[Aditi Mukund]

I chose the song “Hold you Down” by Childish Gambino for this week’s theme.  There is a portion of the song where he goes into how there is a ‘one size fits all’ mentality when it comes to the criminalization of black youth.  White kids are given the right of individuality and personality while black kids are all seen as one type (criminals). I think this whole verse is a lyrical representation of segregation of black kids versus white kids and it kind of reminds me of the James Baldwin essay on the black experience that we read towards the beginning of the quarter. The line “We all look the same to cops” is a reference to police brutality and all the murders of black people that we see where innocent black men are immediately seen as a threat and shot to death while white people are afforded innocence even when they are guilty. The line “The black experience is black and serious” is also another really good line because it really encapsulates how pervasive antiblackness is in every single facet of life and it shows how somber and anxiety inducing it is to occupy one of the most marginalized bodies in the world.

Source: https://genius.com/Childish-gambino-hold-you-down-lyrics

Photographer: Screencap of website from my computer

Artist: Childish Gambino

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[Aditi Mukund]

The image I have chosen is of Representative Mark Meadows at the Michael Cohen hearing. In this image he is clearly distressed and uncomfortable because Congresswoman (who is a woman of color) Rashida Tlaib called him out on using a black employee to prove that Trump is not racist. Her exact words were “The fact that someone would actually use a prop, a black woman, in this chamber, in this committee, is, alone, racist” (Tlaib). In response to this, Meadows got red in the face and asked for this to be struck from the record. His discomfort on being called out on his thinly veiled racism and the fact that the committee had to “coddle and reassure him” is a perfect example of how the feelings and concerns of white people are prioritized over those of any other group of people. His white fragility is seen as superior to the legitimate concerns of a woman of color. The space in which white men occupy garner much more sympathy and attention than the spaces that people of color occupy. People of color being in spaces of power such as in congress are seen as a threat to the system of white supremacy.

Source: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/tlaib-called-meadows-behavior-racist-didnt-go-far-enough.html

Photographer: Al DRAGO/ Bloomberg  – 1/28/2019

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[Aditi Mukund]

I chose a picture of some indigenous elders in Texas standing in solidarity with the Sioux community  at the Dakota Access Pipeline site in 2016. This whole issue is a perfect example of native exclusion because it shows how corporations and even the government work together to forcefully take away land from natives. I think it is also important to consider the methods that are employed while land is being taken away from indigenous communities. In the example of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the government dispatched soldiered up officers and military personnel to go to the site and intimidate the Sioux individuals who were protesting. This shows how even still, this country values profit made from the pipeline and land more than the lives of indigenous people. The whole mentality is that “we will get this land by any means necessary, even if it means killing you”. Police brutality and the inhumane treatment of the Sioux and other native communities at the DAPL site (and at other protests just like it) is a perfect example of native exclusion and the means by which oppressors go to uphold racist and capitalist systems.

Source: John Moore, Getty Images, 10/1/2016

Site: http://time.com/4548566/dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock-sioux/

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Aditi Mukund.

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[Aditi Mukund]

I think that this cartoon fits really well with the theme of mass incarceration because it so accurately shows how most of the black and brown men in prisons, are in there because of nonviolent offenses. It is also really ironic because the media and politicians criminalize black and brown men as violent and dangerous when in reality, the so called ‘crimes’ that they are imprisoned for involve no violence at all. This cartoon also shows the whole “War on Drugs” catastrophe where the government planted drugs in poorer communities of color and arrested these young men for possession just to fill up the prisons. This also ties into the whole for profit prison industry and how in order for that to thrive, there needs to be a ready supply of bodies (which most often come from these poorer communities). This cartoon illustrates the cyclical nature of the whole mass incarceration epidemic.

