Title of Final Project: The Black Struggle to Becoming American –  Life Before and After the Harlem Renaissance

 

The American Negro has always found him/herself a second-class citizen to his/her white counterparts throughout history whether it is enforced through slavery, segregation of people based off color, pay wage differences, police treatment/racial profiling, mass incarceration i.e. My project aims to show although America tried to hold African-Americans/P.O.C. back, blacks defied the odds stacked against them and proved not only to America but to the world, that they were much more capable than what upper white society had thought of them. Whether it be the hard labor of America’s cotton growing economy,

Since I liked Blog #2 (Is Gentrification really all that Bad?), Blog #3 (Does Violence Ever Solve Our Problems?) and Blog #5 (What even is race?) I figured I can use Blog #3 as a big factor for The Great Migration (talk about life with blatant discrimination, constant race riots mentioned in the Opportunity Magazine, Jim Crow era) to then moving to areas like Harlem in hope to find a better life and morphing the black identity in America.

 [BP2] A lot of people describe gentrification in Harlem as a means of not only displacing people, but the stripping of culture away from an area that has had an illustrious history. But the 80s crack epidemic in New York City had already started to stain Harlem’s history as it was one of the most deeply affected neighborhoods…

[BP3]I really wanted to describe a catalyst for the Great Migration, violence against blacks or just the race riots in general.  The lynchings, public beatings and executions left America more divided although it had branded itself to be welcoming to immigrants and the free world. I wanted to talk about the hypocrisy of the word human, on paper a person who is gentle and warm but has violent tendencies

[BP5] For this post I just wanted to point out how passing is usually one sided, blacks who try to pass for white not vice versa, and I really tried to bring the question can a white pass for black? Is it because is it hard to imagine? I’m trying to hint that a person who is passing for white and is black or a person who passes for black and looks white is two sides of the same coin and should look similar.

I could mention how passing colored-folk used their privileged skin-tones to buy property and allowed for a black-owned Harlem to be possible? Using their skin to give back to their community in a sense… which could incorporate Blog Post #5, What even is race? To then tie into Harlem itself, once a sought-after rich white neighborhood, becomes the ‘black capital of the world’.

I find it important to discuss because not only is it our history but it is history that still affects us today, the centuries of discrimination do not disappear overnight. When the 13th Amendment (abolishment of slavery) was ratified in Dec. 1865, it did not stop whites from killing blacks. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, it did not stop discrimination of people of color. People of color to this day are disproportionally arrested versus their white counterparts for the same crime.

 

p.s. would like as much feedback as possible

Criminal justice fact sheet. NAACP. (2021, May 24). Retrieved May 5, 2022, from https://naacp.org/resources/criminal-justice-fact-sheet

A brief history of Harlem. (n.d.). Retrieved May 5, 2022, from https://www.open.edu/openlearn/society/politics-policy-people/sociology/brief-history-harlem