All I saw were mommy and daughter on an outing at first. Then my field of vision expanded and my heart dropped. Would you call this photo art? Regardless of what category this photo falls in photo art and art in general can tell a story, create a feeling, and give impetus to a movement. Photos like this one showed a United States that had nothing to do with the land of the free and the home of the brave.
What did you see when you first saw this photo? Depending on what you saw first, how long did it take you to see the beauty? How long did it take you to see the ugly?
Speaking of seeing ugly and beauty together in the quiet moments, during the moments of calm, when there aren't protests in Baltimore or Ferguson or when we're not watching a black woman being pounded into the ground by a huge white man, I wonder how much better the poorer black neighborhoods of this nation look in comparison to 30 or 40 years ago.
Only some of us have made it through the Civil Rights Window into middle class. Only 70% of us made it.
I suppose saying "70% of us made it "assumes close to 0% had made made it into the middle class and the American Dream prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Clearly, this is not true. MLK and company were college educated and middle class. So let us say that 10% were already middle class or better prior to the Civil Rights Movement. So then 60% to 65% of us passed through the small, short-lived Civil Rights Window slammed shut by the Ronald Reagan benevolently condescending racists of the 1980s
I wonder what the absence of American Dream looks like for the descendents of the 30% that couldn't jump through the Civil Rights Window fast enough.
I wish I could show you. I wish I were a photographer so I could show you. I wish I were a photographer so I could show myself and have evidence of what we're fighting for.
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