African American Presentations

I thought everyone who presented on Thursday did really well. Jill and Sara's presentation on teaching ideas was really informative. I liked how they connected the four major wars with events and ideas concerning African Americans. I don't really remember any of my textbooks making connections between the people and ideas of one war to the people and ideas in the next. I always saw them as separate events. That's not what history is like; everything is connected in the world.

The statistics presented concerning racial profiling are CRAZY. Whether the connection between black drivers being pulled over and searched and racial profiling is causal or not, there is a definite connection between the two. 77% (drivers pulled over and searched) of a 17% total population is huge. That and some of the other stats gives me a little more perspective on Malcolm X and his experiences like when he explained an instance of severe police brutality against an African American and when he evaded the draft. I agree that there is some definite "blame the victim" attitudes going on, like Loewen says, but we need to be careful throwing that phrase around, so that people don't begin to purposefully play the victim, in my opinion at least.

The art, music, and films categories were the presentations that I knew the most about (comparatively). I recognized many of the names mentioned. Jean-Michel Basquiat though, I had never heard of. I found his story very interesting and tragic. On the other hand, I have seen a literature class presentation on Maya Angelou and have heard/read some of her poems before. As for films, I am certainly going to try to watch "Ray" and "Malcolm X" since both have incredible actors and stories. I am most interested in seeing the one about Ray Charles even though I have a high respect for Denzel Washington.