Actors!

Practice the art of expression, emotion, feelings, and heart.

These groups practice to perfect their talents and to make the world laugh. To make the world sad. To make the world feel all sorts of feelings.

Their job in the world is to give everyone that feeling of happiness, sadness and depression all rolled into one.

For a long time, the industry has been dominated by white men. It was eventually changed to  a white woman industry. Finally, everyone moved on to being a united front for white woman and man industry. They were no longer at odds. They were all equal.

However, they were continuously white dominated industries. What is the point of having entertainment if not everyone feels like they matter? People can see them. People are there and they want to be heard.

Some of the greatest classics like the Wizard of Oz and the Sound of Music, that I still love today and will forever love, are not as stereotypical towards women. However, I still feel left out as a female of color.

We look up at the screen and sing along with Dorothy or the Von Trapp kids and not see me.

Walt Disney was the same way. I would not expect less from a white man dominated world. Despite this, Disney did come up with Mulan, Pocahontas and Aladdin. That is all great for the other minorities. However, what about the minorities that are still getting treated like a sickness, like they are cancer and that they need to be erased to get better.

People said “no, that’s enough, we matter, we’re here, and we will be heard” and soon enough, in 2009, Walt Disney made their first black princess Tiana in “The Princess and the Frog.” For a long time I loved the other Disney princesses, especially Arial and I still do.

But I also want to see myself and feel like I belong. In the world we live in, I don’t and TV has always been a way to escape to another world where we do belong. That is not the end of this messed up industry. Women who are betrayed as skinny, like the Barbies are shown as being “perfect everything.” People who are a little on the heavy side – there is nothing wrong with the way you look. However, there are health problems of being overweight and of being skinny. We need to find a middle, where you’re not underweight, but you’re not overweight. You’re just right, and love who you are as well, overweight or not. Health is important, and knowing your body is important. Knowing your skin, and being comfortable within it, is extremely important. 

Wrestlers!

W.W.E. What does that stand for? World Wrestling Entertainment. Participants fight. They get hurt. Apparently it is scripted and it used to be a huge hit. People found out it is not real, but I believe the pain is real. Their whole job is real although everything between it from backstage filming and promos to rivals and feuds are fake or real. It just depends on the way you look at the sport.

I’ve watched reality TV shows of wrestling and hate to break it to you. Unless these individuals have a stunt coordinator or a double, then the talent and pain is real. Like acting, for a very, very, very long time it has been world divided between men and women. Unlike acting, it did not take years and decades for women and men of color in WWE.

People of all colors have been wrestling in the arena that is WWE; it was not uncommon for them to move up. Recently, people of color have main events in Wrestlemania 37.

Amazingly, I feel proud of black people. African forever, still I would love to see women make history by fighting men. We’ve seen it, it can be done.

Women are the future. And women of color are the future. As they will forever be life.

Singers!

I love music, the same amount as I love acting. But not as much as I love writing. However, music and acting are still my passion and a huge part of my life. They are an opening, like movies, TV shows and Broadway shows.

Writing and reading give me a way to express my feelings and they will forever be my passion, my life. Who I am.

Writing and music go together because they both have a rhythm.

Acting and writing go together because they both have a structure.

We use writing to sing and we use that rhythm in most of our everyday lives without even knowing it. Black people have been dominating the entertainment world for many years,

from Langsten Hughes, a black poet, to the Jackson 5, a black family. I feel people forget them because they have the money and fancy houses. However, this does not mean that they are less human. And we push and push and push until they break.

Demi Lovto – her overdose. Justin Beiber – his mental break. To the greats who have actually died. Whitney Housten, (drowning) Michael Jackson, (overdose, in sleep) Amy Winehouse, (alcohol poisoning) John Lennon. (gunshot)

They are in the spotlight and in the media. That they twist and play puppet. The truth is that we do not know what’s going on in their lives. This compares to meeting a new friend who’s a little weird. You can’t judge before you know. It is also similar to reading a new Ebook. The media doesn’t care and we buy into it. Another example is the Central Park 5 (Exonerated 5 now). They were just teens in the wrong place at the wrong time and were forced to say, write and confess to crimes they did not commit. They had “evidence” pointing to them, but they went outside the book. They did illegal things and went to all kinds of lengths to prove they did it.

That says a lot about the justice system. That is where music comes from.

It helps a lot with sadness and other emotions. Music helped us fight agianst slavery, helped us regain the humanty that our masters. Our owners tried to take away.

If we remember those times, we can take back our world, our country. Our life. We have the character to not judge by the color of your skin, to not judge by the way our bodies lok. To not judge by the way we talk, we walk. It’s time to use music to have hope again. Right? 

The poem of Life!!!

Our world was founded on judgment, but we call it racism. Our world was founded on violence towards one another, but we call it oppression. Our world was founded on discrimination, but they called it justice. It was founded on prejudice, but they called it a good job. Music isn’t just entertainment. It’s therapeutic. Music is life within itself. Acting is the art of expression. Wrestling is the practice of relieving pain and anger. Writing is a form of opening up a new world, exploring the possiblings and escaping. Violence is the act of causing pain regardless of who it is.

And it has to go.

So maybe the poem of life was about Wrestling and acting and singing. But maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it is about raising the fact that no one can live in a dystopian society. I thought we were heading towards it.

I was wrong, I can admit it when I’m wrong. I was.

The truth is that we are already in it. The police still abuse power and destroy the black community. We can cry and cry until we can’t anymore and we can scream and yell, but they’re not going to change until you tell them what is right. They can say it was defense, but we can’t crawl in their heads and see what happened. We weren’t there, they don’t see age anymore. They only see color.

Who cares if you’re 9 or 15 or in your 20s. Who cares if you have a family. A little kid, maybe 6  months old. They don’t, because they still see one thing – color.

You don’t need to say the N-word to be a raisin. That was a thing of the past. The future is, you can be racist by just looking at them upside down, by just assuming something and by just saying negative things, So here’s this.

I’m black, and a female. And I am proud to be called black. It’s who I am, I can’t change it. I’m an introvert and quiet. I don’t talk if I’m caught off guard. And I don’t express my feelings well, it’s weird and hard. And seeing people cry makes me want to cry of awkwardness, it’s uncomfortable when people show emotion. It’s like a foreign thing to me and I have a wall that I put right back when my trust is damaged like a flower. Once broken, it’s pretty hard to put it back. It’s not something I just hand out to people.

One more thing – I’m me, and you’re you. To end the academic year I say this.

Be the best you can be, love yourself. Be happy and sing or write. Fight against the oppressors. We are only stronger than those who hurt us if we are not afraid to show the real us. 

We are strong. We are beautiful. And we are powerful in our own way.