African Darter

In Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao we get a greater glimpse into the politics of phenotypes and authenticity in Dominican culture. More specifically in its relationship to blackness. In Irene Lopez, a Puerto Rican clinical psychologist’s essay, Puerto Rican Phenotype: Understanding Its Historical Underpinnings and Psychological Associations, she posits that, “Puerto Ricans who consider being “Indian” more beautiful, or more authentic, than being Black and, thus, often prefer to…

Oakland is a community flourishing in the arts, poetry and literature that has historically ignored in academia by major publishing companies. Most of this work consists of oral/performance poetry and flourishes in communal spaces, spaces that work towards unifying the community and creating a safe environment for underrepresented and marginalized communities.From the beginning of the Black Arts Movement in the 70s with writers such as Ishmael Reed and Sarah Webster Fabio have pushed the…

reason, mistreatment of African Americans wasn’t considered unethical at the time, it was simply considered the norm. The Jim Crow laws were still in place at that time, they were laws which basically treated African Americans as “separate but equal”. African Americans had separate public commodities such as water fountains and bathrooms. These commodities were usually in worse shape than the ones for whites, leading to whites feeling superior. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who…

shown that African American elders are a lower life expectancy than other races. Even though African Americans have a lower life expectancy it has been shown that African American elders confident about what the future holds for them with health and also happiness. The majority of African American elders is content with their communities and will continue to live in the community, because of the support and assistance of their family members. Being part of an…

After years of falling victim to violence from white segregationists across the country, many African Americans became disillusioned with the concept of nonviolence as the preferred means to achieving change. One of the arguably most notable examples of this was the brutal murder of 14 year old Emmett Till, an event that is credited with being instrumental…

There is a multitude of themes that are present in James Baldwin’s book, The Fire Next Time. However, there was one theme that decisively stood out. This theme that stood out was, the idea that Baldwin thinks racism in America must end sooner rather than later. Baldwin addresses this issue many different times throughout the entirety of his book. Additionally, Baldwin use stories from his past to give the reader a more realistic idea of what it’s like to deal with racism on a daily basis.…

The poem “ Blink Your Eyes” by Sekou Sundiata, an African American poet and performer, is about him showing his outrage towards racial profiling. He is trying to drive to go see his women, but there is something stopping him from doing that. He is pulled over by a policeman and he feels tension because he understands that there is a possibility he can be subjected to the law for doing nothing wrong. The policeman accuses the African American man of committing a crime just because he is black. He…

In the film “Crash” the “Isms” were played out from the beginning. The first “Isms” I noticed was the car accident scene and the Chinese women tells the police officer “Mexicans don’t know how to drive” and the scene where the two African American males were walking out of the restaurant and one of the say that he wasn’t going to pay for a service where they didn’t offer him coffee because of his skin color, the other male individual was stating he didn’t get coffee because he did not ask for it…

During the late 19th/early 20th century, there were two civil rights activists who wanted to better the Northern and Southern communities. Citizens respected African American activists like W.E.B Dubois and Booker T. Washington, because of their perseverance in solving political and cultural problems within the black communities. Although, W.E.B Dubois and Booker Washington were opinionated about these issues, they wanted refinement in the government 's decisions. Acknowledging W.E.B Dubois…

identities. “I am black and I am female and I am a mother and I am a bisexual and I am a nationalist and I am an antinationalist. And I mean to be full and freely all that I am.” She used her poetry for awareness of women, the poor, as well as African Americans. Her writing, Poem about Police Violence, was a response to the “accidental” death of a black man in police custody. Jordan tries in this poem to eliminate the growing number of police violence. This work of literature drew my…