Kynnedy Smith is a senior at Hawken School.
The 13th annual Stop the Hate Youth Speak Out contest, hosted by the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, awards $100,000 to 25 students in sixth-12th grades in 12 Northeast Ohio counties. The competition is rooted in the Jewish value of respect for all humanity. Cleveland.com is posting the top 10 finalists. See all the essays here.
Finally! The call came giving me the opportunity to leave the house during two pandemics designed to keep the world separated. The day our Black Student Union decided to participate in the protest for George Floyd, coronavirus and racial tensions could have blocked me, but my excitement to see others and my need to protest for human rights was paramount. A small group of us gathered to create our uniquely creative protest signs. On the day of the protest, we held our signs proudly, high in a sea of other artistically crafted boards calling for justice. Our signs braved heights in unison and swayed to chants and songs of equality. While it seemed we were existing separately in the previous months, we were all together now.
The protest happened at the beginning of the summer. After social distancing again for several more weeks, I visited family out of town. What I experienced was beautifully disgusting. In my travel, I witnessed the graffiti walls of notable Black figures spray-painted with demeaning words and gestures. For the first time in my life, I saw a sign that in its own fashion said “Whites Only.” It had caricature drawings of White, Asian, and Black faces, but the Asian and Black faces were crossed out. At a store, I witnessed a man dancing as if he was a gorilla and pointing in our direction. I had only seen these things on television.
I could have focused on the negative display of these experiences. Instead, as an artist, I needed to remind myself of the beauty of storytelling in these moments. Even when it comes from a place of hate, art is in them. Art portrays the beauty of life or a bitter reality. It records history, revolutions, rebellions, and sometimes is a means to escape and resolve them. There was art in the protest signs and art in my travel experiences. There is no history or culture without art.
To help create a legacy of changemakers, I joined Peace First and became a Peace First US Ambassador. This program supports young changemakers by helping them lead social change in their communities through the creation of projects that produce impactful solutions to injustice. I recruit youth changemakers and receive training, mentoring, and the opportunity for funding for my impact project, “Creative Justice.”
Creative Justice is a program I created for youth artists in Northeast Ohio. Its purpose is to allow each artist to use their art genre to describe how the current state of racial affairs affects the way youth navigate the world today. Youth artists will participate in a series of virtual town halls with panelists who are artists, social justice advocates, politicians, and diversity professionals. After the town halls, each artist will receive a grant to produce a piece of art that depicts their view of social justice. Funding for these grants were received from Essence Communication Ventures. My goal is to host an artist showcase at a local museum in the summer of 2021.
"bitter" - Google News
May 12, 2021 at 02:30AM
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‘Art portrays the beauty of life or a bitter reality:’ Stop the Hate finalist Kynnedy Smith - cleveland.com
"bitter" - Google News
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