correction semaine 25 novembre.
Here is the correction of what you did last week.
This document shows a sculpure by Duane Hanson, entitled " The Policeman and the Rioter". It was made in 1967 during the fight for the civil rights in the USA.
It represents a white policeman and a black man. The policeman is standing and is beating up the black man who is lying on the ground.
The white man is rather plump. He is wearing his uniform, a helmet, he has a gun but he doesn't use it. Instead, he is using a bludgeon to hit the rioter with. He is also smoking a cigar.
The black man is only wearing a pair of ragged pants. He is trying to protect himself with his arms. He is not armed. On the ground, around him, there are pieces of torn paper. They may be the pieces of a poster the so-called rioter used to demonstrate non-violently.
To my mind, the artist's aim is to denounce the violence of the white policemen towards black, non-violent demonstrators. By creating a fat white policeman and a skinny black demonstrator, he also points at the fact that they don't belong to the same social classes and that white people are usually better off than black people.
The title of the work of art is also meaningful: a rioter means someone who demonstrates violently, who burns down cars and shops. Obviously, this is not the case here and the black man is treated in the most unfair way.
I think this work is quite powerful. It is really violent and shows very well what the situation was like at that time. It may even have helped the movement for the civil rights.
A rioter: un émeutier. ( to riot/ a riot)
To beat up: passer à tabac
plump: rondouillet
A bludgeon: une matraque
Ragged: en haîllons
Torn: déchiré
To demonstrate: manifester.
A demonstrator: un manifestant.
Skinny: maigre
Better off: plus riche
SEGREGATION IN THE US
After the Civil War between the North and the South of the USA ( 1861-1865) which ended slavery, the situation of black people did not improve that much. Indeed, in the whole country, a segregated society emerged and they were condemned to remain second class citizens.
As early as 1896, some of them turned to the Supreme Court for help, but the judges declared that separate but equal facilities ( schools, hospitals, restaurants, cemeterries, cinemas...) did not violate the constitution.
But black people did not give up and they kept fighting. The main civil rights association was the NAACP: the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. They filed lawsuits against the separate but equal system but also organized marches against lynching, and voting participation for instance ( black voters were prevented to registrate on the voting lists in the South because of the Jim Crow Laws).
In 1957, in Little Rock, Arkansas, some black students entered a white school, protected by the army since the white people there refused the desegregation of schools which had been ordered by the Supreme Court.
A lttle girl, Ruby Bridges was the only black student in her school for a whole year and only one ot the white teachers accepted to teach her. Barack Obama has a photo of Ruby in his office.
The fight for the civil rights became central in the 1960s. People like Martin Luther King, or Malcom X led the struggle for equality.