1. " T H E S E R O O T S H O L D F I R M , A S O U R S O U L S Y E A R N T O G R A S P T H E S K Y . "
[Volume II,Edition I]
ART’S ROLE IN ACTIVISM:
NECESSARY OR NOT?
By Kyandreia Jones
Art by Jaleel Davis
Race, gender, class, religion, and politics are some of
the many topics that Americans discuss casually in day-to-day
conversation. However, there are many occupations in which
individuals make it their livelihood to address the difficult issues
we face in our society. Often, workers such as creative thinkers
and artists address these issues through activism.
Artists and creative thinkers use activism to promote, as
as to influence, social change. This employment is the best
way to begin engaging others in meaningful conversations. Why
is this? This is due to the important role that art plays in
changing various societies. Some individuals are of the belief
that art is the first response when a tragedy occurs in the world.
For example, the animation studio Pixar uses their films
Finding Dory and Inside Out to raise awareness about mental
health. The film Finding Dory focuses on the comical and
tender-hearted fish Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) and her
quest to find her family. Most people who have watched the
original film, Finding Nemo, remember the blue tang who
suffers from short term memory loss. Upon watching the film
named after her, the nature and depth of Dory’s ten-second
memory becomes clear. Instead of becoming frustrated with their
daughter, Dory’s parents teach her how to exist in their world
with her disability. Moreover, they love her, not in spite of her
short term memory loss, but for every part of her. The film
demonstrates the positive manner in which to treat a family
member with a disability.
Similarly, the film Inside Out highlights the importance
of all of one’s emotions. When her family uproots her from the
life she had always known, Riley Anderson (voiced by Kaitlyn
Dias) must leave behind her old life and adapt to her new one.
The adaptation involves an understanding of maintaining a
mentally-healthy outlook on life. Instead of the usual narratives
about the benefits of happiness and its hand in daily life, the film
evinces the importance of sadness, anger, and other typically
undesirable emotions.
Instead of giving kids a textbook story to watch or silly
songs to sing, Pixar packs its films with lessons that teach the
adults of the future (and those who buy the movie tickets).
However, Pixar’s utopias pose their own problems. Because
children are their main target audience, the studio often fails to
tackle social issues with the aggression they require. This forces
adults to make inferences and leaves the children with subliminal
messages whose knowledge they cannot access until they’re
much older.
Dissimilarly, creative thinkers and artists expedite
morals and lessons, through more direct communication with
their audience. For example, musical artists, screenwriters, and
others in the entertainment industry have spoken out against
recent incidents between police and African American citizens.
Singers and rappers such as Beyoncé Knowles and Kendrick
Lamar use their music to voice their opinion about the recent
tragedies. They address a topic with which many Americans
struggle. When Knowles and Lamar perform, they are vocalizing
their own internal struggles with these issues, as if saying to their
fans, “I know you’re hurting. This affects me, too.” Instead of
seeing a stranger’s name on a hashtag or victims on t-shirts, the American people see their beloved entertainers calling out a social problem. In this way,
art honors those fallen and puts a familiar face on a national dilemma. Now, it’s not only every day men and women calling for change–it is our idols.
This limits viewers’ and listeners’ ability to ignore difficult discussions. Thus, the creative minds use their platforms to say, “While we have you here,
listen to this.”
"These roots hold firm, as our souls yearn to grasp the sky."
GRASPING ROOTS
AMESSAGE TO OUR COMMUNITY
By Professor Todd Franklin
Oftentimes I sit in my office and look out my window. From my vantage point
I see the hustle and bustle of a bucolic college campus filled with bright and busy
people striving to offer, support, and avail themselves of one of the best
educational experiences that any liberal arts institution could provide. Usually,
reflecting on my own experiences within the midst of this ebb and flow proves
comforting. Conversing with colleagues on the walkways, engaging students in
the classrooms, and witnessing the ways in which sharing experiences and
exchanging ideas can inform and inspire encourages me to remain hopeful for the
future despite the regrettable foibles and tragic failings that mar the distant and not
so distant past.
Sometimes, however, even the hopes of the most hopeful can be tested by the
trials and tribulations of the times. These days, sitting in my office and looking
out my window scarcely provides comfort. Instead of seeing and contemplating
the ways in which I feel welcomed and naturally fit, I find myself forced to
confront and reflect upon the countless ways in which I and all too many others
are all too often regarded as suspect or reviled as detrimental and callously
denigrated or violently dispatched due to the words and actions of some and the
disinterested disregard of others.
