In this week’s blog post, I will be focusing on the importance of hair within the Black community and its significance to Black culture. 

If you look around at the Black people around you, it will quickly become apparent that they all chose to style their hair differently. Wigs, locs, cornrows, twists, braids, afros, Bantu knots and the list goes on and on.

Hair plays a significant role to many Black people, and the history of hair has shaped its significance. Ever science African civilizations emerged, many many years ago, hairstyles have been used to indicate key information about individuals. This ranged from their marital status, religion, ethnic identity, financial status, and community ranking. 

As time went on and over 12 million women, men, and children were sold into slavery through the transatlantic trade route, one of the first things that slave traders did was shave the heads of their new slaves. This practice was claimed as a sanitation technique, but rather it is apparent that these were the first steps Europeans took towards erasing the slaves’ culture and altering the relationship between the African and their hair.

During the times of slavery, in the late 1500s, women began to create maps and deliver messages through their cornrowed hair. These maps were used to help men, women, and children escape to freedom as the braids would represent roads they would use to escape. Women also hid gold and seeds within the braids  which were then used to help liberated slaves begin their lives, by planting crops once they reached free-land. 

The history behind these hairstyles runs incredibly deep for the Black community, but where does that leave us today in the 21st century? Well, as history has continuously shown, the Black community has deep ties to hair and the styling of it. 

Within the rest of the US however, institutional biases against Black hairstyles continue to exist. Studies conducted by Duke University revealed that Black women with natural styles (afros, braids, twists, etc) are often perceived as less professional than Black women with straightened hair. 

Furthermore, stories of Black students across the US sharing their experiences of being penalized in school because of how they chose to style their hair continue to make headlines. 

So, for the future, how can the institutional biases surrounding Black hairstyles be dismantled? For starters, people outside of Black community can educate themselves about the deep history of Black hair. Learning more about the significance of hair in African countries, how Europeans tried to sever African’s relationships with their hair through slavery.

Most importantly, we all need to recognize and remind ourselves that how others choose to style their hair is a personal decision that holds significance to the individual and should be respected. 

     

This week’s prompt allowed me to go on a deep dive of terrible pieces of advertising that have been published in the media. While searching, I had many chuckles, jaw drops, and blank stares, but I ultimately chose to focus on this advertisement that was released in 2009 by LifeLock, an American identity theft prevention software.

At first glance, the advertisement is just shocking. The image of Todd Davis smiling proudly in his suit and tie. Todd Davis is not just any regular man, but rather the CEO of the company LifeLock. Using the image of the CEO as the face of an advertisement may have been a tactic used to draw viewers attention to the advertisement and the company as a whole. It’s apparent that Todd is a white man, so he appeals to the American audience where the company is based and ultimately draws them into reading the entirety of the advertisement. At first glance, the advertisement isn’t so bad, however that QUICKLY takes a turn. 

As you read more into the left side of the advertisement, the company uses Todd’s personal information to persuade viewers to believe in the safety and security of the company. The key pieces of information that are highlighted are Todd’s real-life, actual, government given social security number, and the bolded word “Guaranteed”. Viewers of the advertisement are also made aware through a quote that Todd approved the use of such information. Personally, I have always been told never to share my social security number, let alone post it on billboards for all of America to see, but interesting…

Finally, the organization of the advertisement has “More Testimonials” listed on the bottom. The images of other people, whom viewers can assume to be users of the LifeLock service. While unclear as to what the other testimonials entail, could all of these people have been shamelessly sharing their social security numbers with America, we may never know.

The advertisement’s layout, textual evidence, and extended testimonials should convince us all to join LifeLock and secure all of our personal information from the world’s criminals, right? Well, actually, this LifeLock advertisement enticed the world’s criminals and hackers with a challenge. The face of the ad, Todd Davis became the victim of identity theft, not once, not twice, but 13 TIMES! The CEO tragically racked up debts across the US, humiliated his companies reputation, and proved their products to be ineffective.

This advertising may fall in the top 3 worst advertisements to see the light of day, and it’s shocking to think of how many people approved this advertisement before it went live…

The two artifacts I selected focus on the rhetorical situation of gun control and laws in the US and encourage its viewers to think critically about the current situation of the US on a topic as dense and serious as gun control and human safety, without simply showing sad and shocking statistics to evoke fear and worry in the viewers. In fact, both pieces present an almost lighthearted approach to such a serious topic which is particularly why I chose them.

The artifact on the left was created by Herb Block, a world admired cartoonist who has dedicated much of his career towards “fighting against abuses of the powerful”. The piece was published in early December of 1998, which was a pivotal time for US gun control. In 1998, gun ownership in America was at a decline, about 40% of homes owning guns, after the statistic had sat at about 45% of families owning a gun for decades. Despite the decline in gun ownership, there were a multitude of mass shootings that took place in the US. This was shocking as people of all ages, but particularly teenagers performed mass shootings, which rekindled the need for a deeper conversation about gun control in the US. 

