Hannah Black Leftist Painter Calls For Emmett Till Painting To Be destroyed

[binary solo]

KLAMarine said:

binary solo said:
I'll start worrying when social institutions start calling for destruction of artistic, historic and cultural items. When it's an individual expressing an extreme political view, well we get those on a daily basis.

It is a dangerous idea that people from the historically oppressor race can't enter into discourse in sympathy and solidarity with the historically oppressed race, including through artistic expression. That sort of exclusion would tend to perpetuate racial separation and isolation.

Hollywood has profited a great deal from the misery and oppression caused by slavery and post slavery segregation and legalised racism. The beneficiaries of those profits have not all been African Americans, in fact most of the financial beneficiaries have probably been white people - studio execs and shareholders. But if those white people hadn't been financial beneficiaries would those stories have been told and got exposure to a wide audience?

So if the beneficiaries of the sufferings of slavery and segregation inflicted on blacks were other blacks, that would make it okay?

The OK-ness of people profiting from historical misery inflicted on a whole population of people all depends on context. It's more likely to be morally OK if it's African Americans profiting because they are likely the decendants of those who actually suffered, so there is some poetic justice in the decendants of slaves profiting off the story of their forebears. But in general, it's kind of dodgy to be profiting off anyone's misery, be it contemporaneous or historic.