statement of Intent

Police are here to protect and serve people, are black lives not people?

Racial brutality.

To begin with discrimination is a black issue but manly a white problem.

The privilege white people have are endless and its the lack of awareness within the white community of these inbuilt advantages that taints white attitudes to race. Importantly our role is to eliminate racial oppression, segregation, systematic racism, colourblindness and racial abuse. 

To start off, I wanted to do my 3rd year research project on an important and current worldwide problem, which is white privilege and racial brutality. I’ve wanted to do this as racial hate really infuriates me. I want to find out why and where the hate for another race comes from and how it leads to such violence and fear. 

“Today a criminal freed from prison has scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a freed slave or black person living “free” in Mississippi at the height of Jim Crow” (Alexander, 2010, p.141)

('The Nickel Boys' by Colson Whitehead)

 

I confirmed that I wanted to do this topic even more after reading ‘The Nickel Boys’ by Colson whitehead (Whitehead, 2019). The Nickel boys is based 60 years ago, meaning people from a time of extreme discrimination, abuse and segregation are still alive today. So can all this hate reallly be gone by in just 60 years? The obvious answer is no. In the book I read about a boy named Elwood being wrongfully arrested by the police and imprisoned in a school, he’s then treated in inhumane ways, abused, sexually abused and verbally insulted, because of his colour. Unsurprisingly this is based on true occurrences as the Dovier school did exist and kids were exploited and abused but mostly the black ethnicity. (Luscombe, 2015)

Furthermore, The Nickel boys sums up what I want to discuss as Elwood’s situation represents the ways in which “racial biases of the American justice system unfairly target African-Americans for the purpose of denying them freedom and personal growth.” (BookRags, 2021). Elwood and the other Nickel students are also forced to provide free labor, which till this day is just a form of modern slavery.

The visual elements I will research are book covers on racial injustice and how the designers made it meaningful and impactful.  Along with black artists and their artwork on the matter. (The Mill, 2020)

(Top L-R: Anastasia Skrebneva, Tim Devlin, Ed Laag, Cody Samson, Joey Chu & Stephy Tian. Bottom L-R: Leah Evans, Greg Rubner, Patrick Knip, Sasha Vinogradova, Sherry Kuo)

For the outcome of my project I was hoping to do a informative magazine with graphic posters on the issue of racial brutality alongside with the research I would have found during this project. 

Unfortunately, I only found the horrific truth of police brutality and the racial injustice during the outburst of the George Floyd case and then the black lives movement that followed it. Thus why it’s more important to learn and spread the knowledge I will find by doing this topic.  Not only his case but plenty more like Emmett till, Rodney king, John Crawford III and survivors like Leon Ford.  I will research about them as-well. (Lyons, 2020)

Overall, Apart of me is afraid of doing this as I desperately don’t want to get these conversations wrong, but I believe the issue is greater than my fear, so thus I will try my best. This is a huge project, so to begin I would research important historical accounts on racial brutality and work my way through it, down to the core.    

References;

Alexander, M. (2010) The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, p.141.

BookRags (2021) The Nickel Boys Summary. [online] Available at: <http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-the-nickel-boys/themesmotifs.html#gsc.tab=0> [Accessed 27 October 2021].

Luscombe, R. (2015) 'Rape dungeon' allegations emerge in abuse report on Dozier School for Boys. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/06/dozier-school-for-boys-abuse-florida-new-allegations> [Accessed 27 October 2021] 

Lyons, K. (2020) Surviving a police shooting turned a teenager into an activist. [online] The Verge. Available at: <https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/31/21396054/leon-ford-shooting-pittsburgh-activist-journey-police-brutality> [Accessed 27 October 2021].

The Mill. (2020) Artists For Black Lives | Fundraising for the BLM movement - The Mill. [online] Available at: <https://www.themill.com/newsfeed/artists-for-black-lives-fundraising-for-the-blm-movement/> [Accessed 27 October 2021].

Whitehead, C. (2019) The Nickel boys. Great Britain: Fleet.