BREAKFREE 2.0
The breakfree project is a project where we have practiced breaking free from stereotypes and not judging someone based off first glance. We started with this amazing experiment where we had 4 pieces of paper with the races; Black, white, Mexican, and Asian. We had to go write on each paper all the stereotypes we knew about the race. There was a lot. It was just crazy and eye opening to see how many stereotypes I knew of a single race. We had to ask ourselves: Where did we learn these horrible stereotypes? Where do they come from? These stereotypes are very dangerous because then there is the possibility of stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is when we start to believe the stereotypes that inflict our race and think that we have to believe them. This activity was very beneficial because it set off that desire to do that project, without this activity I don't think many people would have realized how much of a problem stereotypes really are. We also read and studied parts of history like "Whistling Vivaldi" that helped us realize how these stereotypes were institutionalized into our society.
THAT CARD
Our personal journey with breakfree all started with practicing being vulnerable. The way we did that was by creating “that” cards. “That cards” are note cards we made with each of our personal stories about discrimination. These really helped us practice being vulnerable which prepared for us for our personal pieces.
SPOKEN WORD
For our personal pieces we had the choice of creating a spoken word, an art piece, a ted talk like presentation, or a song, I chose to create a spoken word. We could write about whatever we wanted so I chose to write about racism. Although it wasn’t as personal as others I wrote about all of the racism that I see from a spectators point of view. Writing my spoken word was very beneficial because I could finally put all my thoughts about the world on paper and share it with people I love.
GROUP VIDEO
The other aspect of our breakfree project was our group video. We started by writing about topics that we wanted to see change in America. I wrote about how discrimination against undocumented immigrants was unfair because most of our ancestors were undocumented immigrants at some point. Then we were paired up with people who wrote down similar topics.
Together we created a proposal that entailed everything we were going to do in the project and how our video was going to make people break free from stereotypes. Then, after Joanne had critiqued it we had to present it to the class.
Our video got a good reaction so we proceeded further with our project. Before filming we had to create an actual storyboard that showed each exact shot that was going to be in the video. Once that was completely finalized we moved on to filming. To get all the shots we needed my group had to meet up after school a total of 7 times. We weren’t getting the reactions that we wanted at first, but, after many times filming we started getting the hang of it and we knew which questions to ask. Now we have a final video uploaded to youtube. Even though it was a difficult and challenging journey, my group and I are very proud of the final product.
SELF REFLECTION
When I didn’t know much about breakfree last year I kind of took it as a joke. But after learning about all these stereotypes that are institutionalized into our society I really found out what breakfree means to me. Breakfree literally means breaking free from all stereotypes that we have known our whole lives. Instead of judging somebody by attributes like skin color and sexuality, we judge someone by their personality and character. The most challenging part of this project for me was being vulnerable to my classmates. I was always taught to not show weakness and this whole project I was scared to show what I felt. But I overcame that because I realized that being vulnerable takes more strength than anything. My classmates also helped a lot by being supportive during the “that” cards and personal pieces. From an academic standpoint this project has actually been very beneficial, when studying the different stereotypes and where the emerged from we had to go way back in history. When studying black stereotypes we studied slavery and the horrible treatment of the black race, for Mexican stereotypes we studied the Aztec empire and a lot of different immigration plans, and for Asian stereotypes we studied the transcontinental railroad and all of their struggles, so breakfree is very beneficial with academics and it teaches a person a lot about morals and judgment. I would say that I really love this project and that anyone would be lucky to partake in this journey and my hope for breakfree is that it can be taught to older people who are more ignorant and not open minded towards race and sexuality and hopefully get them to breakfree from their personal beliefs.
EXHIBITION
This project was very hard and at times my group and I didn't see the exhibition coming together, however the Queen Bee’s exhibit blew those expectations out of proportion. Queen Bee’s was my favorite exhibit so far because everything came together so beautifully. The spoken words on the main stage were very powerful and sometimes had the audience in tears. The Rockestras had no mistakes and people were clapping and singing along. People actually showed up and we had a full house of people looking at our amazing products. I think that this was the ideal of what an exhibition is supposed to look like and it really made our hard work pay off.