Quite commonly, people will take note and make mention of the pathologies
that plague many within our community. Curiously enough, rarely will such
people own up to the fact that we are all a part of the same community and that the
underlying pathogens are systemic.
Fortunately, the contemplation of the contemporary challenges repeatedly
gives way to a resurgence of the historical resilience that enabled many before me
to step forth within community, speak boldly in the name of community, and act
courageously in an effort to rid our community of its ills.
Today I sit in my office and instead of looking out, I pen and share these words
in hopes that they will encourage others in our community to look up to my
window and look deep within themselves to recognize and embrace the civic call
of intellectual conscience. No longer can we—we who walk the pathways,
congregate in the classrooms, and participate in lively conversations on campus—
evade and avoid carefully contemplating and actively addressing the structuraland
systemic sources of the incessant stresses and bitter strains that continue to plague
and threaten to destroy our local and larger community. We, who lay claim to
community in word, must also in deed. Moreover, we who profess a commitment
to community must dedicate ourselves anew and make a conscientious effort to
intellectually grapple with and actively address the complexities of the social
world. In sum, we who lay claim to community must avail ourselves of the
opportunities that lie before us to critically, collaboratively, creatively, and
constructively do what far too many fail to do—we must deal with reality.

2. "These roots hold firm, as our souls yearn to grasp the sky."
POLICE BRUTALITY:
INSTRUMENT OF
OPPRESSION
By Tarik Desire
Donta Taylor. Korryn Gaines. Paul
O’Neal. Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. These
are but a select few of the hundreds of lives that
have been taken by law enforcement officers.
Police brutality is not just a result of
contemporary anti-Black sentiment and policing
tactics. Instead, the disproportionate policing
and violence enacted against minority
communities continues a history of racial
policing in America. The spread of the myth of
Black criminality and the false “war on cops”
narrative constitute the latest dialogues that
bolster the historic system of racism and
oppression that is American law-enforcement.
Racial criminalization – or the
programmatic vilification of Blackness – has
historically justified aggressive policing and
violence enacted against various minority
communities. According to Khalil Gibran
Muhammad in the Condemnation of Blackness,
the manifestation of the “Negro Problem” began
in 1884, when White scholars like Nathaniel
Southgate Shaler, a Harvard scientist, and
Frederick L. Hoffman, a prolific writer on
American race relations, argued that Blacks
were inherently evil, and that Black crime was a
consequence of the moral nature of Black
people. Hoffman’s Race Traits and Tendencies
of the American Negro (1896) was integral to
justifying the acceptance of racial violence
enacted against Blacks “as a means of public
safety.” This conceptualization of Black
criminality became embedded in the collective
perception of Blackness in American society, as
terms like “Black-on-Black crime,” which
emerged in the 80s, continue to be used to
discount the immoral nature of racialized police
violence in minority communities.
Contrary to this established belief,
Black people are not inherently inclined to
committing acts of violence against one
another; intra-racial crime in minority
communities is a product of much larger
structuralinequalities. Crime is typically
racially homogenous, since most people commit
crimes against people they know or live near.
According to the FBI’s 2014 Uniform Crime
Reports, 90 percent of Black homicides were
committed by other African Americans, while
82 percent of White homicides were conducted
by fellow White Americans. Hence, Black and
White people commit crimes against members
of their own race at similar rates. Racialized
policing and housing discrimination have
marginalized and oppressed Black families
economically since the Jim Crow Era, which
has led to generations of disenfranchised Black
communities. Violence and crime are invariably
linked to poverty, regardless of the racial
demographic of a community. According to the
Department of Justice, impoverished Black and
White households were far more likely to be
victims of crime, and at correlative rates (51.3
per 1000, and 56.4 per 1000 respectively).
However, a 2015 report conducted by the
Century Foundation showed that roughly one in
four African Americans lived in concentrated
poverty, compared to only one in 13 White
Americans. Therefore, intra-racial crime is a
more prevalent issue in minority communities
not because members of those communities are
more prone to crime, but because communities
of color are more likely to be impoverished as a
result of the discriminatory ideologies and
practices embedded in American law
enforcement.
