[Genesis Garcia-Elizondo]

For this final photoshare, I decided to share a part of Sam Cooke’s song, “A Change is Gonna Come”. This is already a personal favorite but after reflecting upon it, I realized that it is a song that goes with this week’s theme perfectly. It was released in 1964 on one of Sam Cooke’s albums. Looking further into the history behind this song, it is based off of Cooke’s personal experiences, primarily when he was turned away from a whites-only motel in Louisiana. The portion I decided to share is one where he speaks about the kinds of segregation many black folks had to go through while doing simple things like going to the movies or downtown. They were turned away from many places labeled as white-only. Cooke’s song is very hopeful and we can see that through the repeated lyrics that say “its been a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come.” Without a doubt, this brought hope to those that had to live through this segregation and helped them hold on to the belief that someday things were going to be better and their lives would be different.

 

Source: https://genius.com/Sam-cooke-a-change-is-gonna-come-lyrics

Artist: Sam Cooke

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[Genesis Garcia-Elizondo]

For this week’s share, I’ve decided to share a video that I watched a while back called “‘Dear White People’: Inside the series taking on what it means to be black in America”. The video begins with “race has always been a threat in the social fabric of America,” while showing videos of recent incidents where people of color have been affected by white people who have felt threatened by the presence of those who look different from them. Justin Simien, creator of the Netflix series “Dear White People” talks about the different themes presented in his show and how they are meant to relate to many of the current issues many black people have had to face in recent years like racial bias in law enforcement. One of the scenes shown in this video that I believe is very impactful and worth mentioning is when a black student is asked to show ID at a house party. He questions the officer and asks why he’s the only one that has to. The reason he was forced to show some proof that he belonged was because the officer states that they had gotten several complaints about him. Because the student resisted, the officer drew a gun on him. This is something that a lot of people of color have had to deal with a lot more often in recent years and some people may see this as common, as white people only trying to protect themselves from what they feel is a threat to white space. Because of how common this becomes, we sometimes overlook it and ignore the difficult effects it has on the true victim. This can have very traumatic effects on the person who is facing a near-death experience just because they look different within white space. The actor who played the student says in the interview that the scene was so hard for him that he actually cried. The interviewer then says that that scene in the show shows how “trauma often lingers long after the headlines disappear.”

Source: ABC News

May 23, 2018

[Genesis Garcia-Elizondo]

For this weeks photo share, I decided to share a picture I got from an article titled “Why America’s National Parks are so White”. This article included data from the US census that compared race/ethnicity of national park visitors to the actual US population. The article says that 78 percent of national park visitors were white, 9 percent Hispanic, 7 percent African American and 3 percent Asian Americans. This comes to show that what we spoke about in class is very true in that although national parks should be accessible to everyone because it is open land, it is not actually very accessible to non-white people of lower classes. Like mentioned in class, in order to visit a national park, people have to plan out an entire trip that includes a lot of costs for things like gas, entrance fees, equipment, among other things. That is making it less and less accessible to those who don’t have the adequate resources to visit. The fact that a majority of park rangers are also white can be intimidating to minority race visitors for fear of racism or discrimination. This is why national parks are becoming more and more white.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/7/heres-why-americas-national-parks-are-so-white.html

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[Genesis Garcia-Elizondo]

For this weeks photo share, I decided to share the lyrics to one of Usher’s songs featuring Nas and Bibi Bourelly. I first heard the song in class when we were watching a part of the Netflix documentary “13th”. I went back to look for it and most times, people tend to listen to a rhythm or beat of a song and don’t pay much attention to the lyrics. The lyrics of this song are very deep and touch upon the topic of police brutality and the mass incarceration of innocent black people. The entire song was very impactful but the part I decided to share was one that relates most to this week’s topic. “I am no prison commodity, not just a body you throw in a cell,” is a line that I believe shows how people protest the fact that there are many, particularly black people, that are being incarcerated just because of their skin color and how they are seen as a threat to many people. In class, we spoke about how incarceration can be seen as a new form of slavery. Although slavery was abolished long time ago, we spoke about how, in a way, incarceration can be compared to slavery and how sending people to prison, society can feel a sense of safety and peace knowing that people that are seen as a threat are in prison, even if they are convicted being innocent. I believe that it was mentioned that about 40% of prisoners are black males. The system is very unjust and there needs to be some kind of change because the lives of those wrongly incarcerated are completely ruined if they ever get released from prison because their incarceration goes on their record and it affects everything from getting a job and even the citizen right of voting. Like the song says, it is a problem that NEEDS to be acknowledged and fixed as soon as possible.

Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Knd2el4Lfw

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Genesis Garcia-Elizondo.

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[Genesis Garcia-Elizondo]

For this week’s photo share, I decided to choose a photo that I believe is still very relevant in the education system today. This is a photo that shows the kind of protests that happened back when schools were very segregated and there were white and schools of color. Because of these protests, schools became integrated but I believe that although schools nowadays are integrated, there are still many schools that are predominantly nonwhite and receive very little funding. Little funding means less opportunities for the students in those schools. This is why there are many students even today that can’t achieve certain things because of the continued but more discreet segregation in the education system.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 10 months ago by Genesis Garcia-Elizondo.

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[Genesis Garcia-Elizondo]

As we continues the topic of segregation in class, a lot of our conversations have been about the integration of different races in white suburban communities. The picture I have chosen was featured in an article titled “American Segregation Started Long Before the Civil War” by Nicholas Guyatt. I believe it relates to the things we have been talking about in class because it is things like this that allow us to see that certain people were excluded from suburban neighborhoods simply because of the color of their skin. Because of segregation, many of the people who were being denied the right to live in these predominantly white communities were forced to live into barely livable apartments and had no way of fulfilling part of the American dream which was to own a home. This also led to the rise of slums in cities which provided horrible and unsanitary living conditions to anyone who wasn’t white.

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[Genesis Garcia-Elizondo]

The topic this week is segregation. I decided to choose a political cartoon of the Brown v. Board of Education case back in the 1950s. Back then, schools were so segregated that children of color were required to attend separate schools.  Like the cartoon says, some children had to go to schools so far and underfunded that they didn’t have the best resources to ever do well in school. Although the Brown v. Board of Education might have changed segregation and seemed to have put an end to it in schools, there are still plenty of schools that are still segregated and not funded as much in many communities of color.

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