Sociological Analyse of "The Butler"

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"The Butler" is a movie by Lee Daniels is about a black man named Cecil Gaines, who was a butler at the White House for 34 years. He was a butler during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Reagon administration. He was able to witness presidents did and thought about the civil rights movement. His son was also apart of the Freedom Riders. There was a point in the movie where he had just left the plantation he was living at. He was homeless and one day he broke into a resturaunt for some cake. The butler who caught Cecil took him in and taught him how to serve. One day they were talking about a job out in Washington DC and the old man told him he wants him to take it but Cecil did not want to take it because he didn't want to be around stuck up white people. The old man said to him "we have two faces, one for us and one we show the white folks". I think the sociological aspect of that statement is that they have to be conscious of the way they act and talk around the white people at that time. They could only be them selves around their own race. That's because there's a level of comfortableness with your own race and not others. That also goes to show how things have changed from then to now. Now a days African American people do not have to watch what they say around white people. This seems like a form of social stratification because the white people are held to a higher social status than black people. That is why black people then had to have two faces when they are around their own race and white people. Another scene in the movie shows Cecil's son joining the civil rights activists group called Freedom Riders. As an act for justice, they went and sat in the whites only section of the diner. They were told multiple times to get up and move but they did not. Then there was a group of young white kids that started tourmenting them
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