Tag: George Floyd

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Another statue comes down …. Celebrating protest art

Stepping into His Shoes, East Capitol Street, Washington, DC — with and then without Barack Obama

Walking in my neighborhood a few years ago, I saw a tiny art installation. The piece was called “Stepping into His Shoes” and featured President Obama rising into Abraham Lincoln’s shoes. I loved it. What a great use of a 19th century fixture — a fire department call box — for a 21st century message. Again, my neighborhood came through with quirkiness and  public art.

Then a few days ago, I saw something disturbing. Obama was gone, forcibly removed from the art installation.  I immediately thought, “Why do people deface art?” That thought was followed by an important memory. I recalled my reaction to what I called embellishments to — not defacement of — the pedestal of the Robert E. Lee statue in my hometown.

Robert E. Lee statue, with embellishments, Monument Avenue, Richmond, VA

For over a century, that statue, unveiled in 1890, towered on its pristine white marble base over Richmond’s Monument Avenue. When George Floyd was murdered, I was supportive as graffiti grew on the pedestal in response.  For me, the addition of those thoughts not only contextualized the statue, but they also took away  any power it may once have held.

So, when the public art removal/change/embellishment aligns with my world view, it’s okay, but when it doesn’t, it’s defacement. Wow. I need to think about this.

The Lee statue was offensive to me because it celebrated the leadership of someone who chose to denigrate and subjugate my people.

I celebrated the Obama-Lincoln statue because it recognized the leadership of someone I admired. Obama was removed by someone who I suspect felt as much distaste for Obama as I felt for Lee.

Now what? Who becomes the arbiter of public art? What is built? What stays? What goes?

The same people as always. Those in power.

My understanding is that public art, art paid for with tax dollars, is typically approved by a panel of reviewers chosen by an appointed, or perhaps, elected official. Some group that is supposed to be representative of the sensibilities of the community makes the decision.

In the late 1800s, in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, there was significant support for the erection of the Lee statue. His nephew was then Virginia’s governor and many wanted to celebrate Lee, the South, and Southern sentiments. It is reported that 100,000 people attended the unveiling of this 60-foot-tall statue.

I guess the lesson here is to ensure that the people in power in your community, share your values. Those values will be reflected in big issues, like how they vote on policies with deep and long-lasting impact and in the somewhat lesser decisions, like who is celebrated in public art.

Protestors rallying to remove Lee statue

And, when your values are not shared by those in power, it’s vital to remember your own power – the power to vote out those office holders and the power to organize a public outcry against what doesn’t align with your values and those of others in your community. That’s what happened in Richmond. The Lee statue was removed amid major public support, nationally and locally, for racial justice in public policy and in public art.

Wider view of the original fire call box art — “Stepping into His Shoes”
“Emancipation” located  in Lincoln Park, Washington, DC

Now, here’s the kicker. Unlike what I thought, “Stepping into his Shoes” is not public art, at least not as I described public art above.

A little research revealed that while some call box art in DC was approved by the DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities, a public agency, that was not the case with the art piece in my neighborhood.  No public dollars were used to create it nor was public input sought.  No? No, but it’s located on a public street — East Capitol — in a structure owned by the District — the vintage call box. Does that make it a form of public art?

I now know that “Stepping into His Shoes” is another example of  protest art, not public art as I had thought. When I saw the Obama-Lincoln statue originally, I only recognized their coupling as philosophical kindred. The art was saying much more, but I didn’t see that initially.

So, when a protestor removed Obama from the small art installation, I noticed. That person’s act caused me to look more closely. Not just kindred spirits, the statue had also been an artistic plea by a group called Fearless Girls 2020 to replace “Emancipation,” a statue of Lincoln located a few blocks away with a statue of Obama.

Did the removal of Obama deface the art, enrich it, or both? You decide.

