The Social and Political Climate of Today

 The New York Times piece on the Emmy’s does a great job in pinpointing both strengths and weakness of 2018 award show. As the article discusses, the award show made a great effort to make the nominations and speakers of a more diverse background. While this is a needed improvement, it’s important to keep in check that this is being done because the Emmy’s and Hollywood is mainly white, male and heterosexual. The piece writes specifically about a part of the show that was dedicated to acknowledging the black performers who lacked to receive the appropriate recognition the deserved from the voting academy. I thought this message was powerful because it was two-fold, in giving those individuals recognition while also going against the institutional racism that minimized their success for so many decades. The Emmy’s even with its weaknesses, I believe is a great trailblazer in continuing to make the alterations that need to be made to institutions.

In today’s current social and political climate, it is unlikely for a day to pass where sexual assault is not brought up. The past few weeks have been engulfed by the Kavanagh case, where unfortunately it seems yet another powerful man will not only be unpunished for his assaults but also granted the permission to join the supreme court. Conversations have steamed from the Kavanagh hearing about implications sexual assault allegations have on the man being accused. In a recent New York Times article, John Williams discusses a letter that was written by a Canadian radio broadcaster, Jian Ghomeshi, where he discusses his sexual assault allegations. In his writing, he belittles the number of women he sexually offended and explains the trauma, humiliation, and shame he experienced by the media. The irony of this piece, is almost too much to handle, here we have an accuser having a platform to explain the trauma of being out for sexual assault, while survivors go through trauma from not only the act itself but then the invalidation and backlash they receive when speaking out, as seen in the Kavanagh hearing. The hegemony is what shines through in the Kavanagh hearing and countless sexual assault cases, where the dominant white, heterosexual, male amid sexual assault accusations remains powerful and a priority.