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Instagram: Team DL

D. L. Hughley is an African American actor, radio host, comedian, and political commentator. He is someone that my mom follows on Instagram and I always hear her complain and not agree with some of the things that he posts. For those of you that aren’t familiar with Instagram, it is a social media app where one can post pictures with captions and hashtags and one can make their account public or private depending on if they want anyone to just see their posts or only the people they allow to follow their account. I do not personally follow D. L. Hughley on Instagram, but I do look at his posts to see if I can understand where my mom is coming from and so I could get a sense of his views. 

While looking at his Instagram posts I felt like I saw some common themes. One of themes is he does not agree a lot with much of what our president, Donald Trump, does and he always compares him to Barack Obama. He posts pictures to get his view across of what he thinks of him. Below is a screenshot I took of one of his posts. This shows that he doesn’t support him and this is how he wants people to see him. He feels that African Americans are always blamed for crimes and sexual assault and so here he is comparing him to Obama, which he seems to do a lot, to show that he is white and has these allegations. Also, on every one of his post on Instagram he uses the hashtag #TeamDl which shows that this is his view and if you agree then you are on his team. 

Another theme that I already sort of mentioned above is that he believes African Americans are always seen as the minority and are accused of crimes such as murder and/or rape. Here, I took another screenshot to provide an example of this. He never has very long captions, but he always uses the same TeamDl hashtag. I think he wants the picture to speak for itself and for people to take what they want from it while also knowing what his view is on the subject. 

These things tie into things we have talked about in class. At the beginning of the semester we talked about those pictures of that African American boy that was tortured and murdered and his mother wanted his pictures to be public so people could see the harsh reality that African Americans had. Hughley is doing the same thing because he wants people to see what African Americans go through and that he doesn’t think it is right. This also ties into white privilege because whites have the advantage over African Americans and any other race. The last screenshot I provided shows this because a white man was executed for the first time in history for killing an African American which shows how whites do have the advantage over African Americans. We also recently discussed visual technology and how it relates to race. This is used here since he uses pictures of people with words and it shows us how we are suppose to and how society views this race and the things we tie with the race. 

Instagram has a lot of different purposes from people sharing cooking ideas, crafts, re-decorating, sport updates, etc. Race and politics is definitely another huge one that is discussed on this site. It can either be just a picture to share their viewpoint or the picture with words. We have come a long way with race, but I do think we have a while to go and that social media sometimes doesn’t seem to help the progress sometimes. 

Picture 1: https://www.google.com/search?q=dl+hughley&rlz=1C1NHXL_enUS730US730&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjk8LOqv_7XAhUizoMKHf0TBhQQ_AUIDCgD&biw=1536&bih=711&dpr=1.25#imgrc=DZaTDojurcu6vM:

Picture 2 &3: screenshotted from me

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Glory Road

Glory Road is a sports drama movie from 2006 and was based on a true story that took place in 1966. At this time was around with the Civil Rights Movement when African Americans struggled with inequality. The movie is about the events that led up to the NCAA Division Basketball Championship that is now known as NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. A coach (he is the white male in the photo below) from Texas Western College recruited players to play for his team regardless of their race because he felt at this time everyone deserved a fair chance to play. His team was a good combination of African American and white male college student athletes. They were the first team in NCAA history to have all African American line-up (second image).

This movie shows a variety of things that we have discussed in our class like discrimination, racism, and white privilege. From the first image above, we can tell that this is about a white male coach who is coaching African American males. The image shows us a good presentation of the movie because we can get the sense of the South and that these boys were going from playing street ball to college ball. We can also see from the second image that these boys went against white teams and it was not always easy for them. Since it was an era where African Americans were fighting for equality, there were some things that these boys encountered. They experienced racism when one of their teammates were beat up and when their rooms got vandalized with racial name calling words on the walls at an away game. People did not approve of this team being African American and they also did not approve of the white coach coaching them since they also threatened his family.  

From the image above, we can see that some of these people are not cheering for this team. They do not approve and do not want to accept that an African American team could be winning in this division. Also from the image we notice that the team is not all African American and that there are some white males, too. The coach did not care what race they were because he wanted players based off their talent. But he did want his team to play together as one and realize there is not differences between them and that they are playing together for a common goal. This shows that white privilege doesn’t matter to him and shouldn’t be a factor in his team since he looks at talent solely. He didn’t realize that he was going to be so important and change the way sports are ran because of this. But yet he did, through a time of unfairness and inequality of African Americans he showed America that we are all just alike. 

