In my observations and thoughts of reading the “The Fourth of July” by Audre Lorde, I found the reading to be quite empowering. The author walked me through a memory of her childhood that impacted her life quite greatly. As a result, I felt that the author was experiencing acts of racism when encountering Non African Americans. I found it quite interesting that the author used all her rage in order to create something positive and meaningful. I can connect to the author because I had a similar experience. When I was in kindergarden and and first grade, I was shorter in comparison to the other students. The other students would blocked me off from playing with them on the playground and not let me ride bicycles with them in the concrete. But,…
I have chosen David Hammons’ work Boy with Flag (1968) to analyze. To me, I think this work shows literally a boy’s love for his country. The meaning of this work comes from the fact that the figure is hugging the flag and shows respect toward the country. Hammons created this work during a year where a few monumental things happened in the United States, three things having to do with racism. The first was Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, second African American athletes present at the Olympics made a stand, and third, the T.V. show Star Trek broadcasted the first interracial kiss.…
MLK’s use of passionate diction in paragraph 14 of “Letter From A Birmingham Jail”, interested me deeply. MLK was describing the daily issues adults and children had to face in a segregated country. The entire paragraph was listing all the struggles the blacks were facing on a daily basis. Seeing it in the perspective of children who had no idea why they couldn’t do simple things was eye opening. The appeal to pathos in this paragraph takes it away from a political standpoint and puts it in the eyes of an innocent child emphasizing the need for change.…
Kerry James Marshall’s Vignette#2 paintings have shown the black presence in daily life that is still very relevant in todays age. By creating an imagery which is based in conventional white romantic settings but with black lovers, he has highlighted the racist undertones that still exist today and shown how they have the right to do everything a white person can do. This is his way of standing against racism, and how love is found in all cultures and a happy couple who are so in love need not have any racist…
The success of Dr. King’s letter from Birmingham is mainly the result of effective use of imagery. By inserting imagery, this gives readers an image of the effect segregation has had on the black nation, thus giving readers the idea and sensation of how this civil disobedience effected the black people.…
These photos show how dangerous it was to be an African American trying to become something during Jim Crow America. If you wanted to be anything more then a free slave you would be hunted down by the Ku Klux Klan and lynched. Although it was against the law, it seemed to have become socially acceptable because people were sending these pictures as postcards. Also, hangings were a spectacle. In many of the photos large groups of people crowed around to watch and stare at the bodies. These events were so open and public that even little girls attended them as seen in one of the photos. Most people that were in the pictures in the background and posing were whites. Even though while performing a lynching most people were masked, no one wore masks while going to look at one. This is because it was against the law and the people who preformed the lynchings didn’t want to be recognized since most of them were upstanding members of society, even police officers. It was not however, a bad thing to go see the aftermath of the lynching. This was because it was something many people were proud of. The notes on the postcards shoed that people were proud of this and that they wanted it to be seen. It is also seen in the pictures that not only were they hanged but burned, shot, and beaten. All of this shows how dangerous it was to be a minority, specifically African American during this time period when it wasn’t even safe to go to the police for…
The Hands Up Don’t Shoot painting is a 48x48 inch piece of art located in the Portland Art Museum and was painted by Arvie Smith, recently in 2015. This abstract work is one of the many oil paintings by Smith that depicts his emotions of the way African Americans are treated in modern society. This vibrant piece is full of detail and many unified subjects that it’s difficult to learn its depth by just viewing it for a few seconds. While looking through the museum for the first time, this painting caught my attention instantly through its cultural references and comical yet upsetting images. The art I love the most is the one that has a message behind it, the pieces that speak to you through visuals but inform you about…
This collage makes me upset. The collage reminds me of racism and discrimination, and all of the brutality that black Africans had to live through for majority of their lives. Chris’s choice of colours attracts the audience to do further research about the collage.…
For example, Osorio work of art Chandelier located in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C displays such a powerful message. The Chandelier covered in pearls and plastic figures of what looks like people of Latino descent this representation of art gives me the impression of his culture and what it is like living in the Bronx as a Puerto Rican and African Caribbean this art work shows the dreams, hopes and hardships of those people living in New york the art work displayed embodied immigrant culture of the 1950’s and 1960’s showing how people of Puerto Rican descent emigrated from the islands then he also added hints of himself inside the art work elements of things from his childhood things he associated…
On the last two chapters Dagmawi Woubshet writes about two paintings that break the silence surrounding HIV/AIDS enforcing AIDS awareness. First Woubshet writes about Keith Haring, an American artist and HIV/AIDS activist and his vision of the history of racism. Haring’s painting of Michael Stewart, a young black graffiti artist killed by the police for writing graffiti in the subway in New York represents a protest towards the history of racism lived by black a black American artist. Woubshet mentions “Haring’s painting often incorporate AIDS into a vision of history perennially under siege, replete with catastrophes, a tragic sense of history he shares with African American artists” (85). The painting is a protest blaming Stewart’s tragic death to racism, but he also blames Stewart’s death and AIDS deaths to the…
The slaver/African American mother who was killed because she used a curse word while in the pool was very sad and brutal. Her children were left motherless and her son lost; longing for his mother’s touch. This presentation made me appreciate how far our culture has come over the years; as well as; my not having to live in that particular time and era. I can only image what life was like for individuals who were subjected to that type of mistreatment.…
The piece of art that most stood out to me while visiting the California African American Museum in Exposition Park, in Los Angeles, was “The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles ”, created by Faith Ringgold in 1996. In the art piece, 8 influential African American throughout history from the 19th and 20th Century are sitting together in a field of sunflowers holding a beautiful quilt that they have made together. It is set in Vincent Van Gogh’s sunflower garden in Arles, France, thus Ringgold included Van Gogh in her picture as well.…
The art work that stands out most to me is one that portrays a young boy as a soldier in the US Army. The human experience from this could be expressed as one of many, love, loss, pain, hope, despair, values, beliefs and as we hope not but even death. I think the artist had love, loss and pain in mind with the painting. This is meaningful to my life because I feel that this is a portrait of myself as a young boy. I joined the US Army at seventeen, finished my basic training, school house training and was shipped off to Iraq with my unit before I was even close to being eighteen. I believed in what I was doing, I lost a lot of family and some really great friends in that war. I too had a picture taken with my uniform and full battle rattle, as we called the bullet proof vest, on. In that picture I was all smiles but honestly I was extremely scared and felt almost alone. This picture shows a young man with the same uniform on smiling. It really takes me back in time and allows me to see what war did to the once innocent young smiling boy that I was. I still to this day believe in all I have done, know that somewhere in there I have done them for the right and values of America but still it bothers me now. It also makes me fear for the young boy in the picture, fear for the outcome that will happen.…
The art work that I have chosen is love. The art work is about two African American couple that is in love and has a little child. I have chosen this work because it shows a lot of love between two of them and it reminds me of my human experience and what my life is going to be and look like in July when our son is born.…
However, with that said, Warhol did a wonderful job with Race Riot. The image depicts a young Black male being hosed and chased down by a police officer and his K9 unit. We are seeing selective images from a peaceful riot 1963 Birmingham. Printed in the fashionable…