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Letter to the Editor
An Appeal to Graduating Seniors
C ommentary
Hollywood and media draw curtains
on blacks; continue stereotypes
Just when Blacks were beginning to
I am writing to ask you to consider
spending the next two years teaching in an
under-resourced urban or rural public
school.
Seven years ago, when I was a senior in
college, I started Teach For America
because I was convinced that a national
teacher corps of America’s most talented
individuals could fundamentally change
our country - by ensuring that more of our
nation’s young people have an equal
opportunity to an excellent education, and
by influencing the consciousness of a corps
of individuals who will ultimately be
among our nation’s leaders. Now, having
seen first-hand the circumstances facing
children everywhere from South Central
Los Angeles to the Mississippi Delta to the
South Bronx, I am only more passionate
about our mission.
It is impossible to capture in a short
letter what we have learned about the
severity of challenges facing some of our
nation’s young people. Suffice it to say
that they do not have anything near an
equal opportunity to an excellent education.
They need more teachers who hold high
expectations for them, who are committed
in doing whatever it takes to reach them.
At the same time, our nation at large needs
leaders who are committed to effecting
needed systemic changes.
Today as you read this, one thousand
Teach For America corps members from
all academic majors and ethnic
backgrounds are teaching in classrooms
across the country. They are bringing to
their schools a tremendous sense of
possibility and a passionate commitment
to their students. They are starting extra
curricular programs, running school
improvement initiatives and rewriting
school curricula. They are expanding the
horizons of their students by introducing
them to college and by taking them on
trips everywhere from France to
Washington, D.C. At the same time, our
alumni are starting schools, assuming
leadership roles on school faculties and
working for education reform through other
channels. Others are in law, medicine,
public policy and corporate America where
they have a rare commitment to changing
the circumstances in urban and rural areas.
I’m writing now to call upon you to
become part of this movement to help
build our country’s future. Whether you
are already on track to a secure job or are
still searching for the right opportunity, I
hope you will apply to Teach For America.
You have until April 3 to apply. We
extended our deadline by one month to
help compensate for budget reductions
that forced us to limit our campus
recruitment effort this year. For more
information, please contact your career
service office or call our national office at
1-800-832-1230x225.
Thank you for considering this. The
decision you make could change the rest
of your life and the lives of some of our
nation’s promising children.
Wendy Kopp
Founder
Teach For America
think they had arrived...
For those of us who were laboring under
the misconception that Hollywood was
finally extending its arms to give Blacks
equality— think again.
It’s really amazing that Blacks are
suddenly incensed at their exclusion from
the American Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences. It’s not as if things were
much better last year or the year before,
which only proves how true it is that
people only see things as an issue after the
media makes it one.
Hollywood, seen as the “Great White
Hope” for and by many Black actors,
writers, producers and directors has given
us a much needed wake up call.
Blacks, who tend to measure their
success and talent by trophies, need to
realize that we can’t measure God’s gift by
man’s representation.
The truth is, Hollywoodis and has always
been quicker to praise us when we play
Black stereotypical roles. Hattie McDaniel,
the first Black woman to receive an Oscar
did so for her role as Mammy in “Gone
With The Wind."
With the exceptions of a few, Hollywood
has been a paragon of the exploitation of
Blacks. They create stereotypical images
and highlight them as our reality.
But where once upon atime these images
were obvious, they have become more
subtle and, therefore, more dangerous.
Two of televison’s more obvious
creation were the “Uncle Tom” image and
the “Mammy” figure.
The media took Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
family conscious,God-fearing UncleTom
and turned hi m into a servile ‘yessir massa’
creation to suit the white American public.
“It is ironic that the humble heroism of
old Uncle Tom has been transmuted into
racial treason by the subtle alchemy of
social amnesia,” Historian Wilson J. Moses
said.
The Mammy figure was portrayed as an
asexual, overweight being who would
rather take care of white people’s children
than her own.
"This familiar denizen [Mammy] of the
Big House is not merely a stereotype, but
in fact a figment of the combined romantic
imaginations of the contemporary
southern ideologue and the modern
southern historian," Historian Catherine
Clinton said. "Records do acknowledge
the presence of female slaves who served
as the "right hand" of plantation mistresses.
Yet, documents from the planter class
during the first 50 years following the
American Revolution reveal only a
handful of such examples."
Clinton said the Mammy was created
by white Southerners to redeem the
relationship between Black women and
white men within slave society in response
to the antislavery attack from the North
during the ante-bellum era, and to
embellish it with nostalgia in the post-
bellum period.
In the primary records from before the
Civil War, hard evidence for the Mammy
figure's existence simply does not appear.
These images were obviously not a
depiction of Blacks reality. But now with
many shows portraying whites and Blacks
as buddies, televison has certainly pulled
the wool over our eyes.
The shoot 'em up and gang buster
movies may have a ring of truth in Black
people’s worlds, but it’s not our total
reality.
Blacks and whites as best friends may
be true for some, but that some is very
few.
What the shows we watch forget to
mention is the other more poignant side of
our reality. For example, when a church
wants to remove a child buried in its
cemetary because they found out the
child’s father was Black; or the existence
of a Klu KIux Klan store in right in our
friendly neighborhood, Florida— these
are more our reality.
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Corrections:
•Twenty three students graduated from the Mathematics Sciences Department
with bachelors degree in 1995.
•Dr. Vivian Henderson was the 18th president of Clark College. He served
from 1965-1976.