The artifact on the right was created by Nick Anderson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American editorial cartoonist whose cartoons are known to typically present the liberal viewpoint. The piece was published in mid-April of 2023, which again was also a pivotal time for gun control conversations in the US. During the week of April 21, 2023, the US had set a record pace for mass killings, with shootings happening at schools, farms, parties, and special events. 

One of the biggest reasons that I chose these artifacts is because of how passionately I feel for gun control. While I’m not sure that there is a specific answer for how guns should/need to be controlled in the US, I can agree that something needs to change. I went to Parkland High School, in Allentown, PA and a mass school shooting happened in Parkland, Fl. While nearly across the country, the situation opened my eyes to the very real fact that a mass shooting could happen at my school and in my community. Ultimately, something needs to change with US gun laws, and these two artifacts approach the situation quite differently. 

When putting the artifacts in conversation, I hope to compare the artist’s use or lack of color, the word choice, the facial expressions, and background characters seen in each photo. The two artifacts approach the serious topic of gun control differently and have several elements that can be compared in my essay and speech.

In this week’s post, I will be focusing on African American Vernacular English, more commonly known as AAVE.

If you are unfamiliar with what AAVE is, it’s a dialect of the English language that originated from enslaved Black Americans. Their language and speaking was passed down for generations, and then spread across the United States as Black people migrated. 

Spilling Tea, Period, Go Off, Finna, Chile, Sissss, Heardu, Trippin, 

AAVE is like a second language to Black Americans. It consists of grammatical structures, vocabulary, particular usages, and pronunciations. While commonly labeled as slang, these unique words and phrases follow a tradition and are constantly evolving as the community behind them sees fit. 

Like any other language, people who grew up exposed to AAVE can intuitively understand when it’s being spoken correctly or unauthentically. These ‘native speakers’ have generations of cultural context that can not be learned or replicated by individuals who are not part of this group. 

So, where does AAVE and its usage stand today? Well, in schools, children are told that speaking in AAVE is not proper, illegitimate, and ghetto. In fact, Black Americans have been racialized on the idea that we are inherently lazy, poor, uneducated, or criminal. And to add onto that, Black people’s usage of AAVE is found to be sloppy, unprofessional, and ignorant. 

This negative connotation around AAVE is completely forgotten when it’s used by non-black people and is instead seen as comedic or sensational. 

This trend is seen time and time again with influencers rising to fame because of their use of AAVE and the mockery that they make of it. One example of this is Brit Barbie, a TikTok influencer who rose to fame after a video of her using AAVE went viral. Her use of AAVE was not the issue, but rather the fact that she made a mockery of the language without giving credits to its origins nor addressing the negative connotations associated with it. 

So, where do I stand with AAVE? Well…I would say that I don’t really have any experience with it. My family migrated from Nigeria, and doesn’t have deep roots in ‘Black America’, its cultures, or traditions. Growing up in a Nigerian home in the suburbs of Pennsylvania, I never interacted or heard AAVE. 

Today, I occasionally hear AAVE on social media platforms and in major cities like New York and Philadelphia when visiting. While I have a lot of respect for the language and it’s history, AAVE doesn’t come naturally to me, so I chose not to use it. 

As AAVE gains popularity, I encourage others to learn its history, diminish the negative connotation surrounding it, and use the language with the respect it deserves. 

 

Have you ever been interested in learning more about the different aspects of culture and history that seep into ‘black life’? In this blog, I will be taking a deep dive into the different elements of black culture like fashion, beauty standards, trends, and language, just to name a few. With each of these subtopics, I hope to compare, contrast and relate them back into my personal life as a Black female born and raised in a predominately white city in Eastern Pennsylvania. This blog will be just as much of a learning experience for me as I hope it is for all of my readers. There is so much to learn about Black culture and life, and bringing more awareness to the culture behind ‘blackness’ will allow us all to be more appreciative of it as we recognize it in our day-to-day lives. 

The action of appreciating black culture opens up an entire discussion of where the line falls between cultural appreciation and appropriation and how we can recognize the differences between the two. 

Appreciation involves genuinely acknowledging and respecting elements of Black culture without seeking to exploit or profit from them.

Appropriation occurs when elements of Black culture are borrowed, imitated, or adopted by individuals or groups, typically from outside the Black community, without the proper understanding, respect, or acknowledgment.

When it comes to cultural appreciation, it is typically rooted in a lack of understanding of a complex culture, which may then lead to the oversimplification of cultural elements, stereotyping, and exploitation. All of which may be avoided with seeking out knowledge and trying our best to educate ourselves.

With this blog, while I hope to share and bring some awareness to the histories and nuances of black culture, it is incredibly important to acknowledge that in just a mere 400-word blog post, I am unable to encompass and deeply discuss every single element of black culture. For this reason, I encourage each of my readers to pursue their own individual research alongside this blog. Spend time learning more about not only Black cultures, but the cultures of other marginalized groups throughout the United States.

I really hope that you all enjoy this passion blog just as much as I do and can use it as an opportunity to become more educated individuals. I look forward to learning so much more about Black culture and sharing my analysis and experiences with you all!!