One of the most affecting things we were exposed to in this course was a video of protestors someplace in California who were heckling and spewing hate at Muslims as they went to attend a dinner celebrating civic achievements by Muslims.\u00a0 It was absolutely revolting, and made me feel terrible for those who had to experience such hatred, and that the protestors represented a not insignificant part of the population who shared their sentiments.\u00a0 As I thought about it, one of the most terrible effects of the protestors\u2019 hate was that it told the Muslims, ordinary families, that they didn\u2019t belong, that they weren\u2019t welcome.\u00a0 This kind of exclusion is completely antithetical to all that America stands for as a place of freedom where we claim that anyone should be able to make what they want of themselves and not be prevented from doing so because of their race or creed.\u00a0 I was horrified that anyone was meant to feel that they didn\u2019t belong, especially as these people do belong here.\u00a0 They\u2019re just as American as anyone else.\u00a0 The actions of the protestors were not only infuriating but also absurd.\u00a0 Who are they to tell any other American that they don\u2019t belong or aren\u2019t welcome just because they hold a different form of belief.\u00a0 I thought about how this would be a difficult experience for the Muslims who were protested to process from an identity stand point.\u00a0 These people identify as Americans, and so to be told that they don\u2019t belong to the place that they absolutely feel they do belong to would be painfully dissonant.\u00a0 I wanted to get across the absurdity of the protestors and the poignancy of this effect on the poor Muslims who had to experience this terrible treatment.\u00a0 I realized a political cartoon was a great way to do this, as cartoons are all about powerful brevity, making a strong point in a satirical way.\u00a0 It was towards this end that I came up with this cartoon.\u00a0 That the main protestor has USA on his hat emphasizes how absurd it is that he and the others think they speak for America or all Americans.\u00a0 I especially like how it invites the person reading it inside the thoughts of the girl in the Burka, showing her internality and personality, that although she is covered and therefore often perceived as anonymous she has a vital inner life that is being effected by the hate she experiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the most affecting things we were exposed to in this course was a video of protestors someplace in California who were heckling and spewing hate at Muslims as they went to attend a dinner celebrating civic achievements by Muslims.\u00a0 It was absolutely revolting, and made me feel terrible for those who had to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4563,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/chriswoodcb12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/chriswoodcb12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/chriswoodcb12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/chriswoodcb12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4563"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/chriswoodcb12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/chriswoodcb12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/chriswoodcb12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/chriswoodcb12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/chriswoodcb12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/chriswoodcb12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}