Seeing black men depicted with flower crowns is important and multivalent. For one, they’re perpetuated as aggressive criminals. Simply wearing a hoodie, or retrieving their phones from a pocket is enough for law enforcement to feel threatened, pull a gun and take their lives.
Piggybacking off my initial point, they are dehumanized due to stereotypes of criminality. As if they don’t feel, bleed, experience heartbreak, have aspirations that are curtailed by systemic racism. Mind you, we were imported here and enslaved, it’s the white man who should elicit such fear. Having spread their fallacy of supremacy globally, oppressing everyone, taking what isn’t theirs through genocide, murder, rape.
Finally, it combats toxic masculinity. They’re often pigeonholed into hypermasculine boxes and aren’t given room to breathe, to exist as a unique, singular being. This kind of representation matters, allowing them to be soft. Everyone deserves such grace. To cry instead of bottle up feelings by being told to man up. Resulting in uncontrolled rage when conditions get overwhelming. Which painting is your favorite? Why? Artist: Moses Zibor
