Black Lives Matter, But So Do Black Female Bodies

This past week, the New York Times published information regarding Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate for the next presidential election’s, stance on abortion. Trump, like other conservatives, sees abortion as “murder” according to the New York Times; and, taking it back decades, he is in support that abortion should be illegal to all, and he says that women who engage in illegal abortions should be punished by the United States government. I think it is important, when considering the …

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Why Can’t All Bodies be Different, but Fought For the Same?

In her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander (2010) spells out the issues of the master narrative, which has, since the abolition of slavery and strategic implementation of the war on drugs and mass incarceration, legitimized and hidden from the American people what locking up thousands and thousands of Black bodies has done. The emergence of crack cocaine in impoverished streets and mandatory minimum sentencing laws covered up the racist intentions of politicians …

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Don’t We All Culturally Appropriate?

In light of the recent posts regarding the performance of historical dance works by Muhlenberg College students as cultural appropriation, I find myself questioning cultural appropriation, its nature, what is appropriate, and what is not. To put it even more simply, can anyone really emulate someone else’s experience via performance? And if not, what is the point of performance, if it is not to express an experience of an artist? In my opinion, it comes out of individual perspective and …

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