Project Brief: Create three unique analog collages that "comment" on a contemporary political, social, economic, or environmental issue using conventional methods and media. Systematic racism is the overarching topic of my collages.Racism is frequently systematic and structural; it is not necessarily conscious, explicit, or readily apparent. Systemic and structural racism are kinds of racism that are pervasively and deeply rooted in institutions, laws, written or unwritten regulations, and entrenched practices and beliefs that result in widespread unjust treatment and oppression of people of color, with negative health implications.My collages explicitly address the issues of mass incarceration/the prison industrial complex, the income inequality between races, and the disproportionate number of black Americans who are shot by the police. These are all effects of institutionalized racism. Click here to view my dropmark!
The wealth disparity between black and white Americans has been persistent and severe. It embodies the cumulative impacts of four centuries of institutional and systemic racism, and it bears considerable responsibility for economic, health, education, and opportunity gaps that persist to this day. Following the abolishing of slavery, Jim Crow regulations, which remained in effect until the late 1960s, essentially guaranteed that Black Americans in the South would be unable to build or pass on wealth. African Americans suffered job, housing, and educational discrimination across the country during and after the Great Migration. After WWII, many white veterans were able to take use of programs like the GI Bill to purchase homes — the main asset owned by most American families —with low-interest loans, but lenders frequently turned down Black applications, thus excluding black veterans from the benefit. Redlining, or the systematic refusal of loans or insurance in largely minority regions, lowered property values and made it difficult for African American families to reside where they wanted.
Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly 5 times the rate of white Americans. A Black person is five times more likely to be stopped without just cause than a white person. A Black man is twice as likely to be stopped without just cause than a Black woman. Percent of Black Americans in the general U.S. population: 13% +Percent of people in prison or jail who are Black: 38% +Among men the highest rate is with black males aged 20–34. Among women it's with black females aged 35–39.
Black men ages 20–34: 1 in 9 vs White men ages 18 or older: 1 in 106
Black Americans are killed at a much higher rate than White Americans. Although half of the people shot and killed by police are White, Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate. They account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population, but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of White Americans.
From enslavement to Jim Crow, redlining to school segregation, mass imprisonment to environmental racism, policies have continuously hampered or prevented African Americans from achieving the American dream.
