[Ryan Hur]

For this week’s photo sharing, I chose this image taken directly from the website of the US Congress, containing an abstract of S. J. RES. 14.

Layli Long Soldier’s commentary on this resolution within her poetry collection “Whereas” provided a human voice, in stark contrast to the droning tone of this piece of legislation.

I chose this image specifically because it resembles the cover of a scientific publication, strewn with the names of its authors, far more than it would an apology, especially an apology that is roughly 300 years delayed.  What little information the foreword gives literally betrays nothing in regards to the message its content holds towards native Americans.  She remarks on this with her poetry, asserting her humanity in the face of this soulless document thrown at the faces of US natives in an awry attempt to apologize for nearly three centuries worth of betrayal and persecution.

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[Ryan Hur]

For this week’s photoshare, I have focused on a screenshot from the viral facebook video recorded by the African American man D’Arreion Toles (Oct, 2018), showing a white woman (later identified as Hilary Brooke Mueller) fiercely attempting to deny him access to his own apartment building.  Using her body to prevent him from entering through a doorway and repeatedly demanding to see his key fob, her asinine behavior led to her termination from Tribeca-STL, a real estate management company, whose representatives insisted that racism had no place among its employees.  This latest debacle featuring a white individual harassing African Americans adds yet another name, “Key Fob Kelly”, to the list of individuals whose ignominious actions have brought upon them the scorn of nearly the entire online community.  But it’s heartening to see that even if it’d be far better that we never saw headlines like this, individuals who attempt to pull stunts similar to Key Fob Kelly’s in public can expect to lose much more than the respect of their peers.  The social consequences of exhibiting overt racism in public spaces serve as a potent warning to anyone else who’d be tempted to act in a similar fashion.

 

https://abcnews.go.com/US/woman-defends-video-shows-refusing-black-man-apartment/story?id=58555536

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[Ryan Hur]

For my week 7 photo share, I chose this scenic photo overlooking the Canyonlands National Park in Utah.  I actually had seen this photo numerous times before when researching locations as possible destinations for either family vacations or outings with friends, but had never paid attention to the significance of the ruins displayed in the front of the picture.  Rather, I had only focused on the “untouched” wilderness that the photograph exhibits, and thought that this was a beautiful manifestation of America’s last vestiges of unexploited nature.  Now this photo presents a much more bleak theme of forced removal, violated treaties, and the ruins of what was once Pueblo territory, now labelled as a place that had always been free of human inhabitants.

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[Ryan Hur]

For this week’s photo share, I chose this image of a demonstrator’s sign, featured in the Vox article “Everybody Does Drugs, But Only Minorities Are Punished For It” by German Lopez.  As the title states, this article’s pointed argument, as well as the protest behind the sign, exposes the War on Drugs as an inherently prejudiced and systematic operation that hardly makes beneficial impacts on drug abuse rather than tearing apart communities of color and placing the remnants behind bars.  As we discussed in lecture, and as stated in the “New Jim Crow” reading, if as much effort exhibited by the government in executing this operation went into the creation of jobs, community resources, and functional schools in target areas, perhaps REAL beneficial change would actually materialize.
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[Ryan Hur]

The photo I chose for this week’s sharing was a black and white still from an Atlantic article delving into the forms of school segregation that have persisted into the modern day education system.  Nearly 6 decades after the milestone case Brown vs Board of Education, critics point out disturbing trends in the “Tracking” system utilized by the New Jersey school district, which assigns students to different levels of curriculum based on their academic performance at earlier ages.  Though the school system asserts that this system is purely to aid students by assigning them to classes in which they can learn material at a manageable level of difficulty, the resulting racial compositions of the “gifted and talented” classes compared to those of the regular classes seem to do little more than prove that segregation in our education system has not entirely left, but has changed forms.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/11/modern-day-segregation-in-public-schools/382846/

 

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[Ryan Hur]

For this week’s photoshare, I decided to use an image of the Black Panther Party’s breakfast program.  This image, now one of the enduring legacies of the BPP’s many contributions to local communities in the USA, juxtaposes sharply with the image that my entire household was taught both in and out of school as we grew up.  An apron-clad man serving children was a far cry from the textbook photos of armed, menacing groups roaming the streets and courtroom debacles.  This is just one of many such photographs displaying humility, kindness, and a drive to improve their environments that has slipped under the radar, only to resurface decades later as we begin to dismantle an equally old narrative.  To me, being a good ally is something that one exhibits in their actions, and not just their words.  The BPP’s free breakfast for children embodies such action, as do the many modern day contemporary programs that it has inspired throughout the country.

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[Ryan Hur]

For this week’s theme, I chose a still from Joyner Lucas’ Grammy nominated music video “I’m Not Racist”, a controversial and heated exchange between representatives on either side of America’s modern day political and racial divide.  The rap music video first dishes out the perspective of a white middle-aged man sporting Trump apparel, laying bare the grievances he holds against Lucas’ kind.  Following this barrage of accusations, Lucas responds in kind, highlighting the struggles that minorities, particularly African Americans, still suffer from today, systematically meeting each one of the man’s points.  I believe this photo is significant for two reasons. The platform upon which this dialogue was displayed is remarkable, considering that the idea of a minority representative being nominated for a Grammy award was unthinkable just 60 years ago.  However, this is also directly juxtaposed by the nature of the dialogue, and how disappointing it is that such a strong divide still persists so many years after the Civil Rights movement made such promising strides.

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