As a child, I can remember watching the movie The Color of Friendship. Of course, at the time I had no idea what the underlying messages or sociological concepts were; I just knew it was about being nice to people. In this film set in 1977, a young white, South African girl, Mahree Bok chooses to go on a foreign exchange trip to America, with the advice of her maid saying that things were much different in America and that it would benefit her to learn from them. Mahree, at this time had no concept of the privilege she had due to the apartheid. She engages in an exchange to America where she temporarily lived with the Dellums family. Piper Dellums, daughter of Congressman and outspoken opponent of the South African apartheid system Ron Dellums, was overjoyed to find that her family was expected to be hosting a South African; assuming the African student would be black. Mahree, on the other hand, was expecting a white family. While Piper tried to be cordial and polite upon this racial surprise, Mahree was horrified and on the verge of panic, locking herself in Piper’s room. After Piper picked the lock into her own room, she expressed her anger towards Mahree. This was the first time Mahree began to understand that her behavior was unacceptable and offensive in America. Mahree was experiencing a culture shock again, but towards her own country.

In chapter 1 we discussed culture shock: how sometimes the first encounters with different cultures can be a bit disorienting and may leave us questioning ourselves (Ferris and Stein 12). It is important for us to try and enforce a sense of culture shock upon ourselves in order to see the world as it really is, through the sociological perspective.  This is apparent in the film when Mahree is so overwhelmed that she locked herself in Piper’s room. It was only after she began to look at her own culture with the same curiosity that she looked at America with, that Mahree saw the flaws with the apartheid. Eventually she overcame her sense of culture shock, as we all do, and learned to see her host family as normal people, not somehow “lesser than”. It is clear that Mahree experienced several forms of culture shock; when she arrived in America, when she started seeing the flaws with the apartheid, and when she actually made it back home and decided to join the black liberation movement. In this process Mahree began to see the world through the sociological perspective.

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