New Kids in the Neighborhood The astonishing piece by Norman Rockwell, New Kids in the Neighborhood, shows a composition of African American kids meeting the white kids in the neighborhood in which the black family had just moved in to. The artist shows his perception of a current event during the civil rights movement in 1967 when black families moved into majority-white neighborhoods; he depicts a change in the social comfort of white families, making them uncomfortable; he shows this threw the inclusion of common household objects which both families can afford, positioning of the kids looking at each other and how they're separated.
The beautiful but awkward displacement of the "New Kids," the African American kids, clearly makes the white kids uncomfortable using a hyperrealistic depiction of objects around both groups of kids. In comparison, there are three similarities between the kids. First, both the older kids have baseball gloves, which shows how both groups of people enjoy playing and or watching the same sport and African American communities had adopted baseball as their own and made it even more popular when Jackie Robinson broke the colored line in baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers in April 15, 1947. The artist includes this similarity to depict the time in which these kids are meeting and how similar they are but still have such awkward interactions in the white family's suburban neighborhood. Second, their articles of clothing can't be the same. To even further show the similarity in culture, Rockwell clearly paints both the oldest kids wearing very popular cover shoos, as you can tell from the laces and the white tops of the shoos (Rockwell). This inclusion of clothing strays away from the separation of color during the civil rights movement but instead amplifies how blind white families are to see their reality in which Afri...
