Adrien Mantohac

Racism

The issue that I’ve chosen is racism. Racism is prejudice and discrimination that’s directedcagainst someone of a different race, holding a belief that one’s race is superior than the other. What does it look like exactly? Well to start off, racism is ugly. All it does is it divides our society as “us” and “them.” From southern whites glaring at blacks to verbal actions that include calling each other such disrespectful terms, making jokes, bullying, etc. It dates way back in the 1400s when European settlers began colonizing America. They conquered the Indians in wars and even forced Christianity upon them; those who refuse would be punished severely. African Americans, on the other hand, were the main focus. They were treated as slaves, majority of the time being beaten and treated like animals. Not good at all. It affects my community in various ways. As soon as you define yourself as part of a group, you are dividing society into parts. You are placing yourself and other members of that group apart from everyone else. This by definition puts people opposite from each other and creates inequality. So to summarize, there really is no one big community.

With my chime, I hope it will make a difference. I hope people will realize that making fun of our skin colour or of our culture is morally wrong. I am aware racism won’t go away 100% in a
couple of years, but just a small change is enough to give me hope in us. The audience for my chime will be of any age really. For children, they’ll know the definition of racism and will learn and grow up to not be part of it. For teens, we tend to say jokes, whether we mean it or not, but they’ll learn as well. It would be hard for some teens to get it through their heads. Adults will get
the idea. I don’t see a lot of adults being racist, probably because I don’t go out a lot or talk to them, so in my experience, it’s mostly teenagers. They’ll be amazed by my chime because of it’s visual. It’ll be beautiful and eye-catching. To get this reaction, I was going to limit on the colours because of how sensitive this topic is, it really isn’t all bright colours and rainbows, but since our class chose pop art, I’ll have no choice but to use a lot of colours in some way.

I am currently working with a partner for this project but we are going to have separate chimes, our compositions and ideas will go together though. For the type of sustainability, it is social. Social sustainability is a positive condition within communities, such as having access to medicare, opportunities for education, racial & gender equality, no crime, high graduation rates. It is an idea that future generations should have greater access to more social resources than the current generation. The sustainability of the social pyramid is a difficult one, but it is possible through the process in technology and ways of thinking. Social sustainability relates to our topic, racism and police brutality, because it requires a change in people's mindsets. How this will happen is so the future generations won't think of thoughts relating to violence and prejudice. This will also be hard to do, but it is still possible. Questions both our chimes will address are: can suppressing discrimination bring the community together or not?, can we impact the community by doing this project?, and can people feel interested in what our sound sensor is doing?