Planned Obsolescence Kashif Johnson
“Planned obsolescence is ….the definition of unnecessariness “ is something that Lupe once told me. The calculated act of making sure the existing version of a product (for the purpose of this writing the product is people) will become dated or useless within a given time frame. As I spent the past few days contemplating what is going on in the world and what I know of the world, this term spoke to me. Made me spend some time reading Carter G. Woodson’s Miseducation of the Negro. With the fact that Black people were originally a commodity not a people in this country. What has it been like 156 years since slavery, 56 years since the Civil Rights Act was signed? Can we honestly say that we are viewed in a different way now? Professor Sharon Holland said, “what happens when a person that exists in time meets someone that only exists in space?” Throughout recent history, the achievements of people of color have not been truly acknowledged; in fact, it was once said that nothing of significant value came out of Africa. And with that the whole continent has not moved forward, anything like its counterparts that have been acknowledged to have achieved monumental things and have given great things to the world as a whole. Continuous obsolescence is a phenomenon where trends, or other things that do not immediately correspond to needs, mandate a continual readaptation of a system. Such work does not increase the usefulness of the system but is required for the system to continue fulfilling its functions. We as a people are held in this space where we cannot help the
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