Is it really over?

At the F. W. Woolworth store, now the International Civil Rights Museum, I was mesmerized by the black face exhibit. I had a lot of previous knowledge on minstrel shows but for some reason as the tour guide explained to my group the minstrel shows purpose something just clicked in my head. Our tour guide had said that minstrel shows portrayed African American stereotypes so that white people wouldn't want to be around them and I immediately thought of modern day television shows. The first show that came to mind was "Love and HipHop", then the wide array of black news interviews that have been made into hysterical comedic jokes, and also the way that African Americans are portrayed in our television shows as gangsters, drug dealers, and "ratchet". And I had to ask myself if blackface as a form of institutionalized racism had deceased or if it had just taken a new form.
Secondly, in memory of the 6 month sit ins, I'm acknowledging the fact that I made the commitment to myself to explore what it means to be a black female in a predominantly white world which is something I hadn't realized until I went to the Park School.                     

Chinika Derrick. The Park School of Baltimore