bell hooks and Dangerous Minds

After reading the bell hooks essay on othering, I started to think of all the movies in which white individuals come into a situation to “help” or learn things from people of different backgrounds or “others”. One movie that stuck out to me in particular was Dangerous Minds. Dangerous Minds is about a white woman named LouAnn who is hired to teach a class of “special” kids. This class is made up of mostly African American and Latino high school kids who have learning problems and behavioral problems. Her first day of teaching the class is rough, they don’t listen to her and they aren’t interested in what she is trying to teach them. LouAnn contemplates quitting, but then decides against it. She feels that she can help these kids and offer them knowledge that will better their lives. While LouAnn teaches and helps the kids, she realizes that they are helping her too. They are helping her to understand what life is like for them and they teach her that she is tougher than she originally thought, making her a better teacher in the end. In her essay, bell hooks explains how the media often portrays white people developing an interest to “others” or people of a race other than white. She states that White people don’t do this to dominate the “other” but they do it “…to be changed in some way by the encounter”. With that being said, it is seen through the movie how LouAnn’s life has been changed by the kids that she teaches and how they have helped her to become a better person and teacher.