Empowering Women of Color

As women of color, we wanted our activist project to present a message that was important for current and future generations. There was a consensus that women of color face many challenges but often the first challenge we face is colorism; discrimination based on skin color. We are often told that certain shades are more desirable than others and that the statement “Beauty is more than skin deep” is not always the case. To some, exterior beauty plays a role in things such as, how intelligent a woman is and how well of a partner she will be.

Appreciation or Appropriation?

  For our project, our goal was to bring attention to cultural appropriation, which is a societal issue that is seldom addressed. We wanted to help others understand how much they can negatively impact and oppress certain racial groups by ignoring the historical context of and borrowing another’s culture. In order to achieve this goal, we interviewed a sample of UMBC students and asked them 5-6 questions regarding the topic of cultural appropriation. Our interview questions were meant to gauge our interviewees’ feelings and knowledge about the individual effects of cultural appropriation, specifically the appropriation of Black culture. We managed to gather a diverse sample of people with varying amounts of knowledge on the topic in order to successfully create a 7-8 minute video on the prevalence and significance of Black cultural appropriation.