 

“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been concealed by the answers.” — James Baldwin

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Racial trauma is real

Just imagine, every day you are poised for something bad to happen.  You may not be conscious of the tension, but it’s there. You’re primed for fight or flight. That’s a part of what it’s like to be Black in America.

Sometimes you’re just ready for someone to follow you in a store thinking you’re a thief or for someone to make a disparaging comment about a section of town or to offer the backhanded compliment (microaggression) of how articulate you are. But often you’re waiting for the next big shoe to drop.

I’ve been tense, expecting something bad – some racially motivated event — since 2012, the year that Trayvon Martin was killed.  The catalyst wasn’t just Trayvon Martin, it was the series of lost lives that came after his, but there is no doubt that Trayvon Martin was my ground zero. I experienced his death personally, viscerally. It was hard for me to read the news or watch the coverage. My son and Trayvon were born 364 days apart. When I learned of Trayvon’s birthday and the normalcy of that evening when he was killed, I immediately connected my son and Trayvon. My son could have been walking home from the grocery store near our home. Nothing but time, space, and fate caused this to happen to Trayvon and not my son. 

While incidents of violence against Black people, especially boys, and men, have always been known and discussed in the Black community, it wasn’t until the years immediately following Trayvon’s murder that we started to regularly see the images. Suddenly, video cameras were everywhere – home and business security cameras, police body cameras and just citizens with their phones. We weren’t only hearing about tragedies; we were watching them, a lot of them, one after another.  

Imagine, for example, watching violence happen routinely to women with blonde hair. If you were a blonde woman, maybe you’d choose to wear a wig or dye your hair until the source of the violence was discovered and addressed. As a member of this subset of the white community — blonde and female — you would probably feel confident that the source of the violence would be identified quickly and taken care of. 

Photo by Julian Myles, Unsplash

Now, imagine you are a Black man or boy. You cannot and don’t want to camouflage your skin color or race. The causes of much of the violence you face are already known – racism, prejudice, ignorance, and fear. Unlike the anticipated response to the blonde women, there isn’t a widespread effort to address the causes of violence against the Black community. In fact, some want to ignore the causes, like the response to teaching the entirety of our country’s racial history. Or the response takes an inordinate time (anti-lynching legislation was first introduced in Congress in 1918 and passed over one hundred years later in 2020 following the televised “lynching” of George Floyd). So, there’s little to make the Black community think this violence/ trauma will end.

I don’t live in fear for myself, primarily because of my age and my gender, but I do live in fear for my son. He assures me that he isn’t afraid. I hear him, but I believe he carries this fear with him every day, subliminally. He knows that his physical presence alone is causing some white woman to fear him and to know that she can call the police and say a Black man is threatening her and be believed.

This feeling of being in danger or having a loved one in danger is constant for most Black people. It may not be at the surface of one’s day to day life, but it’s there. According to all that I read, living with stress – and this fear certainly causes stress, acknowledged or unknown — contributes to high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes, all conditions in which Black people are disproportionately represented. 

A few days ago, I was watching the evening news with three friends, two of us were Black, two were white. The anchor began to discuss the death of a Black man, Keenan Anderson, after he was tasered by Los Angeles police officers. The video came on. I averted my eyes. Every time I see another incident, the fear for my son increases. The other Black person in the room didn’t watch either. I guess we’ve both seen enough. We can’t watch the inhumanity against Black people any longer, but I’m glad that our white friends watched. While the images cause me pain, they have revealed our reality to many in white America. But, must our continued pain and death be necessary to open eyes, hearts and minds to the need for change?

NOTE: This post was written before the murder of Tyre D. Nichols in Memphis. 

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Should a Select Committee to Investigate Racism in the U.S. be in our future?

 

Like many of you, I’ve been watching the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. From Chairman Bennie Thompson’s opening comments at the first hearing on June 9th to the July 21st closing comments from Vice Chair Liz Cheney, I’ve watched them all.  The hearings have been riveting, not a bombastic spectacle, but a tempered, dispassionate presentation of what led to the event, what happened on that day, and what has happened subsequently. We are beginning to fully understand how this assault on American democracy unfolded and what would have been the ramifications had it succeeded. I believe we’re doing this, in part, so our country might recognize the toxic political partisanship that almost destroyed us, address it, and, hopefully, begin to heal.

