MAPLEWOOD, NJ — Addressing the stigmas surrounding black masculinity is a difficult task, but that is exactly what Maplewood resident and Columbia High School alumna Claudia Schafer hopes to do with her new exhibit “Black and Blue,” which examines the personal experiences with prejudice and racism of six young black men. The exhibit is on display from Sept. 7 through 29, in the Domareki Gallery at Columbia High School on Parker Avenue in Maplewood.
Utilizing photography and graphic design, “Black and Blue” seeks to not only explore the stigmas surrounding black masculinity, but also highlight some glaring issues that persist in American society, particularly the treatment of men of color.
Schafer, a 2013 graduate of Columbia High School and a 2017 graduate of Caldwell University majoring in graphic design, said that her thought process for this project was significantly influenced by the many recent cases of alleged police brutality toward black men that have been in national news.
“In my senior year as a graphic design major, all the art majors have a senior exhibit so most of the year is figuring out what you want to do. At the start of the summer, I knew I wanted to do something political,” Schafer said in a recent phone interview with the News-Record. “Early July was when everything with the cases for Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were going on and I saw the impact and it really upset me. This is something that I know has been an issue in the United States for a while but not something I experience myself, and that’s where the idea started to flourish; I wanted to explore how racism is ingrained into our society and into the history of the United States.”
Armed with a passion for photography and graphic design, Schafer went to work on both doing research and putting together a collection of work that highlighted her artistic capabilities, while showing reverence for a complex subject.
“The name ‘Black and Blue’ was one of the parts that came to me first. I was thinking about how this issue is a bruise on the United States. A lot of people don’t take the chance to understand something that they don’t experience but that others do,” she said. “I started building the show off the title and throughout the year I was doing research and watching documentaries, all the way from Emmett Till to the present day. It was very heart-wrenching for me, because I knew it was an issue and that racism never disappeared but I didn’t realize how prevalent it was.”
For the interviews conducted as part of the project, Schafer reached out to four fellow Cougars from her days at CHS and two current classmates at Caldwell, all who were excited at the prospect of being involved with the project.
Schafer interviewed six young black men ranging in age from 19 to 23 years old: Devin Bryan, Emanuel Grant, Sydney Scruggs, Keshawn Williams, Kailif Williams and Alfonso Spottswood.
She asked each participant a series of questions that explored their first conscious encounter with racism, their feelings toward law enforcement and police, and also how they personally define masculinity.
“I decided to interview six of my friends to get their stories and hear their experiences. I can only go so far, so I needed the personal experiences from people of color,” she said. “I chose to examine the stigmas against black masculinity because it is something I have noticed especially when I went off to college. Maplewood and South Orange are diverse and it was very different from the people I was meeting at school where they aren’t exposed to as much diversity and might not even realize that they’re doing racial profiling themselves.”
Schafer said that although she is happy with the final project, the research and interviews did bring to light some uncomfortable truths for her about what peers right in her hometown have dealt with on a regular basis.
“It was a very interesting experience, and I was very pleased with the results. A lot of people who attended the show at Caldwell University came up to me and thanked me for opening their eyes to something they had never thought about before,” she said. “I was very surprised by some of the things my friends shared with me, based on the color of their skin or the way they dress. The stories they were telling me, I was in fact shocked (that this happened in our towns).”
Although some of her friends from South Orange and Maplewood did come to the university to see the show, Schafer was inspired to bring the exhibit back home and hopes to get the community involved and have some tough conversations.
“Some of my SOMA friends made it to Caldwell to see the exhibit and, being a white woman, I didn’t want that to affect how people would take the project,” she said. “I wanted the stories of my friends to do the speaking, and so many discussions branched off my show in classes at Caldwell. People react better to understanding something when it’s presented in an artistic way.
“I think that media, especially news and movies, sort of skews how people of color are presented and people who grow up in towns that don’t have diversity, that’s where stigmas stem from,” she continued. “Whether it’s presenting them as criminals or (as having) low-level vocabulary and intelligence, and I think my show was able to bring a different light on that.”
After returning home following graduation in May, Schafer approached the administration at Columbia High about bringing “Black and Blue” to her alma mater.
“I pitched idea to Principal Elizabeth Aaron about showing the exhibit and they were immediately interested, and by early July we had confirmation that my show would be in the Domareki Gallery in September,” she said.
Photos Courtesy of Shanee Frazier and Jonathan Fisher
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