Is It Still Appreciation?

In my first slate post, I explained how cultural appropriation is harmful to the Black community. Black culture benefits every other community, except for its own. It was important that I gave 6 examples as to why cultural appropriation is an issue in the world that needs to be solved, while also using my 6 sources as main ideas. The amount of various ways I persuade the readers to help seek the principle and bigger picture, of a struggle out of many, that Black/ African Americans face everyday are strong.

In view of the fact that Black cultural appropriation is my topic, to be an agent of change, I have teamed up with my classmate Tybria Bowser. Her You & The World project is about the African American Achievement gap, which connects to Black cultural appropriation, in many ways. We thought it would be a brilliant idea to combine our ideas, and work to produce a future mini course for class of 2025, and if successful, so on. It would be great to teach the youngest classmen on how to not harm their peers, especially at such an open and diverse school like SLA.

*Tybria and I emailed Jeremy Spry, proposing our act of change. We gave background information about our projects, and basically just went into depth about our plan. He agreed for us to move forward with our idea :). *

After hearing that there was a chance of our plan coming to life, Tybria and I created this mini course template, to help prepare and brainstorm criteria for the future freshman. We each went along and created material for each of our topics, and found a way to connect one anothers. The mini course will be 8 days long. We have an intro for the first day, and then cultural appropriation is spent using the next 3 days, and then I transition my last day into Tybria’s first day. She also has 3 days, and then our final class, the 8th day, we’ll let the students take control, and use that as a way to reflect on the course as a whole. I did some research mainly for my section of the course, and found a video to explain “What is Black culture?”. I thought it would be a great introduction to our first class.

The process in making and planning a mini course during a chaotic benchmark time like this was very difficult, but very interesting and enthusiastic. Tybria and I were able to finish our mini course template, and emailed it to Ms.Giknis and Jeremy Spry.

Unfortunately, Tybria and I weren’t able to hear back in time to see if our mini course was approved or not, but we feel very pleased with our journey, and feel supported through every step of the way. Before I close out my slate post, I just wanted to mention Tybria and I’s projects connect to each other, because of the double standards that Black people face when doing anything in society. It just made sense to collaborate on a project like this, because we can both use each other as a strength in educating future SLA students, about the Black community better. Like I said before, we aren’t aware if our mini course will be approved yet, but a way you can be involved, is by showing us your unconditional support, and being here with us on this journey.