I find it interesting that color is still an issue and still not recognized for what it is.
For instance, Yellow is a very interesting color, it can be considered dangerous, cynical and mental unrest or a warning in literary terms. Certain shades make you move or feel a certain way and help move you along in some chain restaurants. I say that to say we've been trained and primed from years and years of media ,movies and history grade school books to receive information a certain way. (Side note: School is originally used for the benefit of the state Gov, to fashion types of workers to grow up and be apart of certain classes of day and night workers, usually segregated by race.) So for February, " Black History MONTH," I decided to not use certain colors deemed for "black people,"and try something else to change the narrative of unspoken rules that TRULY don't exist. I remember years ago in college I had the opportunity to meet some interestingly successful people and what they taught me I could never have found it in a book. One particular artist was telling about his experience as an artist for marketing. Long story Longer...they asked him to illustrate a group of ladies, "universal" looking and diverse, for a board game for young adults. The information was "CLEAR" and there were no other issues. He went through the regular process of laying out the scene and a few options to send to the editor for approval. The artist drew 5 to 6 different young ladies, Hispanic, white, asian, black, Indian with all similar clothing, summertime hot, shorts or jeans and graphic tees sitting in a living room playing a board game. The editor receives the artist plans and layouts and sends an obscure email back. They send back the "GreatshitGreat" sandwich. "The images are great, but It's too UNIVerSAL, when we speak about universal/ Diverse we are speaking about hair color and height of white young females only." After reading this and then realizing what they "meant" by certain words he felt a little disrespected and slight disgusted by it. So he did what they said, the project ended up having all white character different heights, with different hair colors. Clearly we see the issue of selling product geared to "everyone" but only showing one type of person, one race. As the reader of this blog, I hope your minds take you back to a time or place where you first noticed this idolizing priming in marketing strategy.
I'm for all people, people, mostly first by the heart of the person then color, and then intentions, thats how I look at people. Me being African American, or just simply American, I have seen how representation can be a problem. My father was a country and grew up and wanted to be a cowboy because his favorite hero back then was John Wayne, there's no issue there, but the real issue is that the only black cowboy came up in a movie "Blazin Saddles," many years after being a grown man. The true solution was to truly be diverse regardless, because if you do that young people can be taught another narrative, the original narrative of this "free nation" all men/women are created equal. It's complete fine to focus on something like race for a moment, for my case I want to flood more content with more black work and label it as "universal" then I'll move on to another race, to my Native American and Indians, hispanic, asian brothers and sisters. Hamilton and Bridgerton aren't the only one..oops said too much..lol
Here's some non-apologetic, AFRICAN AMERICAN, BLACK, BLAQUE, BLAQ etc what ever you want to call it, in ya face with some Interesting mood filled yellow to top it off.