The false “war on cops” narrative also
functions within this racist system of policing,
used as a means to shift the public narrative
away from the oppressive nature of police
brutality in minority communities, and
criminalize the acts of pro-Black activists.
Events like the recent killing of five police
officers in downtown Dallas are used to
perpetuate this fictional idea. Media outlets like
Fox News and the New York Post blame pro-
Black activism, namely the Black Lives Matter
movement, for “enabling a wave of violence
against police officers in the U.S.” However,
violence against police officers has been in
steady decline for several years. Data provided
by the Officer Down Memorial Page, a database
which documents the deaths of police officers,
shows that violence is the lowest it has been
since 1960, down 5% from 2015. The drop in
police deaths parallels a dramatic decrease in
crime in recent decades:FBI statistics show that
violent crime rates in the US have decreased by
approximately 49 percent in the past 20 years.
Thus, like the notion of “Black-on-Black”
crime, and the rhetoric of Black criminality that
came before it, the “war on cops” narrative is
being used to vilify Black people, and
legitimize the extreme violence and oppression
enacted against members of the community of
color.
The current issue of police violence
within communities of color embodies the
slavery, racism, and extreme violence that
preceded it. The legacy of Black and Brown
bodies being lynched for acts that would not be
considered crimes if committed by members of
the white community lives on in the deaths of
people like Alton Sterling, who according to
The Guardian, was murdered by Baton Rouge
police for selling CDs late at night outside a
convenience store. The over-policing and
violence enacted against people like Sterling is
not a product of individual racism, but a
consequence of systematic criminalization,
discrimination, and oppression that constitutes
the basic framework of the American criminal
justice system. Although police departments
across the country have started to implement
reforms focused on community policing,
increased transparency, and accountability,
unless we address the systemic/subconscious
racial biases held against people of color, as
well as redefine this basic framework
legislatively (for example overturning the two
Supreme Court rulings in Tennessee v. Garner
and Graham v. Connor that allow police
officers to use deadly force when they perceive
a “reasonable threat” to their life or the lives of
others), Black and Brown folk will continue to
be victims of unwarranted police violence, and
consequently, victims of extreme and
unwavering poverty and oppression.
Grasping Roots Staff:
Editor-in-Chief:Terri Moise
Managing Editors:Branden Miles,Tarik Desire,Alex Witonsky
Copy Editors:Junpei Taguchi, Marquis Palmer, Tayzia Santiago
Layout and Graphic Design: Yassine Dahlek, Jaleel Davis
Staff Writers:Kyandreia Jones, Tarik Desire,Joany Lamur, Janika Beatty, Marquis Palmer, Branden Miles
NOSTALGIA
By: Ricardo Millien
I miss being able to go for a walk not worrying about having an interaction with cops. The good old days.
Being young and naive, we were just leaves falling freely from the tree. Until we hit the ground.
That's when we were no longer kept up by the branch that kept us, safe.
Now the same branch that kept us safe pokes holes in us. No trust in that protection. And our trust will plummet this upcoming election.
As our options will be a bigot or woman whose integrity is nonexistent. Both could care less about our children.
Especially since our children can't go out and play with toys just as we did. Can't play tag just as we did.
Can't have hopes of turning 16 and willing to learn to drive just as we did, without a white
person thinking "that car with black people has passed our house too many times, they must be
looking for trouble, 911, they keep parking in front of our house and doing three point turns then
coming right back, they must be high off of crack with guns in the back, we've moved to the
back, please help us, we need our blue to protect us from the black!" Now how disappointing is that.
I miss being able to go for a walk not worrying about having an interaction with cops.
And I can't have successful conversations about these issues outside of my writing or people whom I trust. Other spaces I can't confide in. See,
The space provided is usually the space to confide in. Understand this space would move a race and make the hate subside
And make the ones innate arrive Conclude that they should choose the side That makes a fool complain but makes a shoe get put into an eye.
Ambitions to make money when older. Go ahead. Cop the coupe, drop the roof, wear a suit a tie, You'll still be a brother that's not likely to survive.
Because it's no longer about making it to 25, but it's a matter of being black and not another youth to die. Or have a brute assume you'd shoot-
even though it's a toy and you can't reproduce.
I miss being able to go for a walk not worrying about having a negative interaction with cops.
But my consciousness will always overshadow nostalgia.