hey everyone,
first off..sorry this is late. I have had a very stressful week.
second..im sorry i wont be around this weekend for Bonner Orientation. i have some family issues that i need to deal with.
third..if i read the assignment right, im supposed to discuss how i felt about "and still we rise"
so here goes.
when i got to the auditorium to see the play i instantly noticed the amount of diversity in the room. there were so many different races and different age groups. there were professionals and those that came simply because they were interested. there were a lot of introductions and then the show started. the way it was set up was a little difficult to understand and some of the stories were brief and a little confusing but i seemed to be the only one in the room that didnt understand. even the younger people around me got it. in one particular scene a man acted out getting raped by an older boy. i did not understand this until after the show when we got to ask questions or comment on this and one person mentioned it. i literally had no clue. thinking about this later i thought that probably most other people did get it because of where they were raised. i was brought up in a small town where things like that rarely ever happened. i am not accostomed to seeing that, it is not something i have ever had to deal with.
there were other things in the show that really stood out to me as things that i did not have to deal with as well. i never witnessed someone being murdered or shot. i never even knew someone who has been killed. almost everyone on the stage and i assume over half the people in the room knew at least one person that had been killed. it was amazing to me. i cannot imagine the pain of losing a close friend or family member in that way. also a lot of the people had to deal with poverty. i grew up in a middle class town and there were very few people that were poor. most everyone had everything they needed. this poverty related greatly to incarceration.
another thing that interested me was that almost all of the people on stage were either black or hispanic. Dr.J talked to us after about why we thought that there were higher rates of people of color that were incarcerated. i think part of it is their culture; where they are brought up, the types of lives they have and their education level. i was raised in a small town and given many oppurtunities that they may not have been. for example, if a black male is brought up in a single parent home where he lived in poverty, i beilieve he has a higher likeihood of acting out or doing something that could get him in trouble. another aspect of it is that often times police are told to patrol black neighborhoods so it is not like white kids arent doing the crimes, they are just not being caught and/or punished for them. in order to adress this issue i think we should move into schools in underprivelaged areas and provide support for the kids and their families to prevent. then i think we should fix the system because a lot of times it is the system's flaws that are causing people to be victims once they are incarcerated.

overall the show was great and it impacted me greatly. although i think some of the stories could have been portrayed better, it was very powerful.


BLOVE <3 Lindsey