WASS Cultural Week in Review

Last week, my group's African Cultural Week was awesome! I was so happy with how everything went: very smoothly; no glitches; no meltdowns. And great turnout. We had a lot of non-WASS members at each day's event: Monday's movie night, Tuesday's Taste of Africa, Wednesday's discussion forum, and Thursday's African dance class.  Of these days, Wednesday will definitely be most memorable to me. We put on a discussion on the similarities and differences between Africans and African Americans. On the panel we had two African Americans and three Africans. The audience was a good mixture of the two groups, with a few whites and even an Asian sprinkled in there. Lol....

Anyway, the discussion was very interesting. Unlkike in the past when we've had professors and professionals, all of the panelists were students. People were really honest on their views and the discussion got really heated at some points. Hahahaha..... We got on the subject of education. The argument by some Africans was basically that Africans value education and when they come to America they are more motivated than African Americans. The Africans were saying that their parents always told them that education was the way to a better life, and they didn't understand why so many African Americans don't pursue higher education. One guy even said that African Americans were lazy. Yikes! His reasoning was that he was often the only black person in his advanced math and science classes for engineering and when he asked some of his African American friends why they don't major in the math and science fields, they said it was too hard.

The African Americans said that many of them didn't always have someone telling them that education was the way, pushing them to go to school. They said it's hard to be motivated when no one is pushing you, and the system is plotting their downfall. The African said who cares about the system? You can rise above. The African Americans said that they can only rise so far before they get pulled down by the system because of their race............It went on and on.

In the end we basically all came to the conclusion that our differences were based on the cultures in which we were raised. Everyone left with good feelings and I don't think anyone took anything personal.

As great as the discussion forum was, our main event, the Cultural Show on Saturday was the best!!! Again, I was so happy with the way things went. Last year, there was utter chaos behind the scenes. This year, things ran as if we had practiced several times when in fact, we didn't. I was sooooooooo glad that things went well because honestly, I was kinda scared. Lol. But it was really awesome.

We had so many awesome acts. One girl, an African American, sang Asa's Fire on the Mountain.

Awesomeness.

The guys in our group did a dance.

So did the girls.

There was also a hilarious skit about an African girl and an African American guy that were dating, and each of their parents didnt like it because of stereotypes they held about the other group.

And then we had the Black Angel's African Acrobats, and they were truly amazing.

I participated in the show by performing an Igbo dance with a group, I performed a poem, and I was in the fashion show. Here are some pictures:

Overall, it was a really great show and it was lots of fun. :)