[LUCY ZHANG]

The lyrical representation of segregation I chose for this week is the song “They Don’t Care About Us” by Michael Jackson. Although the song was controversial at the time of its release and accused of being anti-Semitic, I still believe some of the lyrics to this song relate to the topics we discuss in class. The song is about racism and declaring that “they” don’t care about people of color, and calls for people to start acknowledging this fact so that a change can be made. I also think the music videos for this song relates to our themes of mass incarceration because one of them was set in a prison (there were two, the other one filmed in Brazil). The lyrics are saddening because they mention police brutality and how nobody seems to care people of color are being shot dead for no reason or that everybody looks down on them in shame.

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[LUCY ZHANG]

For this week’s photo share I chose a picture from a Quartz article (https://qz.com/1320154/bbq-becky-permit-patty-and-pool-patrol-paula-how-memes-and-humor-can-combat-racism/) that discusses the memes that have been created aka “BBQ Becky”, “Permit Patty” and “Patrol Paula” as modern day tools to combat racism. All of these incidents follow the same pattern, where a black person is doing something innocent and minding their own business – like having a cookout with their family or napping in a college lounge – and a white person decides to call law enforcement because they see these black people “intruding” in their white space. The photo below shows a relation between racism in the late 1900s and racism today in 2019, where an old fashioned picture of a black person being taunted in a diner meets BBQ Becky, a woman who called law enforcement on a black family having a cookout. By combining these two very different photos, it shows how her behavior in 2019 fits right into the time of Jim Crow laws and the racist years of the late 1900s. Although it’s been years since the segregation of people of color has been outlawed in the United States, it shows that the issue of “white space” is still very prevalent today and something that people need to be consciously aware of.

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[LUCY ZHANG]

I chose this photo from onedio.com’s article called “The Racist History Behind America’s Famous National Parks”. This photo was taken in 1864, depicting the start of the eviction of the Ahwahneechee people from Yosemite. This is a sad photo because these native indigenous people are being forced out of their own lands just because somebody like John Muir and other conservation leaders believed it was in everybody’s best interest that the land be used for something else. Disgustingly, Muir believed that these people were “lazy” because their hunting techniques allowed them to live comfortably without wasting any effort. However, this is in no way any reason to force people from their lands or to believe that somehow white people know the land better than the people who have lived there for centuries. This photo made me especially angry because of how defeated the indigenous people look, and how the children seem to be scared. Also, there’s a woman reaching for what it looks like another woman for comfort, and a child in the upper left clinging to someone else. This picture depicts what America has done to our native people, and no apology could ever make up for it at this point.

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[LUCY ZHANG]

I chose this photo taken in 2017 from Eji.org, a website that actually discusses mass incarceration, children in prisons, and racial injustice. This photo depicts bunk beds lined right next to each other, and shows how cramped these prisoners are. There is barely any space to walk around, and people are practically sleeping an arm’s length away from another person. It can also be noted that most of the men in the room are black males, compared to the one white male in the photo. Not only does this look like a fire hazard waiting to happen or a living situation that just looks too tight to be comfortable, but it’s also a reflection of our prison systems today and how mass incarceration is continuing to push people, especially black men, down in society.

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[LUCY ZHANG]

I chose this picture from the newspaper The Chicago Reader, this particular article printed March 1, 2016. This photo depicts a 21-year-old Bernie Sanders being arrested in Chicago while protesting school segregation during a time in which black people did not get the same educational rights that white people did.  This particular incident is known as the battle at 73rd and Lowe, where a Goodwill warehouse building was transformed by the city into a temporary school for children. It was built near a railroad track, with no playground space or even any fire sprinklers inside the building. The building was originally created for storage, never intended to be used for classrooms or a safe learning environment for children. Chicago Public Schools claimed that this was a temporary solution for their over-enrollment numbers, but in reality, this was intended to keep black and white children apart in schools. I felt that this photo was powerful and fit our discussion topics for this week, as you can see people using their physical bodies as a means of protesting and to stop any further construction of the warehouse into a sad, makeshift school for young children. This is a real life example of how institutions would systematically try to segregate children in school systems, and how education was often times not readily available to non-whites as it was for white people.

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[LUCY ZHANG]

I chose this photo in response to this week’s theme of segregation from The Washington Post’s article where they discuss how America is more diverse than ever these days but still very segregated. The different colors on the city map (yellow = Hispanic, blue = black, red = white) show where each ethnicity live within the city. Chicago is the least integrated, with clear areas of sectioned color and not much overlap. Washington D.C. is a little better in regards to red overlapping yellow, but the city of Houston seems to be integrated the best because all of the colors overlap each other. This is a modern example of segregation and how even though there are no longer laws that demand segregation between whites and colored people, the truth of the matter is that the inequality still exists. It has much to do with the history of the city but also due to how money flows within the city, the preferences of people, and any existing discrimination there may be. These are only a few of the factors that play into the complexity of why segregation still exists today.

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[LUCY ZHANG]

I chose this photo from The African American Policy Form’s article called Segrgation to represent this week’s theme because it clearly depicts the separation between whites and colored people that was so heavily enforced from the 1870s to the 1960s. There were many examples of how colored people were discriminated against, from unequal housing opportunities and job opportunities to colored people being denied access to good schools and good hospitals. In this picture, this sign states that colored people couldn’t even drink out of the same water fountain as white people, even if it was the same water being filtered. This is how segregated society was at the time, that a small act such as drinking from a water fountain had to have rules imposed upon it.

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[LUCY ZHANG]

This week ‘s theme revolved around the ideas of race and space, shown in our discussions in class and the readings we did at home. I chose this photo because it clearly represents the divide between white people and colored people during the era of Jim Crow Laws. Even in public spaces like waiting rooms, where people usually just sit in peace and mind their own business while they wait for something, are segregated. A space where hardly any interaction occurs needs to be separate, and it is even ordered by the police department to be enforced. Although these laws are no longer in effect today and a physical sign similar to this one would never be allowed to be posted anywhere, it doesn’t mean that people of color aren’t being denied their rightful access to certain public spaces; regardless of whether it’s owning or living on property, attending certain schools, or applying for jobs. This sign has gone from physical to theoretical.

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