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Est. April 5, 2002
 
           
March 30, 2017 - Issue 692

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Emmett Till Mutilated Again


"If white artists are going to deal with race, we
need to be ready to take the heat and be
accountable if we offend people. We should deal
with race, and get into the conversations that
follow, and then be ready to make things as
right as possible if we offend people."


When artist Dana Schutz presented “Open Casket,” an abstract painting of Emmett Till’s open casket-the Chicagoan 14 year old African American male teen lynched in the Mississippi Delta in the summer of 1955- she could not have fathomed the conflagration that erupted.

The painting hangs at the Whitney Museum in New York City but under the daily watchful eye of protestors blocking its view they termed the “black death spectacle.” Some protesters sent letters of grievances to the museum curators requesting the painting be taken down and others have flatly demanded the destruction of it.

Because Schutz is white queries abound about cultural appropriation and exploitation, asking whether a white artist can sensitively and appropriately depict black pain.

The Whitney Biennial aims “to gauge the state of art in America today.” Schutz’s abstraction was inspired by the infamous photograph of Till’s mutilated corpse, first appearing in Jet Magazine that galvanized support for the 1960’s Black Civil Right’s Movement, and at the insistence of Till’s mother, Mamie Till Bradley, who wanted the world to see the reality of racial violence on black children.

In an interview Schutz’s shared that the genesis for her painting was the reminder of the recent rash of unarmed black males shot by police across the country, and that “the photograph of Emmett Till felt analogous of the time: what was hidden was not revealed.” Shutz’s shared that as a mother she, too, empathized with Mamie Till Bradley.

While Schutz, and many white mothers like her, no doubt perhaps had their moments “empathizing with black mothers,”realizing that Travyon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, to name a few, are their children’s age, none of their children, however, reside- urban or rural- in the daily reality of the possibility of no returning to them or being gunned down because of the color of their skin, and then gazed upon like “road kill” (Michael Brown).

Being a mother" doesn't hold water,” Corinne Cooper, a white Southerner from Winston-Salem, NC told me. “Schutz may carry a concern for her children's safety but has she had “The Talk" about what to do if stopped by a police officer?”

The Talk” is a heartbreaking one which is needed for our children’s survival outside the home. Sadly, it robs them the life- like it did 12-year old Tamir Rice - of enjoying their childhood. And, undoubtedly, it does psychic and emotional harm to their self-esteem and sense of innocence and fairness in the world.

Because Schutz is a mother who feels pangs of angst and outrage about how black youth are presently policed in this country, her empathy propped up as a legitimate and normative representation for all mothers essentializes and erases the particular pain, history and context of how and where black mothers’ pain - like that of Trayvon Martin’s mother’s -derive from.

For example, like the film sensation and bestseller, “The Help,” by Kathryn Stockett where the white protagonist helps black maids -because of the love she had for her own - to expose racism in 1960’s Mississippi as if a civil rights movement isn’t already afoot. Schutz and Stockett with all their good intentions reinscribes the trope of the “white rescuer” suggesting they know how best to represent and tell black people’s pain and history.

Some critics have suggested that Shutz’s should have done what many artists do concerning their art work by merely not offering explanation and let viewers interpret. I’m glad Schutz didn’t because such approach doesn’t resolve the issue whether white artists have a right to tackle thorny issues concerning race. I feel white artists should do so more often than not, highlighting it’s an American problem and not the province of only racial groups.

Painter Norman Rockwell, for example, depicted a horrific moment of our racial past with his famous 1964 painting “The Problem We All Live With” with Ruby Bridges, a 6-year- old African American girl, escorted by deputy U. S. marshals during New Orleans 1960 desegregation crisis. The painting invites the viewer's point of view because protestors are not visible as you see the smashed and splattered wall behind Bridges written with the n-word and “KKK.”

Cambridge academician and artist Estelle Disch, who’s white, doesn’t shy away from racial issues and offered her advice:

"If white artists are going to deal with race, we need to be ready to take the heat and be accountable if we offend people. I think we should deal with race, and get into the conversations that follow, and then be ready to make things as right as possible if we offend people, Disch told me. “In the Whitney case, the artist could do the right thing and ask that her piece be removed. An empty space on the wall would make a statement in itself. And she could post an acknowledgement and apology where the painting was.”

Schutz refusing to acknowledge that her representation “Open Casket” aestheticizes black pain and suffering as a piece of art not only cultural appropriates a tragedy, but she also once again violently dehumanizes Emmett Till - which is what his mother wanted the world to see.


BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, The Reverend Monroe is an ordained minister, motivational speaker and she speaks for a sector of society that is frequently invisible. Rev. Monroe does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on WGBH (89.7 FM), on Boston Public Radio and a weekly Friday segment “The Take” on New England Channel NEWS (NECN). She’s a Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist. Her columns appear in cities across the country and in the U.K, and Canada. Also she writes a  column in the Boston home LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows and Cambridge Chronicle. A native of Brooklyn, NY, Rev. Monroe graduated from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African-American church in New Jersey before coming to Harvard Divinity School to do her doctorate. She has received the Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching several times while being the head teaching fellow of the Rev. Peter Gomes, the Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard who is the author of the best seller, THE GOOD BOOK. She appears in the film For the Bible Tells Me So and was profiled in the Gay Pride episode of In the Life, an Emmy-nominated segment. Monroe’s  coming out story is  profiled in “CRISIS: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing up Gay in America" and in "Youth in Crisis." In 1997 Boston Magazine cited her as one of Boston's 50 Most Intriguing Women, and was profiled twice in the Boston Globe, In the Living Arts and The Spiritual Life sections for her LGBT activism. Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College's research library on the history of women in America. Her website is irenemonroe.com.  Contact the Rev. Monroe and BC. 
 
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