Ray

The movie “Ray” gives a more in depth outlook into the life of Ray Charles Robinson, one of America’s most renowned African American musicians. Much of his work revolutionized the musical world, especially as he combined R&B with Gospel, somewhat causing a controversy within the African American society. Throughout the movie, Ray has a reoccurring sight of touching a limb in murky water, a memory of not only his brother drowning in a washtub as a child but also the guilt he constantly has carried with him ever since then. After the loss of his brother, he slowly begins to come blind, but with the tough love of his mother learns to find his strength in his greatest weakness, as he learns to use his hearing as a form of sight. His mother is constant appearance throughout the movie, to remind Ray of his morals and his true character.

Throughout the movie, despite the time period being around the CIvil Rights movement, Ray does not really seem to have any race related struggles. As he becomes more and more successful, he begins to deal with addiction and infidelity, one particular downfall being his impregnating of one of his mistresses A moment that stuck out as far as racism is related occurred in the midst of his rise to fame. As he is about to perform a concert, a man approaches him about the segregation in the concert. Ray decides to cancel the concert, in response to the segregation and as a protest. This particular instance demonstrated multiple tenets in CRT, one particular being that racism is ordinary. Also, it demonstrates how race is not a biological construction but a social one. By the creation of this segregated concert, they prove that racism is something created by society, not necessarily from birth.