White Supremacy and American Exceptionalism

Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1.7, Ruhr-University of Bochum, language: English, abstract: The term paper is to examine the depiction of American Exceptionalism and White Supremacy as two cultural concepts in media. Therefore, the origin of these two phenomena will be explained and related to events in the course of America's historical development. In order to analyze the perception of American culture by people with different ethnic backgrounds 'Only in America' (2001) by Brooks and Dunn, a song performed by white artists, and 'Black Rage' (2014) by Lauryn Hills, representing an African-American perspective, have been chosen. Hence, the term paper is to define the two concepts American Exceptionalism and White Supremacy and is to point out how these are depicted in two songs written by descendants of two different ethnic backgrounds.