There were a lot of babies born on Tuesday, February 3rd. Some were White and some were African American.
Meet Adam...
Meet Andrew...
or
Meet Andrew...
Meet Adam
Adam and Andrew grew up on the same block.
They lived right next door to each other actually.
Adam and Andrew became great friends.
Andrew and Adam went to the same high school.
Adam is going to Yale. Andrew is going to his state school, the University of Michigan.
They had identical High School transcripts....
There were a lot of babies born on February 3rd, some were White and some were African American.
After finally completing my post, my biggest challenge was getting the images to be in the spot I wanted them to be in. Once I inserted another image, the image that I had already placed would move to another spot, or disappear altogether. As I was doing this post, I kept thinking about how much I would like to be taking these pictures myself. Unfortunately, I do not have the time nor the resources to have done that so I was forced to rely on Google images. Google images for the most part is great, but for my post I was looking for very specific images to convey a very specific message. A lot of the time, I would find an image that has a text written over it for copyright issues. Finding images was very time consuming. From the beginning I wanted to do a post on Affirmative Action, and portray it from a different point of view. My argument is that Affirmative Action should not be based on race alone. The story of these two boys is an example of how race should not allow advantages for one individual versus another individual who has the same credentials. I named the boys Adam and Andrew to show the extreme similarities between the two (both had names that started with A, both grew up on the same block, etc.). I never tell my reader who is Andrew and who is Adam. I do this on purpose to keep the reader guessing, and to show that Affirmative Action is inherently unfair, because these two boys are equal, and no different besides for the color of their skin. As Berger argued, photographs are isolated bits of time. In my post I try to create a continuous history for my two characters, starting at birth, and ending at college to show that photos can indeed tell a full story when ordered in a particular way.
Hi Alex,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your visual argument, even if I think it doesn't fully capture the complexities of affirmative action. Personally, I think that is one of the biggest challenges in this kind of an exercise. It's so much easier to portray the other point of view when you're writing, but when you're using images, it can be really easy to confuse your audience and really hard to refute the other perspective(s).
I particularly liked that you never distinguish which baby is which. I think that was the strongest part of your argument, stronger than saying that they lived on the same block, had the same grades, etc. I applaud your creativity.
I really like your concept and idea here, Alex. I know blogger can be a pain when trying to insert images :-/ its just something we have to deal with and try and work around.
ReplyDeletein terms of image searching, google and flickr both have options to search for Creative Commons licensed images (images that you are able to use so long as you attribute the author. they are free and without watermarks).
I agree with Emmarie, the strongest part of your argument is never saying which child is which. It really bolsters your point and adds to your visual argument. Affirmative action is a very interesting and controversial topic, I'm glad you chose to work with it.