Pictures: 

https://www.google.com/search?q=glory+road&rlz=1C1NHXL_enUS730US730&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjd6cPm5t3XAhVE44MKHRYXBXYQ_AUICygC&biw=1536&bih=760#imgrc=B0L5kXa8PR-0cM:

https://www.google.com/search?q=glory+road&rlz=1C1NHXL_enUS730US730&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjd6cPm5t3XAhVE44MKHRYXBXYQ_AUICygC&biw=1536&bih=760#imgrc=5VeiEvKw1RRh4M:

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1NHXL_enUS730US730&biw=1536&bih=760&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=NZMbWsmuNezojwTWiYSQBA&q=glory+road+racism+&oq=glory+road+racism+&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i8i30k1j0i24k1.12736.16584.0.16725.24.20.4.0.0.0.126.1549.15j5.20.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.14.901...0j0i8i13i30k1j0i30k1.0._PzG4f50CNQ#imgrc=PPUxhKiE6HFMhM:

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How to Get Away With Murder

“How to Get Away With Murder” is an American drama television show that aired in 2014. Professor Annalise Keating (main character) is an African American female professor and a lawyer at Middleton University law school in Philadelphia.

She wants students to intern for her at her firm, so she has all her students compete for the position and she ends up picking 5 first year students from her class. 

The series goes on about the different situations, such as murder, that this group of students must face together with Professor Keating helping them get through it. She helps them “get away with murder” and other tough situations that they encounter. This show is so enjoyable to watch especially if you are interested in murder, drama, and suspense. 

The show has diversity in it with the different races that make up the group of 5 students as shown above, which is African Americans, Whites and Latina. The show goes against some of the typical stereotypes tied with each race and has some typical stereotypes that go with each race. White privilege is something seen through one of the 5 students, but it is not a huge problem or discussion in this show. Since Professor Keating is strong, successful African American lawyer, it gives the audience a different view of African American women and goes against the stereotype of this race like being poor, not intelligent, etc. Also, each of these 5 students are seen as equal and are not treated any differently by Professor Keating. Once you get to know the characters you can see that she picked them solely based on their intelligence level. 

The people that these students and Professor Keating represent are culturally diverse and some align with the stereotypes for their race, gender, or ethnicity. For example, when they represent an African American it is normally because they were poor and got involved with either drugs or murder. Furthermore, the male African American in the above picture does not have a father and has a poor mom who works a low paying job and she ends up committing suicide. The African American woman in the above picture was adopted and previously did not come from a good family. Both of these are typical stereotypes of this race. When it comes to the White characters above, they come from wealthy families with successful parents. The Latina character is the women on the very right and she has a father who is a bad business man (either something with drugs, prostitution, etc.) and she knows for a fact that he hired someone to kill off the African American guy in the above picture that she was dating. A stereotype for Latinas, Hispanics, Mexicans is that they have something to do with drugs or breaking the law. This show is full of examples of cultural diversity, cultural norms, stereotypes, gender norms, and then examples going against cultural norms or stereotypes. 

A good article to read further about this show’s cultural diversity that I found is: http://www.tvovermind.com/how-to-get-away-with-murder/get-away-murder-defying-hollywood-norms 

Pictures:

https://www.google.com/search?q=photo+from+how+to+get+away+with+murder&rlz=1C1NHXL_enUS730US730&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwickaGKx7rXAhUD44MKHSn6DPMQ_AUICygC&biw=1536&bih=760#imgrc=5_sIKJr8On5OUM:

https://www.google.com/search?q=photo+from+how+to+get+away+with+murder&rlz=1C1NHXL_enUS730US730&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwickaGKx7rXAhUD44MKHSn6DPMQ_AUICygC&biw=1536&bih=760#imgrc=s8cFzqTBo6uwYM:

Article:

St. John, Mariah. “How to Get Away With Murder is Defying Hollywood ‘Norms.’” TV Overmind. 11 May 2016. Web.