My memories of Malcolm X date back to when I was a kid. I distinctly remember the photograph of him with his pointed finger, and his assassination quite a topic of conversation years after the event in the decidedly racist neighborhood in Queens where I grew up.
I'd read bits and pieces of his autobiography over the years, but only recently in one hit, oddly, on a plane to Bogotá this January. The Times, in its review back then had called it a painful book, and it was. The stories are well known, and I'm not going into them here. Except one.
Something I found resonated with me: the passage where he described a time when he was in a foster home with a white family. He described social workers, neighbors and others coming over to view how he was getting along--as if this could be measured--in the foreign environment to which he had be relegated.
What struck me was that he, his situation and his details about his daily life were discussed and dissected plainly in front of him, without the first consideration that he participate or be included in the conversation, or that he had any understanding--or the ability to understand what was being said about him. He observed and felt that he was treated like a piece of property, like a piece of real estate or a farm animal.
I don't know if that's how all children were treated at the time, or if adults in that part of the US behave differently toward kids than liberals in Manhattan, but it resonated with me because I've seen this time and again with different individuals. The elderly, women, the differently-abled, foreigners, the poor. They're treated like specimens, in the worst sense of the word.
Making yourself prominent and respected on the most basic level of consideration, needs to be the springboard for any type of equality. That level of consideration could be quite complex, even at if it is elementary, and the exercise to explore, much less understand that consideration is a process that occurs over a period of time, on various levels and in an expanding network of ideas, cultural knowledge and historical facts.
Simply put, you don't wake up one day and understand "diversity". You don't get over "separate but equal" over night. We've been working on it for over a century and usually fail with a few pockets of success. However, what I find disheartening is when I see people who really ought to know better and have a sense of understanding and compassion, fall into what their insular circles have taught--and reinforced--over their lives. To the point that there isn't a chisel sharp enough or hard enough to break through the ice.
The piece shown was composed in AI and a number of design considerations were made to make the text readable. It's planned as a silkscreen, printed over the next few weeks.
I'd read bits and pieces of his autobiography over the years, but only recently in one hit, oddly, on a plane to Bogotá this January. The Times, in its review back then had called it a painful book, and it was. The stories are well known, and I'm not going into them here. Except one.
Something I found resonated with me: the passage where he described a time when he was in a foster home with a white family. He described social workers, neighbors and others coming over to view how he was getting along--as if this could be measured--in the foreign environment to which he had be relegated.
What struck me was that he, his situation and his details about his daily life were discussed and dissected plainly in front of him, without the first consideration that he participate or be included in the conversation, or that he had any understanding--or the ability to understand what was being said about him. He observed and felt that he was treated like a piece of property, like a piece of real estate or a farm animal.
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| By Any Means, digital typographic com- position, 22 x 30 inches 56 x 76 cm. |
Making yourself prominent and respected on the most basic level of consideration, needs to be the springboard for any type of equality. That level of consideration could be quite complex, even at if it is elementary, and the exercise to explore, much less understand that consideration is a process that occurs over a period of time, on various levels and in an expanding network of ideas, cultural knowledge and historical facts.
Simply put, you don't wake up one day and understand "diversity". You don't get over "separate but equal" over night. We've been working on it for over a century and usually fail with a few pockets of success. However, what I find disheartening is when I see people who really ought to know better and have a sense of understanding and compassion, fall into what their insular circles have taught--and reinforced--over their lives. To the point that there isn't a chisel sharp enough or hard enough to break through the ice.
The piece shown was composed in AI and a number of design considerations were made to make the text readable. It's planned as a silkscreen, printed over the next few weeks.
