BLACK SNAFU

Anti-Blackness seems inescapably mixed into whatever context I place it into; literature, science, government, health, art... look into any “field” and see for yourself. My people have had to cry, scream, and fight for respect for centuries, and we still have not gained the full respect we deserve. In order to move past the damage this has done to our society, we can’t simply deny our history—we must recognize it. We should not hide it because it cannot be erased. We must acknowledge the many ways in which this country has perpetuated a racial hierarchy since these lands were first colonized and stripped from indigenous peoples, and Black people were stolen from their native land and brought to America. In BLACK SNAFU, I appropriate various depictions of Black people that I find throughout the cartooning of American history and beyond—from the 20th-century racist characters in Don Raye’s “Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat” to more contemporary, uplifting, and pro-Black characters like Huey and Riley Freeman from Aaron McGruder’s “The Boondocks”—and juxtapose them with photographs that celebrate and/ or line up more authentically with my Black experience. The photographs in these pieces are made by my hand and come from my camera, allowing me to fight back against the historical racist caricature illustrations by reclaiming them to depict Blackness authentically. By combining these ambivalent visual languages, I intend to expose to viewers America’s deplorable connection to anti-Black tropes through pop culture while simultaneously celebrating the reality of what it means to be Black.