CULTURAL APPROPRIATION: Critical Dialogues on Cultural Awareness THE POWER OF TALKING, LISTENING AND CONNECTING

Professor Neal Lester, Ph.D. has started a critical conversation among High School students that will enlighten and bring awareness and hopefully motivation for them to be agents of change by engaging in meaningful conversations, taking a personal stand, and educating themselves and others through social discourse. Cultural Appropriation describes the act of taking over the creative artistic forms, theme or practices by one cultural group from another often times by exploitation. Project Humanities components can be set out as respect, integrity, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, kindness and self-reflection. For whatever reason we agree that thought provoking conversations about race and culture are often absent from today’s classrooms. Cyber bullying, hate crimes seemingly have increased as there exists a misunderstanding of cultures that leads to racial and cultural bias and insensitivity. This symposium will facilitate conversations through the lens of race, gender, sexuality, class, age, and ability. It will also demonstrate the value and necessity of cultivating positive communications, inclusive language, advocacy, self-awareness and cultural competency.