue. In cinema, its portrayal is similar to real life. Some people are okay with it, while others will go to extremes to protect it. Race mixing of course is more common today than it was in 1960 or the 1600s; however, the taboo of race mixing is still alive and strong. However, what people who believe in whiteness as being right fail to realize is the fact that without the absorption of other cultures and ideas, we wouldn't be where we are today. Whether they admit it or not, their lives have all been affected by "mixing."