Akeelah and the Bee: Inspirational Story of African-American Intellect and Triumph or Racist Rhetoric Served Up On Another Platter?

摘要

The term "post-racism" has increasingly emerged in the media and national discourse. Many point to Barack Obama's election as the 44th President of the United States as proof that this country has moved beyond the ugly legacy of racism (Wise, 2009). With this historic milestone of electing the nation's first African-American president, the "post-racism" rhetoric encapsulates two major accomplishments at the hands of African-Americans in particular, and U.S. Americans in general: (1) African-Americans can indeed achieve anything they put their minds to-a testament of sorts to African-Americans' intellect, hard-work ethic, leadership abilities, etc., and (2) The ability of U.S. Americans to look past color and judge on merit alone. Despite this optimistic appraisal on the state of racism in the United States, we argue that racism is alive and well and often lurks in unsuspecting places. In this article we look into the inspirational movie, Akeelah and the Bee, a movie that highlights some of the same themes that emerge from Obama's election to presidency: The story of an African-American who goes against all odds to achieve success in grand proportions. Described as an "inspirational family film" and a "successful feel-good movie" (Turan, 2006), Akeelah and the Bee proved inspirational to many viewers, as it highlights Akeelah's intellect, tenacity, and determination to ultimately win the Scripps National Spelling Bee. While this movie seems innocent enough, we perform a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Huckin, 1995) of this movie to expose what we perceive as numerous racial overtones, undertones, and more particularly, several racist discourses that underpin and permeate the entire storyline to construct African-