I know what you’re thinking: obvious choice!!! Nevertheless it struck me and got me thinking. This photo feels like a different world, so foreign to how I’ve grown up. The reality is, it wasn’t really relatively speaking, that long ago. With such segregation and degradation imposed on one group of people, how can we expect all to be forgotten in 61 years? For decades African Americans in this country were told they weren’t even good enough to be considered lower class citizens. For a black person drinking out of a white person’s fountain meant contamination and breaking the law. Yes, things have gotten much better, however there is a divide still. While that is to be expected after two centuries of racism, I wonder how long will it take before we can all truly think there is no racism between the two races? Is this even possible? Can either party forget the past? In my opinion I do not think we will ever get past this dark period of American history. The injustice was too great and the pain has been passed down from generation to generation. Things will always continue to get better with each passing decade but I feel as long as there are images such as these, it will be difficult to ever forgive and forget.

Just looking at the picture though, we can begin to the appalling politics that’s involved in this raced body. Notice the pipe that comes from the white’s fountain to the colored. Realizing that water, a key element in living, is what’s passing through the pipe. This almost gives the feeling that its through the generosity of whites that we grant blacks, a lesser form of humanity, life.

One more thing though that I find interesting about this picture: isn’t the black man through this body practice a docile body??? He allows and accepts the society that thinks of him as a lesser being. If that’s not creating a world view while withholding the white hegemony.