Dream Deferred Five is reminiscent of both the Civil Rights movement and the more recent Ferguson riots. The painting depicts a protest in front of a storefront and judging by the words on the protesters signs it is race related. The Diner in the painting is Woolworth’s, which is the sight of the North Carolina Greensboro sit-in. The depiction of a protest Woolworth’s is important not only because of the historical background but also because it represents the privileges African Americans were denied at the time. Woolworth’s, in this painting, represents the dream deferred the title refers to. In addition, the painting addresses the consequences of deferring said dream.
Another thing to note about the setting is the signs on the store windows. …show more content…
This is important because people tend to whitewash the truth and make things seem small than what they were. It is also important to have visuals accompanying the historical fact. We live in a time where visuals are viewed as a means of teaching. Using the arts to tell history will have a bigger social impact on people rather than a textbook alone. This leads to another point. The arts should not be censored as Plato insists they should. Censoring any of these paintings would whitewash the truth and defeat the whole purpose of historical art. The Dream Deferred paintings possess the dangerous “powerful charm” Plato warns us about, however, it would be even more dangerous to censor them and pretend that such things don’t happen in real life. Such an action would not be beneficial to our society especially when it is in danger of making the same mistake it did years ago. A lot of people think that racism is a thing of the past or go as far as to say that it is non-existent, that leads us to David Hume’s “delicacy of imagination”. If the painting is powerful enough to change someone’s opinion then it has done its job to make people think about the past and current state of our
Another thing to note about the setting is the signs on the store windows. …show more content…
This is important because people tend to whitewash the truth and make things seem small than what they were. It is also important to have visuals accompanying the historical fact. We live in a time where visuals are viewed as a means of teaching. Using the arts to tell history will have a bigger social impact on people rather than a textbook alone. This leads to another point. The arts should not be censored as Plato insists they should. Censoring any of these paintings would whitewash the truth and defeat the whole purpose of historical art. The Dream Deferred paintings possess the dangerous “powerful charm” Plato warns us about, however, it would be even more dangerous to censor them and pretend that such things don’t happen in real life. Such an action would not be beneficial to our society especially when it is in danger of making the same mistake it did years ago. A lot of people think that racism is a thing of the past or go as far as to say that it is non-existent, that leads us to David Hume’s “delicacy of imagination”. If the painting is powerful enough to change someone’s opinion then it has done its job to make people think about the past and current state of our