With so much production and consumption of a plethora of different forms of media, too many people never need to need for it to be any different than how it is, never have to wish it would change. Too many people, unknowingly, take for granted something another group of people would weep with joy at finding. This is what being represented in the media can feel like. African Americans experience anywhere from negative representation to erasure from television, film, literature, and even the educational curriculum. This lack of active or positive representation stems from a long, complex history of slavery and racism. Even outside of history lessons, most books with prominent African American characters are set in times of slavery or the Jim
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In turn, it hinders their opportunities, their development of their sense of self, their self-esteem, their education, their sense of agency, ambition. It hinders them by manipulating them into self-handicapping their potential, and therefore their future. African Americans struggle immensely with high school dropout rates, and even if those are overcome, they are met with obstacle after obstacle in their journey towards higher education and beyond. It can be hard to maintain hope and hard work with so many discouraging norms set up against a single solitary person. However, there is hope through change. One of the best ways to start this change is through diversifying the educational curriculum. The current curriculum has failed African American Students for too long. There is an answer, and it comes in the form of afrocentric education. The positive representation that African American children gain from an afrocentric education prepares them much better for their futures in the adult world than regular education ever can. In schools, students are either taught African American History through the lens of slavery and oppression, or barely at all. Schools are where children spend most of their time, and African American children need to see themselves represented, and since the media is not providing that, it is the teacher’s responsibility to do so, as it very well should in the first place. Otherwise, it contributes to the negative effects …show more content…
Unless an active effort is being made to celebrate and teach African American history and culture, beyond slavery, racism, and oppression, than the result will be unacceptable and unsatisfactory. In A Lesson Before Dying, Jefferson is a black 21-year-old man wrongfully charged and found guilty of the murder of a white man and two black men. His old teacher, Grant Wiggins, and Jefferson’s godmother, Miss Emma, visit him in jail, and try to make him feel like a person. When visiting in his cell becomes too much time for Miss Emma to stand for one period of time, it is arranged that Jefferson meet them all in the prisoner’s day room. On one condition: he is to remain chained at the hands and feet for the duration of his time spent outside his cell. Gaines describes him, “Jefferson had not been chained before, and he took long steps that caused him to trip, my aunt said. He came to the table like somebody half blind, and he didn’t sit down until Paul told him to do so” (Gaines 111). Later on he reiterates, “And I heard the chains out along the cellblock before I saw anyone. Then they came in, Jefferson in front,
In turn, it hinders their opportunities, their development of their sense of self, their self-esteem, their education, their sense of agency, ambition. It hinders them by manipulating them into self-handicapping their potential, and therefore their future. African Americans struggle immensely with high school dropout rates, and even if those are overcome, they are met with obstacle after obstacle in their journey towards higher education and beyond. It can be hard to maintain hope and hard work with so many discouraging norms set up against a single solitary person. However, there is hope through change. One of the best ways to start this change is through diversifying the educational curriculum. The current curriculum has failed African American Students for too long. There is an answer, and it comes in the form of afrocentric education. The positive representation that African American children gain from an afrocentric education prepares them much better for their futures in the adult world than regular education ever can. In schools, students are either taught African American History through the lens of slavery and oppression, or barely at all. Schools are where children spend most of their time, and African American children need to see themselves represented, and since the media is not providing that, it is the teacher’s responsibility to do so, as it very well should in the first place. Otherwise, it contributes to the negative effects …show more content…
Unless an active effort is being made to celebrate and teach African American history and culture, beyond slavery, racism, and oppression, than the result will be unacceptable and unsatisfactory. In A Lesson Before Dying, Jefferson is a black 21-year-old man wrongfully charged and found guilty of the murder of a white man and two black men. His old teacher, Grant Wiggins, and Jefferson’s godmother, Miss Emma, visit him in jail, and try to make him feel like a person. When visiting in his cell becomes too much time for Miss Emma to stand for one period of time, it is arranged that Jefferson meet them all in the prisoner’s day room. On one condition: he is to remain chained at the hands and feet for the duration of his time spent outside his cell. Gaines describes him, “Jefferson had not been chained before, and he took long steps that caused him to trip, my aunt said. He came to the table like somebody half blind, and he didn’t sit down until Paul told him to do so” (Gaines 111). Later on he reiterates, “And I heard the chains out along the cellblock before I saw anyone. Then they came in, Jefferson in front,