Racism, visibly and invisibly, has also divided our country. We’re just beginning to see this. So,  imagine if we had the same type of examination of slavery,  segregation, and the overall impact of racism on America—the same level of thoroughness to examine how people of color have been treated, and the impact of that treatment on disparate groups and on the country.

How would that story be told?

The January 6th hearings are so compelling because real people are telling their own stories. You can relate to, even feel, their emotions. Because so much of the foundation of racism happened centuries ago, telling this story will be more difficult, but I think it can still be told.

For example, without video and first-hand accounts, how would the terror of having your land taken and your people exterminated be told? Maybe those currently living in war ravaged countries in which predators have come to take their land could describe their experience. Could they be modern day proxies for what happened in America centuries ago? I think so. And coupling those stories with disclosures from people living today who were taken to Indian boarding schools could bring to life the full trauma of that experience.

Without people alive today, how would the committee capture the horrors of being kidnapped, brought to a foreign land, and forced to work from before sunrise to after sunset in atrocious conditions? Perhaps some of those brought to this country in current times as domestic workers and then enslaved by their employers could tell their stories. I know, it’s not the same, but perhaps hearing those agonized accounts will offer insights.

Then the committee could listen to real first-hand experiences in Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories.  These are actual accounts, recorded interviews with the formerly enslaved, done between 1932 and 1975, and stored at the Library of Congress. But even those accounts may not reveal the complete truth since some suggest that the experience of oppression and fear of white people may have caused some formerly enslaved people to alter their stories so as not to fully incriminate their oppressors and be punished for telling the truth. Yes, fear even decades after slavery had ended.

While some parts of the story of racism would have to be approximated or told via recordings, that would not be the case in the discussion of Jim Crow laws, and the 20th and 21st century treatment of people of color in America. The reality of disparities in education, health care, housing, the in/justice system, and overall economics could be told by real people today. Some might be elders who were taken out of schools in the 8th grade to work the fields, or soldiers returning from World War II or the Korean War wanting good neighborhoods and housing for their families, or some might be contemporaries, such as the families of those who are now incarcerated  for offenses – remember three strikes you’re out — that are currently touted as desirable entrepreneurial opportunities and some witnesses might be people simply seeking unbiased appraisals today of the value of their homes or quality public schools for their children.

The truth can be told if America is ready to hear it, learn from it, and then change — heal.

Racism is a deep wound that continues to affect our country.  A wound/a disease cannot be accurately treated until you know what caused it and then address it correctly. That is what the January 6th committee is attempting to do – find the truth, repair the fissures in our country, and, hopefully, heal.

We’ve never had a national conversation about race. The closest we’ve come, that I’m aware of, is the President’s Commission on Race established by then-President Bill Clinton in 1997. Have you heard of it? It was chaired by noted historian John Hope Franklin and charged with conducting town hall meetings, examining data, and creating solutions to address the racial divide. The intent was correct and the leadership stellar, but one of the first lessons in racial justice work is that intent and impact are two very different things. While well-intentioned, I don’t believe this commission had significant impact on racial justice. In fact, 25 years later, our inability to examine and discuss race and racial injustice seems to be worsening. Maybe the country wasn’t ready in 1997. I’m not so sure that it is now, but I know that when a group of Texas educators want to refer to slavery as involuntary relocations that’s a clear sign that truth is lacking. Obfuscation and denial continue.

