Hello everyone! Today I wanted to spread the work of some of my favorite artists to show my support for the current black lives matter protests. The first is Gordon Parks. Parks lived an incredibly hard life, growing up in the Jim Crow era and suffering extreme racism. He went on to become a journalist for Life magazine, directed multiple movies including Shaft, and wrote multiple books of poetry. He was without a doubt one of the hardest working artists of his time. We should have statues honoring him.
“I suffered evils, but without allowing them to rob me of the freedom to expand.” -Gordon Parks
Parks remains one of my favorite photographers because of the way he showed the beauty and humanity that still exists within systematically oppressed people. He never turned the people around him into cliches or objects. There’s always an element of strength and perseverance in his photographs.
Another artist I want to share is the work of Nina Simone and James Baldwin. These two artists were able to use their words to communicate their experience and I think everyone needs to hear these voices right now. To empathize with those struggling for basic human dignity and freedom is the first step the privileged class needs to take in order to fix the systemic racism within our societies. The second is to sustain it over a long period of time and to realize that change requires a lot of hard work.
I have faith that the long arc of history will swing towards justice, but that can only happen if everyone is educated in how and why inequality was created. This blog post is just a way of spreading a bit of lovely work from black people that’ve been discriminated against. I think if we want to make long lasting change we need to study the history of our governments and to target each specific case of how the system allows racism to go unchecked. Please go out and continue your research and together we can make a better world for our children.
Thanks for your time.
-Jeremy