Boundaries and Breakthroughs- Exploring Borders in Artistic Expression
This is an image of a black woman holding the hands of a young boy, seemingly her son. The son is carrying a schoolbag behind his back, suggesting that he is a schoolboy. He is probably being taken to school to interact with other children who are not of the same racial grouping as his. As it is seen, the mother is probably a single parent and takes the sole responsibility of schooling her son. Schools in New York comprise children from different racial groupings and personalities that are not necessarily similar to that of the boy. The mother is a working-class lady since she is tasked to provide for her son’s basic needs. The needs include school fees and other basic needs that the child will require. Hire our assignment writing services to save yourself tons of time and energy required for your assignment papers.
This essay will analyze the underlying issues that this Jamaican lady and his son will experience in their stay in New York. The boy will grapple with issues of adjusting to different personalities and racial systems in his school. Just like the son, the mother will face additional issues of employment and patriarchy.
Patriarchy is a core subject that the two would have to deal with. The child, as seen, lacks a father figure that would instill the values of patriarchy in his life. The mother will step up like the father in that role. Patriarchy is a socio-political system that states that the male gender is dominant over the female gender. Patriarchy holds the belief that the strong should rule over the weak in society. Religion teaches patriarchy in various ways. Religion encourages the dominance of men. Women were responsible for assisting men in carrying out these duties, obeying them, and playing second fiddle to the man. God was believed to be a man.
Men were informed that their decisions would be influenced by their nature, which was expected to be violent. Violence is instilled to be enjoyable and right. Boys were instructed further to avoid expressing their feelings (Akgul,2017). On the other hand, girls were to express their feelings fully or partly. A girl child who was enraged when they were denied their toys was informed that the rage was a wrong feeling, that it should not only not be expressed but also eradicated. The male child, responding by being enraged at being denied a toy, was taught that their abilities to showcase rage were right in a patriarchal household. However, they had to learn the best way to showcase their hostility. It was inappropriate to use their rage against the will of their father and mother. Later on, when the female and the male child grew up, the man was informed that rage was permitted, the rage was leveraged to provoke the grown-up man to exude violence; thus, they were able to protect their families and the nation as a whole. Gender roles were learned from the parents. The way the parents behaved meant a lot to society because that was the platform on which the children would learn patriarchy.
Patriarchy was confusing at times. The behaviors of both the male and the female children had to follow some values and beliefs about gender. ‘Patriarchy’ is referred to as a ‘social organization established by the supreme nature of the man in domestic and religious functions. It associates male supremacy with power. Patriarchy involves both the male and female genders. Many people learn patriarchal attitudes from their families of origin, passed down often by the mothers. The attitudes later received reinforcement in schools and religious groupings. Today, households that females head are assumed to be devoid of patriarchal value teachings due to the lack of male presence.
Furthermore, they believe the male gender (men) is the worthy instructor of issues of patriarchy. Surprisingly, single mothers encourage patriarchal thinking with greater effectiveness than the stable families of father and mother: such single mothers lack shreds of evidence to challenge the downsides of patriarchy. Single mothers have higher chances to firmly support men’s roles than ladies who live with males and believe in patriarchy. Thereby, there is a surging want to outline the role women play in encouraging and inspiring issues that lead to patriarchy. It is important to acknowledge patriarchy as a way of life in which females and males give equal support for its success. However, the male gender is advantaged more by the patriarchy theme. As a result, men and women need to be combined in order to improve the system (Akgul,2017). As can be seen, it will be difficult to dismantle the system if we still do not openly criticize its negative impacts on contemporary society. This system needs men’s domination, encouraging sexist violence. These include the sexist violence involving rape and abuse of domestic partners as well as those occurring publicly. However, the most common forms occur in homes involving mothers, fathers, and their children. The aim of the witnessed behaviors is usually to strengthen a domineering model; the head of the house, or the ruler, has authority over the others who lack real authority power and can preserve that ordinance using submission and other related techniques.
Learning about personality differences and adjusting to different cultures is essential to the boy. This is because the boy interacts with other children from different cultures and personalities. Representation is a problematic subject, given that it involves issues of variance. These involve emotions and perceptions of a person. It leverages fears and anxieties in the person at higher insights in a simple and most known way. It is essential to understand the reason why the differences matter. The first explanation is advanced using linguistics – from the sort of approach associated with Saussure and the utilizing language as a manner of cultural operation. The main point emphasized is that ‘difference’ matters, the reason being it is important to the overall understanding of the language; when there is no difference, personalities cannot exist. An example of the difference is spelled on white and black (Hall,1997). It is argued that because there is the importance of ‘black color’. However, the reason is that white is the opposite color. It is the ‘difference’ between white and black, which signifies what carries meaning. Another explanation is also advanced from language theories. However, it is from a different school of thought. The argument advanced states that difference is required to build an effective conversation with someone else. Mikhail Bakhtin studied language as an element of culture, as an objective system, and that meaning is only realized in the conversation between many speakers (Wykes, 1998). Meaning in different languages and cultures does not belong to any of the participants. The last point poses anthropological logic. Culture relies on making meanings of objects by sorting them into various positions within a grouping system—the variant forms, thereby the foundation of that symbolism in order, named as culture.
