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caramida: (campanile)
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Representing Race and Ethnicity in American Culture

posted by [personal profile] caramida at 09:58am on 05/08/2008 under , , , , , ,
I have spent the last week trying to figure out what image to use for my assigned 3-4 page paper in the summer class on Visual Narratives of Race and Gender in Photography and Art. The paper is due Thursday, and so I kind of need to get cracking. There are lots of iconic images from which one could make a choice. I decided that I didn't want to take anything too pop-culture-y, or too new. After thinking on it for a while, I realized what photo I wanted to do. Having looked it up, I've decided that I this is the image for me:

San Francisco, Calif., April 1942. First-graders, some of Japanese ancestry, at the Weill public school pledging allegience to the United States flag. The evacuees of Japanese ancestry will be housed in War relocation authority centers for the duration of the war

Now just to put together a coherent narrative describing the disconnect between the fate of these children and the phrase with liberty and justice for all.
location: home
Mood:: 'depressed by the picture' depressed by the picture
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There are 7 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 

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posted by [identity profile] miriammiriam.livejournal.com at 11:45pm on 05/08/2008
why is the photo so depressing?
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] caramida.livejournal.com at 09:41pm on 06/08/2008
I'm working on writing up a paper about the picture, when I'm done, I'll let you know all about it.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] caramida.livejournal.com at 08:42pm on 07/08/2008
What does the image mean to you? What do you see and feel when you view it?
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] miriammiriam.livejournal.com at 09:04pm on 07/08/2008
hmmmm

well i thought it was a reflection on little kids being diverse, but also americans, because it looks like theyre all getting ready to recite the pledge of allegiance, so it makes me think about racial diversity in america. especially since most of the kids are asian, but theres a little white girl and a black kid in the background. it probably also helps that that building in the back looks like my elementary school i went to, where i was the only white person in my class. when i was growing up i experienced a lot of racism, but i also was happy that i was in such a diverse place. and i remembered when we all recited the pledge of allegiance every morning, something we all had to do. it sounds sooo cheesy but it reminded me that we were all americans, which is something that a lot of people forget, esp here, when so many of these kids have english as a second language and who are first generation.
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posted by [identity profile] caramida.livejournal.com at 09:17pm on 07/08/2008
That's a good solid read. Now with a different context, it reads differently. If you note that this is a photo of Japanese American kids one month before they were relocated to camps like Manzanar, what does the pledge of allegiance mean then?
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posted by [identity profile] swatibee.livejournal.com at 02:08am on 06/08/2008
my first thought was WWII internment camps but now I'm not so sure, when / where was it taken?
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posted by [identity profile] susannochka.livejournal.com at 05:59pm on 06/08/2008
Great photo.
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