Personal Narrative: My Trip To The Black Cultural Center

All throughout time people have been “the other.” Pratt refers to the other as being “Someone who is perceived by the dominant culture as not belonging, as they have been

The reason I chose to go to the African Art Museum is because I have been there before and I enjoy my time when I go. The tours at the museum consisted of talks about certain pieces in the museum that fell in a category the tourist wanted to focus on. Nkechi Obi was my first tour guide and the title of her tour was “Docent African Arts”. Her goal throughout the tour was to show pieces of artwork that showed what Africans may have gone through in the past in slavery. One piece that she focused on that I want to highlight was “Southern Landscape” by Walter Williams Roots. In this piece there various things going on in the photo.

Too black for the White kids, yet somehow too white for the Black kids, oh the perils of a cappuccino mixed race kid. But it’s true. My life since I was young, at least younger than my eighteen year old self, has been about which group do I most fit in with. Between the four school changes over the course of twelve years, all in white suburban towns I’ve molded myself into an array of characters.

“It is said that seeing is believing but that depends on the source vision”. If one does not experience first-hand they see through another medium which is often film and television. Film is one of the reasons black culture and the black experience is misunderstood and filled with fabricated beliefs. African Americans have been involved in Hollywood films since film earliest forms in the early 20th century. In these early films African Americans was showed in a damaging unpleasant way. African American filmmakers have been are emancipating the black image from Hollywood’s depiction of Blacks. They are challenging the stereotypes and destroying the view of the singular black experience. Black are becoming more involved in the

Since its founding, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) has been exhibiting and collecting works by contemporary artists. They have an ever-expanding collection of 20th- and 21st-century art that I had the pleasure of viewing, following its remodel in 2012. In addition to the permanent collection, a new innovative experience called the Black Box gallery introduces a new way of viewing the works of contemporary artists. The Black Box allows the viewer not only to see the work in a new way, playing with light but also hear and experience images in motion. The exhibit I went to see was curated by Kristen Hileman, the senior curator of contemporary art, and it features two screen-based works as opposed to displaying one as it usually does. The two artists featured were Kara Walker and Hank Willis Thomas.Within their works, both artists discuss the feeling and experiences associated with being black in America, specifically the historical significance of the legacy of slavery.

The last few weeks were worse than I could have ever imagined. If I had known what it this job would consist of I might not have taken it in the first place. I sailed to Africa with the crew, expecting to pick up cargo when, to my shock, it turns out we were bringing a more alive supply of 140 young African slaves. Why do people want slaves anyway? I had questioned Mr. Slater with this. “They’re better with agriculture and cattle, ” he had replied. “The Indians are no good… they’re all dead, ahahaha.” I did not have the energy to tell him why his joke was grossly unfunny. He strangely did not recognize even a slight problem with forcing people to work for us, just because they had immunities to our diseases and their government allowed it.

Many Americans point to the suffering of the African American experience from the internal problems in African Americans communities; however, they neglect the external social constraints that African Americans have faces in America. African Americans have suffered oppression through social institution through factors such as Segregation, Racial Crimination, and Mass incarnation. The constraint of segregation was a way of social, political, and economical control over African Americans. African Americans are usually a racial group that is associate with crime. Research and statistics has shown that African Americans are those that are majority incarnated in the United states. Many white Americans kept

John Howard Griffin was a journalist and a professional on race issues. After publication, he became a leading advocate in the Civil Rights Movement and did much to promote awareness of the racial situation sand pass legislature. He was middle aged and living in Mansfield, Texas at the time of publication in 1960. His desire to know if Southern whites were racist against the Negro population of the Deep South, or if they really judged people based on the individual 's personality as they said. Because of this he felt that they had encouraged him to cross the color line and write Black Like Me.

Worked in collaboration with a local artist and the Artist in Residence, Fran Joy, for the celebration of Black History Month, 2015. The work involved research of true stories around the globe to highlight atrocities that have taken place with people in the name of religion and color. My work comprised of a picture of an African American male who is standing with his face and back toward the wall and his hands on the wall to show the helplessness and need of time to pay attention to unfathomable suffering of people in pain. The picture was a 36 x 17 mounted picture. The work was on display along with the pictures of others who are real sufferers.

When I think of America, I think of one sole word: determination. Our history is a medley of spectacular accomplishments and now-realized mistakes. We’ve struggled with issues that appear to be simple, yet the effects of past hardships can still be felt today. For example, we thought we had ended racism by making African-Americans equal under law, after the civil rights movement, but this same issue has merely developed into social discrimination. Despite the problems that remain and evolve with us through time, the most defining attribute every American has is their will-power to achieve their dreams. To many, these dreams are to end racial, gender, or sexual orientation discrimination. To many, these dreams may even be as seemingly simple

The feeling of having 200 of my peers striding along side me shouting, “No justice, no peace, no racist police,” or “Back up, back up, we want freedom freedom, all these racist ass cops we don’t need them, need them,” is an exhilarating feeling I will probably never experience ever again.

It was a normal day in the streets of Harlem, New York. Men and women moving to and fro through the streets, but one situation involving the eviction of an elderly negro couple disturbed this everyday serenity. The policemen were forced to dodge fists from the old lady as they attempted to properly evict the old couple. A large crowd gathered around the corner building, watching in horror as the elderly couple had their all their possessions tossed out onto the sidewalk. Shouts from the couple could be heard throughout the ordeal, some including statements such as “It’s all the white folks, not just one. They all against us. Every stinking low-down one of them.” It was apparent that the old lady seemed to be especially triggered by the policemen

My trip to the “National Museum of African American History and Culture”, gave me the opportunity to absorb the hardships and rigors African Americans experienced during difficult ages. I learned, in more detail, about the people who made an impact on the African American movement. For example, before the trip, I thought Ben Carson was merely an important figure and didn’t have a clear understanding of what his contribution was. In the Community Galleries, I discovered that Ben Carson that is known for being a distinguished neurosurgeon and for successfully separating conjoined twins. His accomplishments link to my goals of becoming a physical therapist because he was able to defy odds with immense dedication.

The museum is a very interesting place where amazing exhibits are around you.While entering the museum and exploring the different art one drawing seemed to catch my eye the most. The title of the drawing was called “Dying Solider”. In this piece of art their were three working people in the drawing. It was a man portraying a janitor, an older lady scrubbing hardwood floors, and a woman taking care of an infant. Those three descriptions of the images makes me realize how hard an African American house hold had to work.

When I survey the current state of black America, or blacks internationally, what I see hurts me to the core. We are the most marginalized, abused and oppressed group of people in the world. For years, I have been anatomizing the issues to determine the cause. I am a person who believes in identifying causation, because if you can identify causation, you can develop a strategy to stop the negative forces that are behind the current situation, reverse the damage, and move forward. What I have discovered is that there are multitudinous issues that are the result of complex mechanisms that must be addressed individually.