As they try to settle in New York, the boy and the mother will most likely experience the weight of racial injustice in different spheres of their lives. Racism encompasses negative views on ethnicity by various groups. These are demonstrated in-laws that are discriminative in nature, as well as in actions. White Americans are at the center of the enjoyment of legal and socially sanctioned rights at the expense of other groups (Perry, 2016). These racist practices have existed for a long time, even during the times of the colonial era in the USA. Racism exists in various forms, including slavery and genocide. Schools have also been separated, whereby some schools are attended by Americans and others by children of immigrants (Yelvington, 2001). Racial politics are reflected in socioeconomic inequality. Before the 21st Century, the major way to determine racism in political science has been the scales of the racial system. Some people argue that group hostility results from individuals’ desire to maintain a greater status (Bailey et al., 2017). Understanding relative status is a result of experiences obtained through years of study of racial groups and the making out of meaning from these experiences by both the top classes of society and other members of societal classes. Racial prejudice also results from racial resentment advanced by natives who underwent mistreatment during the colonial era.
Employment opportunities are an area of core consideration in these circumstances for the black woman holding the boy. Jobs form a key part of adult life. Jobs have been a center of discussion for many years in the USA. It is riddled with taboos and silence about essential values that underlie it. Indeed, many people are not satisfied with their jobs, yet it is difficult for them to admit. Technology advancements have been predicted to reduce the number of work hours (Graeber,2013). Some companies have downsized the number of their employees, who are the main contributors to their success. Some jobs have even been branded bullshit jobs, involving jobs that are waged and salaried. These definitions are mainly subjective and give assumptions that underline reality.
Jamaicans living in New York would experience various types of issues that will affect their lives. As branded, these borders of the race will likely affect them negatively or positively. Personality and cultural differences in which the woman and the boy have to grapple, lead to more understanding of their situations which will propel their lives to adjust to their new environment. Additionally, patriarchy is a major theme that obviously would influence the lives of the mother and her son.
References
Akgul, F. (2017). Understanding Patriarchy. In Patriarchal Theory Reconsidered (pp. 29-65). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Bailey, Z. D., Krieger, N., Agénor, M., Graves, J., Linos, N., & Bassett, M. T. (2017). Structural racism and health inequities in the USA: evidence and interventions. The Lancet, 389(10077), 1453-1463.
Graeber, D. (2013). On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs: A work rant. Strike Magazine, 3, 1-5.
Hall, S. (1997). The spectacle of the other. Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices,
Perry, K. K. Y. (2016). Geographies of power: Black women mobilizing intersectionality in Brazil. Meridians, 14(1), 94-120.
Yelvington, K. A. (2001). The anthropology of Afro-Latin America and the Caribbean: diasporic dimensions. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30(1), 227-260.
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Question 
What kinds of borders exist in your life? How are they transgressed? Create something artistic and write a 750-1,250 ethnographic essay describing your artistic creation. Your essay must cite at least four of the readings from class.
Boundaries and Breakthroughs- Exploring Borders in Artistic Expression
My professor said it could be a photographic essay, meaning you can take a picture of something and then write about and describe the picture. Please keep in mind that if you’re taking a picture, I live in New York, so the picture will have to reflect over here. Or he said you can draw a picture and write an essay and describe your artistic creation. My essay must cite at least four the readings from my class I have uploaded a couple of readings that my class has read you can choose ONLY 4 readings out of the uploads of the readings below you will like to use for the essay.
Additional information: You need to upload project and artistic creation or you can add artistic creation in essay and write about it. The artistic creation can also be a poem, but you have to make the poem up. The artistic piece has to be created and explained by you in essay format and you must add 4 articles read in my class, which is uploaded below. Once again, it can be a drawing created by you, a picture taken by you, a poem written by you, a collage, or anything artistic that reflects what you are writing about in the paper and must explain it. Think about borders in your life, then use artistic creation to reflect that and create articles. For example, I am Jamaican. You can write about the borders of being a Jamaican, and your artistic creation can be to draw a picture of what you are writing about in the essay, draw in the readings from class, and explain why you thought about that for borders. If you need additional information please email me I don’t want any mistakes. Below, I have uploaded an example of what my classmate is writing about. Do not copy their idea; use as an example