Cartoonist: Adam Zygis

Date: August 10 2013

Source: http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/125126/

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[Aditi Mukund]

This image is of a rally outside of the Arkansas state capitol to protest Brown V Board court decision. The context of this image is that these white individuals are protesting specifically against the Little Rock Nine and their admission into Little Rock High School. This image stood out to me because one of the signs says “Race Mixing is Communism” which is an argument that a lot of people still use today to argue against issues such as open borders, single payer healthcare, etc. Communism is something that is seen as negatively in our capitalist society and any issue that attempts to improve the structural inequality against people of color is seen as “extremist” and “communist”. I think this is so interesting because in reality CAPITALISM is the extremist system that needs to be eradicated but communism and literally any other societal system is seen as (and is!) a definite threat  to white suburban utopia.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/24/little-rock-arkansas-school-segregation-racism

Photo source: Granger/REX/Shutterstock , 1959, Little Rock, Arkansas

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Aditi Mukund.

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[Aditi Mukund]

This image is of a movie theater in Leland, Mississippi in 1939. This photo goes along with the theme of segregation because this theater serves people who are “c*lored” as the photo states. What I find interesting is how in white facilities during this period, there are billboards and signs that say “NO C*lored” or “Whites ONLY”. This use of the words ONLY and NO show that this is a space where only white individuals can congregate. In this image however, it says “For C*lored People”. There is no restriction on who are the only individuals who are allowed to go to this movie theater. There is never any “C*lored ONLY” or “NO whites” in any of these signs. “ONLY and “NO” are only reserved for when white individuals want to restrict people of color but when people of color want their own communities and own spaces, whites are allowed to come in at any time to co-opt and take control of these spaces.

Photographer: Marion Walcott, 1939

Location: Leland, Mississippi

Source: https://www.loc.gov/item/2017801759/

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Aditi Mukund.

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[Aditi Mukund]

When I saw the theme for this week, my mind immediately went to thinking of modern examples of segregation. The school to prison pipeline is a striking example of this where children who go to schools located in poorer communities of color are disproportionately more likely to end up in jail. The structural disenfranchisement of these communities causes less funding for education which in turn affects the quality of resources, teachers, and programs that are in these schools. A lot of the students come from marginalized backgrounds where they could benefit from additional counseling programs, extracurriculars, and tutoring which all require funding that these schools just don’t have. This coupled with harsh punitive policies and standardized testing cause students to be susceptible to suspension or dropping out. These students have a low chance of achieving in the classroom because of all of these factors so often more likely than not, they end up in prison. Physical segregation that is a result of redlining, the War on Drugs, and structural neglect directly causes the school to prison pipeline phenomenon because it intentionally groups poor black and brown children into schools where they aren’t given any attention or funding from the government on the basis of the color of their skin and their socioeconomic status. This political cartoon depicts a black boy entering a school just to come out on the other end into a prison. This encapsulates everything I just talked about and is a bleak depiction of structural oppression against poor black and brown children.

Source: http://studentrightsalliance.org/school-to-prison-pipeline.aspx

Artist: Unknown, 2017 (Did a reverse google search of the image but just ended up with the year of publication of the image but no artist name)

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[Aditi Mukund]

In our readings and discussions in class this past week, we talked about the idea of the “Pure American Space” and how its existence requires the genocide of “impure” populations. Rather than sharing this space, the moral geography of the white spatial imaginary requires the complete genocide and removal of people of color from the land in order to keep the purity of the typical ‘American suburb’. A good example of this is the angry reactions of white communities to the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The picture I chose depicts Elizabeth Eckford,  a member of the Little Rock Nine, being taunted and followed by a crowd of angry white women after she was denied access into the high school. This imagine perfectly depicts the concept of white fragility that we talked about this week and shows how a black child in the same space as a white child is seen as a threat to the white spatial imaginary. These white women forbid Elizabeth and children just like her from entering these spaces because they ruin the Renaissance concept of the ‘free nation’ where ‘homogenous populations have ties to the national landscape’ (Lecture 1/18).

Image Source: Vanity Fair https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/09/littlerock200709

Original Photographer & Source:  Will Counts for Arkansas Democrat – Now at the Indiana University Archives

Date Taken: September 4th 1957

 

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