The Black World Study - Essay Example

 Black World Study Black World Study can be described as a study that deals with the continuity, integrity, vitality and experience of black communities worldwide. It fosters an understanding of the historical and cultural dimensions of conventional international Black world communities and societies. It is interdisciplinary in natured from multiple approaches i.e. from political science, literature, sociology, anthropology, history, religion, art, psychology, and economics. I attended an international school known as Pacific Smart schools in Asia and graduated from High School in 2011. It is indeed my High school education that I find to have been quite influential in the development of my intellectual progression. This is because I ventured into a special education program known as Progressive Education. This got us as young students to participate in talks about a wide range of current affairs and anything else that was of interest to us. This led into some unusual lines of interest and effort. I remember being challenged by our teacher to name all countries in Africa and those states in America that are highly populated by Blacks. I was only fourteen years then I was not able to name the states. Being an intellectually curious person by nature, I decided to carry out a research on black world history. The study offered me a unique opportunity to enhance my understanding of the historical, religious, cultural, social, and political experiences, expressions and values of Africans and people of African descent in America and worldwide. I got so engrossed in this study that by the time I was taking the last examinations in High school, my future career choice was clearly cut out. I was going to join college of Arts and Science where I could major in Black World Study and take sociology as a minor. I sort admission at Miami University in the U.S in 2012 and am now in the 3rd academic year. My choice of university was influenced by the fact that a Black world study was inaugurated in Miami university in1976. It has many departments and several academic divisions comprising of six core and twenty five affiliate faculty members. Here, Black World Studies program is an interdisciplinary program offered in the College of Arts and Science and it is open to all undergraduates. The program offers many learning opportunities including, summer workshops, courses, service projects and research. Moreover, the study of African communities in Diaspora exposes all students to be able to cope with ever-increasing demands of a multicultural and multi-racial world. It also offers and emphasizes accurate knowledge about blacks, reflection, critical thinking, social justice and informed action. With this background, in my intellectual development, I’ve gained great appreciation for the rich heritage and the creative contributions of black communities in all fields throughout the world. In this regard, I want to appreciate one person who has been very instrumental in my intellectual development since I was a toddler. My mother Zara who doubles up as my life coach given her profession in psychology, taught me to understand that no two children brought up in the same environment can develop in exactly the same way. This aroused my curiosity to find out what innate characteristics people posses that makes every individual different from the other. I started reading books from my mother’s library by authors like Sigmund Freud, Cohen, Piaget and Eisenberg. I got to learn about the intra and interpersonal processes involved in peoples’ cognitive, psycho-motor and social-emotional development whose main features on intellectual development include the ability to recognize and comprehend one’s own feelings, to accurately discern and understand emotional states in others, to control strong emotions and their expression in a constructive way, to manage one’s own behavior, to empathize with others, and to establish and maintain good relationships. I would therefore attribute my intellectual development to my mother’s provision of a home environment that instilled in me a reading culture with a strong bias to social science. Amongst the many books and pieces of writing that I’ve read in the recent past, one that inspired me most is No Matter What by Sally Donovan This book has fostered in me a very strong positive self image. It brought to fore some of my subconscious strengths and weaknesses that I had internalized and had influenced how I act generally in life. This gave me a better understanding of which I am, enhancing self mastery. It trained me to continually take in information and use the information to evaluate myself in multiple domains such as physical appearance, performance and relationships. With an improved positive self-image, I recognize and own my potentials while being realistic about my liabilities and limitations. A visit to Hamill Gallery of African Art in 2013 was such an exciting event, there were numerous display of African artifact from all over the continent. Most captivating was the TSOGO posts from Gabon. The Tsogo artifact is connected with the initiation rites of a tribe called Bwiti in Gabon. The posts represented ancestors and how they harnessed supernatural power to protect their lives from evil powers. The artifact is encrusted with offerings to the ancestors. However this was not entirely a unique scenario, a number of artifact had religious and passage of rites connotations. These resonated with my studies in black Africa history and provided an in depth insight as to why certain behavior patterns are common across the diverse culture of Black communities. The artifact also bring out the fact that black intellectual tradition of African scholars has always been descriptive, that is, experiences, beliefs and realities of life are presented in art. This piece of Tsogo artifact has contributed to my intellectual development as it provides another setting in which I’ve gained more knowledge of the Black world, that will go a long way to assist me in confronting diversity in development into a productive, lifelong learner, citizen, and activist seeking to improve our communities, our nation, and the world. Read More