Even in this post-Trayvon Martin, post-Barack Obama, post-George Floyd world of an awakening to racial injustice,  are we ready for a Congressional Hearing on Racism? I believe, if done correctly and with full transparency, it would get us closer to the truth, closer to healing, but is America more primed now than it was in 1997?  If the Congressional Select Committee on January 6th can be an example, we know that Congress can investigate a travesty against the country and can present its findings in a way that compels almost 20 million Americans to watch.  Now, we’ll just have to wait to see what happens because of all the revelations. If the country can handle the truth about January 6th, learn from it, and then act, maybe it’s ready to handle the truth about racism.

 

 

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Out of sight, out of mind

When a problem isn’t constantly before you, directly impacting you, concern often ebbs. Sadly, it seems to happen regardless of the seriousness of the issue or your degree of previous commitment to address it. This is especially true when you don’t understand how you are impacted by the problem, a problem that, on the surface, seems to be someone else’s problem. That’s the situation as I see it with racial justice. Top of mind – always — for Black people. Out of sight, out of mind – often? typically? — for white people.

It looks like this is the year racial justice has again fallen off the social justice map. The May 2020 televised murder of George Floyd galvanized the country. Finally, many white Americans understood why the slogan, Black Lives Matter, had emerged as a rallying cry and they joined in the push for racial justice. For a minute, it seemed that Black lives did matter. It seemed that white people were understanding how racist narratives had shaped, or misshaped, their perception of the truth of America. They were digging deeply into a topic that many had only scratched the surface of before. Now, interest in learning about race and racism seems to have waned, as have many of the public efforts to fight for racial justice. Not only are states banning the accurate teaching of our country’s history, but books on our racial history and our current reality that once dominated the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list are no longer there. Training of staffs on racial equity has slowed as businesses, governments, and nonprofits seem to feel like either they’ve done it – checked that box — or other social justice concerns have popcorned to the top. Is it my imagination? Has the multi-racial moment/the movement ignited by the murder of George Floyd come to an end without fanfare and without much notice?

Black people live with the trauma and reality of racial inequity and injustice every day, never needing any reminders beyond day-to-day life. Many white people seem to need “punched in the gut,” horrific, visual moments for them to be jolted into racial awareness. Moments like Mamie Till Mobley’s raw despair as she grieved over her son, Emmett’s battered body; the national coverage of water hoses and snarling dogs attacking peaceful civil rights protestors in Alabama, or the plethora of cellphone videos of racially-charged incidents in a hotel lobby, a college dorm, a park, or just about anywhere. These incidents sparked momentary outrage and commitments to racial redress. The images, in 1955, 1963, the 2010s or 2020, got many off their sofas and into the streets to protest or into the voting booths to elect individuals committed to change. But the commitment, the passion, in white communities seems to be rarely sustained. I want to know how to change that.

Understanding and addressing racial injustice is not a one and done situation, not reading one book, or participating in one racial equity training, or voting one time for the “right” candidate. There must be lifelong learning and unlearning of years of messages, and then working, in many ways, big and small, for racial justice. I thought the heinousness of George Floyd’s murder, coupled with so many high visibility, recorded racial incidents, might be enough, but it doesn’t seem to be. While race and racial justice remain top of mind for Black people all the time; for white advocates, other issues seem to have pushed race and racial equity to the back of the proverbial bus.

Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility

Racial injustice cannot be recognized and understood only by Black people. White people must see this too if we are to have a racially just America. White people must believe that justice for Black people will enable justice for them as well.  White people hold the reins of power in America.  Just as women wouldn’t have gotten the vote without the commitment of men, Black people alone cannot overhaul all the policies, procedures, and practices that undergird racial inequity in America. Black people can identify issues/inequities. Black people can march, protest, and vote. Black people can define and humanize the impact, but Black people do not sit sufficiently in those positions that wield the power necessary to transform racist systems and institutions. White people, you must engage on this topic, not just in the moment of a hate crime like the recent ones in California and in Buffalo, but on an ongoing basis. Black people must not die to prove that America continues to be racially unjust. Black people must not die to prompt white people to act.  How do we sustain the commitment of the white community to work for racial justice? I really want to know. I need to know.