Documentary Analysis: Black Brilliance

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Black Brilliance is a documentary featuring five African American teenagers who excelled in high school and are going on to college. Through the documentary each student talked about the adversities they had to overcome in order to succeed. The adversities the students faced ranged from being kicked out of their homes, having learning disabilities, living in a low income household, and fighting against stereotypes. Each student had different risk factors but shared similar resilience and protection factors. Some of these resilience and protection factors are the same as presented in ““No One Ever Asked Me”: Urban African American Students’ Perceptions of Educational Resilience”. Support from the community, school and family were all themes mentioned in the article and were all evident in this documentary. Family was the most noticeable support system in the documentary. Four of the students had a very supportive family that they created a lot of their success to. Along with support from their families the students were very involved around the school. Each student was part of at least one …show more content…

And it made me glad to see that many of the themes from the article can be, and are naturally occurring in many cases. The documentary also mentioned the achievement gap between African Americans and European Americans in America right now. The students and teachers gave some input on how they think it could be improved. Many of their suggestions aligned with the article. But one that stuck out to me and was not in the article was when a student said that African American students need more positive African American role models in the schools. So that way they are know they can succeed in the classroom and not fall into the stereotypes society expects from

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