Fiyin's Blog

Week 4: Representation of African American Identity in Media  Tuesday, Sept. 20: Read: Tracy Jan, News media offers consistently warped portrayals of black families, study finds , Washington Post , 2017. Watch: African American Stereotypes in the Media: An Exploration of 20th and 21st Century Visual Media Thursday, Sept. 22 : Watch: The evolution of black representation in film Read: Lori Harwood, The evolution of Black representation on television , UArizona, 2022. Assignment: Blog 5: Watch/Read any media regarding Black Identity and write on if the characters were stereotypical or not This topic will explore "What is an American?" through how African Americans are represented in various media, including games, television, film, etc. Why this topic was chosen in particular due to how important media is in the current day. We gain a lot of different perspectives from our media and they portray many things to people for the first time. In turn, we should see how the African ...

            One's home is perhaps the most crucial aspect of one forming an identity. As you are young, you take up aspects of your country and general culture into an ever growing outlook that is one's life. However, conflict occurs when your birth place and the country you spend your life in aren't the same. Through out my teen years, I felt a sense of never being a full Nigerian. Whether it be my 'oyinbo' way of speaking, my disinterest in Nigerian language or my interests never falling into football, I have always felt a certain disconnect from my Nigerian upbringing, that maybe I wasn't fully Nigerian, maybe my correct place was in my birth place, America. I feel for many who are born in one country but live in another, they might be experiencing similar feelings as I did and through this essay I want to explore the possible conflicts and how one can deal with their cultural identity.     I was born in America but lived in Nigeria most o...

I watched the livestream of the Black Arts Baltimore event. It was an hour-long live session by historian Mary Rizzo, in which she discussed about her research into Black artists activists of Baltimore in the 60s and 70s. She discussed about the less archived artists that weren’t recorded by general history and the much more nuanced aspects of the artists. From what I understood from her talk, a big message and a core of what she is trying to get across is the idea of a standard history and counter history. A standard history means the general knowledge regarding the history of a certain time or place while counter history is viewing history from a very different point of view; not changing what actually happened but coming to a different conclusion regarding them. This relates well into what the actual event was about; the 1968 Baltimore Riot being considered the defining narrative of the 60s in Baltimore but how that doesn’t tell the full story of that era. What this doesn’t take i...

 What is but a home if not a miserable place of secrets? Home, like many words, has a solid definition but what it actually entails differentiates from person to person. The common definition would define it as a place of permanent or semi-permanent residence but there's a lot more to what I would describe a home as. As someone who lives in the school dorms, I'd struggle to call it a home just yet. It fits the definition but isn't 'homely' for me or at least what I'd call a home. To me, what makes a home isn't as much the home itself but more 2 main things; time spent in the home and family or a sense of community with others. More time spent in a place gives one the ability to really 'get' the place and the subtle nuances of the home. You could have spent a day in a friends' house but you would have only seen the more surface level home and not the more nuanced aspects of it. However, as you visit the house more often, you'd come to see some...

A. I feel like I have a jaded/apathetic view regarding the news, though more specifically the contemporary view of news as 24/7 Cable News. I've always felt that due to its more limited nature, they have to choose what to talk about and what to focus on and that takes away from the myriad of stories that could be told. It's why I feel that news has a bit more relevance in modern day as it can be spread and heard from various places and sources, be spread towards others via social media and even better doesn't limit the amount that can be heard of. In fact, it increases the amount that can be heard. I get a lot of my news from 2 main sources. The first of these sources, like most people, is from social media. Social medias like Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat, etc. have people active 24/7 all across the globe so whenever a new story breaks out, it's usually received and spread like wildfire via these social medias. While they may not be 100% accurate, they would quickly inform...

 I think the intro of The View from Nowhere was very quite well done and interesting. The host, Lewis Raven Wallace, sets up her point of doing the podcast very well; she does this podcast so to have journalism with a purpose and not to have the journalism be impartial. Ramona Martinez further supports her with the idea of objectivity being something that is factored by one's environment and whatever is considered objective is really only due to the agreement of the majority. I also really find David Mindich's explanation of "Helen's Sphere of Consensus" to be quite interesting and the changing perspective of what's okay to talk about or what becomes disagreeable. I thought the short podcast was a very well done introduction to her ideas.