Japanese diaspora

“Hairitage” What is the relevance of Black Women and their hair? “I am not my hair, I am not this skin, I am not your expectations, no I am not my hair, I am not this skin ,I am a soul that lives within.” All women can relate, when it comes to hair, it doesn’t matter your race or ethnicity; every woman has a battle with her hair. These battles can range from deciding on a color or cringing at the thought of just getting a trim. Visually, Black women’s hair is thicker, curlier, and frizzier…

In her essay “Why Are All the Black Kids sitting together in the Cafeteria?” Beverly Tatum, analyzes the significance of African American students migrating towards each other in social outings within schools. Many people believe that the kids migrate towards each other simply because they are friends, however Tatum argues that the reason goes far beyond friendship. As children began to grow into adolescents, they become curious as to who they are or what their purpose is in the world. However,…

To gain a better understanding of the African American family, one must study the African philosophy and cosmology. By learning about the philosophies origins and its five themes, the black family will be able to harmonize itself and begin to see what is wrong with research done by people like E. Franklin Frazier and Daniel Moynihan. Once this is accomplished the black family can free itself from western conceptual incarceration. There are five central themes in African philosophy and cosmology…

Assignment #2 The anti-colonialism movement was fueled by a spirit of Pan-Africanism and Pan-Negroism in the early 20th century. Black people across the world identified with each other through their similar struggles for political equality. Pan-Negroism stemmed from the idea that the unification of African-Americans and African natives would be the best way to gain access to the polity. For Africans, achieving political equality meant liberating themselves from colonial rule. African-Americans…

Conservative estimates put well-established, dynastic African civilization as beginning nearly 5,000 years prior to the first slaves landing in North America. Perhaps the greatest injustice ever conferred onto the African diaspora in America was the large-scale insistence on minimizing the vast and bountiful history from which they originated. W.E.B Du Bois, in writing The Souls of Black Folk draws a powerful comparison between this categorical miseducation that was necessary to perpetuate…

blood in human veins.” Hughes conception of the black experience and rich ancient existence in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” can be analyzed through Stuart Hall’s second definition of cultural identity presented in his essay “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”. Stuart Hall defines cultural identity in two ways. The first is an essentialist identity, which focuses on the…

If you were to type in “beautiful girls” into the Google search engine and go to images the only females shown are with traditionally European features and light skin. A study by William Janowiak and associates found that those of Eastern Asian background are more fond of large eyes and pale skin, which Westerners are typically portrayed with, to be more aesthetically pleasing. Another race’s analysis of European features reflect a similar report, the infamous “Doll Test”; the babydoll test,…

“At birth, you are given a pair of binoculars that see black life from a distance, never with the texture of intimacy,” writes Michael Eric Dyson in his essay “Death in Black and White”, which is a New York Times article in response to the deaths of Alton B Sterling and Philando Castile by “the hands of the police.” Dyson is talking about how white America will always struggle to understand black people. White America’s inability to understand African Americans is echoed in Claudia Rankine’s…

The Effects of Reconstruction After reading Voices of Freedom, the chapter that really resonated with me was “‘What is Freedom?’”: Reconstruction” In this chapter, the overall theme or topic is the period of time in history when Reconstruction was taking place. Reconstruction can be defined as “something that is being rebuilt after being damaged or destroyed.” After the Civil War finally came to an end in 1865, that “something” that needed rebuilding was our country, as well as the rights of the…

What kinds of fruits emanated to your mind when the word ‘strange’ comes before it? In the song “Strange Fruit” the singer of the song sings about some rather strange fruit. The singer is an African American, female Jazz singer called Billie Holiday. “Strange Fruit” was released during 1939 in the time where segregation was still pretty big in the south. Lynching had been happening for a few years before the song was released. While definitely a way to dehumanize African Americans, which is…