Documentary Film, “Don’t Tell Anyone”

 The documentary film, “Don’t tell anyone” narrates the story of an undocumented Angy Rivera. She along with her mother immigrated to United States of America and as the story unfolds, we are shown the side of US which only people like Angy see. Being undocumented she had to suffer both in her personal life and her career. This documentary addresses the problems faced by people who are undocumented in United States. These problems range for denial of equal opportunities, lack of growth prospect and above all suffrage from crimes like sexual abuse and assault. Andy was sexually abused by her stepfather in her early life and this was something she had developed deep fears about. Yet an equal fear she had was the prospect of being deported back due to her undocumented status. The documentary addresses the problems and discusses them using the personal narrative of Any and while at the same time it discusses facts and figured about the plight of undocumented people in United states such as that United States deported more than 200,000 undocumented people in 2012. Many appeals to logos and pathos can be seen throughout the documentary which coax the audience into relating with the focus group of this film- the undocumented people.

            The case of undocumented people related to a type of racism that we have studied in the class. Structural Racism. Though we can not exactly classify the undocumented people as a whole new race but what happens to them is kind of exactly like the structural racism. To get any scholarship in university a social security number is need and it is something that these people do not have. Thus, they cannot apply for scholarships, subsequently they won’t be able to get enough good education to actually get decent jobs, their chances of unemployment will increase and thus they won’t be able to teach their kids. This dominos of effects results from the first passive discrimination of them not being given a chance at a university due to lack of a social security number. Angy received hate mail as shown in documentary. She was sent mail by individual people letter that were speaking ill of her just because she opened about her status. This related to the individual racism to much extent. Person prejudice exists just as it did for racial differences.

            What this documentary made me realize about racism is that racism is not only the reason why people discriminate among people and groups. Angy was not discriminated because of her race rather just because she was not holding the same documentation as other people. Thus, to address the problem of racism we need to stop the prejudice from being developed in the first place. People need to be made aware about the fact that not every human get the same lifestyle as they did thus judge them based of their race or in fact based on anything is pure wrong and is something that should be avoided.