Sports: Deion Thompson in action in Western's loss
Sports: Western baseball heads to Southest Missouri
WesternCourier.com
Friday, February 22, 2019 - Vol. 119 Issue 58
@WesternCourier
Multicultural Center hosts Black History Month event. By Karla Foster courier staff
felicia selmon/courier staff A group of students (above) view a documtary shown by Stephanie Hovesplan (bottom)
When we are born, we are born with a soul. A gift not only to be brought back after death for some, but also a state of consciousness for others. Our souls help express our thoughts, feelings, lives and personality. Our souls help us dive into topics with a deeper meaning like love or hate. Stephanie Hovsepian hosted Monday’s Black History Month event from the Women’s Center located in the Multicultural Center. In the 2008 documentary “The Souls of Black Girls,” the main topics that were addressed was attraction and representation in society. The producers had a chance to speak with a group of girls, mostly AfricanAmerican, who shared their thoughts and feelings on the subject. Actresses, activists and musicians also had a chance to explain their idea on the matter. The concept of representation is pressing in this documentary because while Africian-American women in the media have representation, most representations have been stereotypical. During that time, you would mostly see black women being oversexualized, “ghetto” or obnoxious. However, you would rarely see a black woman as a doctor, nurse or even a teacher. To continue having these negative stereotypes can influence future generations of black girls into believing that what makes a black woman popular is these sterotypes, and that it is not accurate. The speaker encourages society to influence the next
generation to be better than the last, just like what the previous generation has been doing, and the generation before them. If each generation did not change from the one before it, we would still have a lot of negative things happening like segregation and laws against certain marriages. Many students who viewed the documentary during the event provided some feedback based on their own personal lives and experiences. Some students found the event relatable based on their lives as minorities. “I felt that they were thoroughly explaining stereotypes in media,” one student said. “It reminded me of the influences that they would show on TV and it would usually be the ones you see on TV,” another student said. While it's for certain that we are not quite at the proper representation of African-American women yet, we can at least thank and celebrate the ones we have so far like; Susie from the “Rugrats”, Bumblebee from “Teen Titans” and Cleo from “Tutenstein.” There are also a large amount of real-life positive representation of black women in the media, like Oprah Winfrey, Regina King, Beyonce and Whoppi Goldberg. Since African-Americans make up only 12.3 percent of the country, and there are not a lot of black producers, animators or directors, it is very important that we have more positive role models, because the future generations will see it and won’t see themselves as jokes, sex objects or gangbangers, and that is not what we want to see.
Opinions: "I know this contradicting weather has started this year off on a gloomy note, but aside from midterms, spring break is right around the corner."