ARED 3070: New Insights Regarding Visual Culture and Diversity

Along with this class one of my other classes is focusing heavily on addressing issues of diversity which I think, as much as I am embarrassed to admit it, is a very good thing for me. As many of my peers may know I am from a small town in Northwest Georgia, within the small town I can account to the lack of diverse opinions that influenced me before I came to study here at UGA. Sure there were great things about being raised there, I loved it and still do. But several aspects of my education, to say the least, were left lacking. I was in a bubble that burst when I came to Athens, and since then I have been trying to rebuild my way of looking at the world. Which is one of the reasons I am excited to see how this semester will help me reconstruct and shape myself.

My entire life has been lived within the 'southern motto' of "treat everyone the way you want to be treated" which sounds like a harmless reminder of how to behave except for that it led to my understanding that colorblindness is a way to treat everyone the same, and even if I was treating everyone 'good,' I am realizing that is not okay. As Acuff (2015) defines, colorblindness is "the idea that race is irrelevant and does not impact equity and access in America" (32). This leads to the belief that we are living in a post-racial America and I honestly believe that when I was younger I thought that we were. But we aren't, witnessing the several events have taught me that: first the election of President Donald Trump, and currently the news of the UGA TA Irami Osei-Frimpong.

When President Trump was elected in November of 2016 I was in my first semester here at UGA, I had never seen anything like what happened the next day. When I went to class the professors had announced we weren't going to have lecture instead it was just going to be a 'safe place to talk.' I was lacking empathy, is what it really boiled down to, because I liked that class and I wanted to keep learning and suddenly that was interrupted so that we could talk. I now realize that, educators must be aware of the society in which they are educating students (Acuff, 2015). As a future educator I hope to honor that just as my teacher did. She read the needs of the class and facilitated in a way that wasn't focused on political parties or core values instead it was a conversation in a secure environment about fears and vulnerability.

Page from Citizen: An American Lyric

Though I cannot understand what it is like to be an African American in America today, Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric recently gave me insight on the "pain points of everyday life" as she describes situations herself and friends have experienced (Tippett, 2019). I can imagine the painfulness of the sharp white background which is perpetuated continuously in visual culture. Seeing the work of artist Micheal Ray Charles illuminated the realization that along with lack of representation, extreme misrepresentation continues to exist in visual culture today. Though his work uses depictions of African Americans from history, we still see stereotyping of African Americans in all types of media, for example as highlighted by Jamil Smith "films that depict a reality where whiteness isn’t the default have been ghettoized, marketed largely to audiences of color as niche entertainment, instead of as part of the mainstream" (Smith).

Artwork by Micheal Ray Charles alongside characters from pop culture films.

The surfacing of the tweets and videos of UGA Teaching Assistant

Irami Osei-Frimpong have sent a shock wave too many Georgians and has recently spread to an article posted by Washington Times. This situation has given me a unique chance to evaluate his comments from the standpoint of the critical multiculturalism pedagogy Acuff (2015) describes, encouraging the question "[do] education practices re-inscribe oppression or liberate our children in negating their realities?" (40).

References

Acuff, J. B. (2015). Failure to operationalize: Investing in critical multicultural art education. Journal of Social Theory in Art Education. 35, 30-43.

Smith, J. The revolutionary power of black panther. Retrieved january 19, 2019, from http://time.com/black-panther/

Tippett, K. (On Being). (2019, January 10). Claudia rankine: How can I say this so we can stay in this car together. [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://onbeing.org/programs/claudia-rankine-how-can-i-say-this-so-we-can-stay-in-this-car-together-jan2019/.

Other Resources:

Rankine, C. (2014). Citizen: An american lyric. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press.

Artist Micheal Ray Charles

Article about Irami Osei - Frimpong:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jan/18/university-georgia-ta-some-white-people-may-have-d/