Becoming What We've Never Been
Social Justice Blog Post
"What you have to understand is we're trying to become something this country has never been"
The portriat here shows a young protestor participating in one of the many internationally occurring Black Lives Matter protests in response to the unjust murder of African-American George Floyd on the 25th of May 2020. Her mask is scribed with some of Floyd's final words, words he repeated more than 20 times while white police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on hiss neck. I aimed to capture this young woman's strength and fight in this powerful image.
Dishonouring the scared promise of the Declaration of Independence; are all men really created equal? Who was Thomas Jefferson really talking to...
Though I will be working in Canadian classrooms, this narrative of denial of history and promise of equality are common and problematic threads I will be challenged with throughout my entire career. What does it mean to be black in Canada? What does it mean to resist the dominance by simply exisiting? Classrooms are mini-societies that inherently echo society as a whole. The positive side to this is that classrooms become a more attainable environment for us to enact change. The pursuit of equality is so complicated and needs to be deconstructed to be reconstructed, which is the intention of protest. As I progress through the episodes of the Seeing White series, I am appreciative that the ideas introduced here force me to recognize my bias and progress sensitively through a climate I aspire to. The quote is for people who are about transformative change, equal rights, liberation, decolonization and promotion of the simple yet jarring words that "Black Lives Matter," but we must accept the messy process of rebuilding society into something that it has indeed, never been.
References
Biewen, J. (Producer). (2017, March 30). On Crazy We Built a Nation (Seeing White, Part 4) [Audio podcast]. In Scene on Radio. Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University. https://www.sceneonradio.org/episode-34-on-crazy-we-built-a-nation-seeing-white-part-4/.
“Martin Luther King - I Have A Dream Speech - August 28, 1963.” 20 Jan. 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs&feature=emb_title.