March 16, 2023 • 16 mins
A Vermont Law School recently made news when a white artist created a mural depicting slavery and a Black faculty member demanded that it be taken down. Host Ramses Ja and special guest Q Ward discuss this story and offer their individual reflections in today's episode of "One More Thing".
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
That this is the Black Information Network Daily podcast and
I am your host, Rams's Jah And sometimes the amount
of stories that make their way to us means that
we simply can't cover everything that comes our way. But
from time to time, a story just stays with me
and I feel compelled to share it with you and
give you my thoughts. And now one more thing. Okay,
(00:33):
so most of the time on the show here, when
I want to do one of these, what I'll do
is play a newsclip and you'll be able to hear
a little bit about what's going on in the world,
and I will try to provide some context that I
believe is missing from the narrative, or an alternative perspective
(00:57):
or something like that. But you'll have to forgive me
today because I have no news clip. Rather, I have
an article from the Grio, and I'm going to approach
this one a little different because I have q Ward
in the studio with me today and we're going to
(01:20):
have a conversation. This is something we haven't done before,
not the conversation, but the type of we're going to have.
And then we are going to as always open the
floor up to you, the listener, to help us to
continue the conversation, so I will read again. This is
from the Grio. The article was posted February twenty second.
(01:45):
The headline says a white artist painted murals at a
college depicting slavery a black administrator once then removed. And
then there's like a subheading that says, the two murals
at Vermont Law and Graduate School show the brutality of
enslavement through images of a slave market and enslave brandishing
a whip and a dog attacking someone. I'll try to
(02:07):
describe the visuals to you, but there are these almost
caricatures of slaves. I'm not sure if it's intentional or not.
I can't say it's not artistic, but you know, you
do see the really big lips, you know, that are
(02:30):
painted really starkly in contrast on the skin. And then
of course you see the white slave master with a
long red whip and a long handlebar mustache, and you know,
there's a there's a dog attacking someone as mentioned, and
the slaves look very fearful, and a couple of them
(02:52):
are on the ground. One woman is on her knees
with a ball and chain attached to her ankle, and
a very sort of cart tuonish. Look. Cartoonish is the
word I was going to use to describe it as well. Okay,
so before you jump off the porch and run down
the street, I want you to pick the side, and
(03:15):
what I will do is pick the other side. I
guess the question is should this be taken down a
white author that has painted this art installationist mural on
the campus of Vermont Law School. And whatever side you take,
(03:38):
I will take the other side because I do think
that these are conversations that are important to have. And
oftentimes when we hear about a lot of stories, we
hear one side of it, and the end of feeling
is created when we encounter the information rather than the
(03:58):
information being conveyed to us, and we have a little
bit of time and space to develop feelings about it.
And so after reading the article, which side would you
say you fell on? Or which side would you choose?
You don't have to actually feel that way. I certainly
I have conflicted thoughts, which is why I wanted to
have this type of conversation. Leave it to my brother,
(04:22):
put you on the spot, well, put me on the spot,
not an issue at all, just to present me with
something so challenging. Sure, the nature of what you and
I do requires nuance. Yeah, it is very hard to
just pick a side because we're My mind is trained
to seek out the nuance and every story that we
(04:43):
read it and something like this, it gave me more
questions than feelings. I didn't read it and feel away.
I read it and it had literally a bunch of
questions I wanted to ask. Right, there are things that
are by nature not racist when done by a black person,
(05:06):
that are by nature racist when done by a white person.
And I have to ask, is the person viewing this
art determining that before they know the answer? Did you
see it and get offended? Or did you learn that
(05:26):
the person that did it was white and didn't get offended? Right?
I asked that question because no one can tell you
that you're not allowed to be offended. But I feel
different about you being offended if it's just based on
you knowing that you know what I mean. It's the
question that you're opposing should it be taken down? There's
(05:51):
something that happens when we want to tell people you're
not offended or that's not offensive, and I don't think
we're allowed to do that. A student saw this, it
was offended by it. Yeah, a faculty member. But yeah
so someone at the school and yeah not you're fine.
(06:13):
So at that point, what are we talking about. Okay,
so let's do this. Let's do this. To make it easy,
I will have a conversation, brief conversation in support of
keeping the mural at the school. Go for it, And
(06:34):
I would like you to have the opposing opinion with
respect to this topic. And in having this conversation back
and forth, we can tell more of the story. So
this mural was painted over thirty years ago on the campus,
(07:00):
and the mural was intended initially to be something that
was oppositional. It was it was not something that was
painted in support of slavery. The artist know what, no
one is claiming the artist is a racist man, who
is you know, laughing all the way to the bank,
(07:22):
having gotten paid and painting this, you know, this image
he did depict the slave master, I guess, or the
person with the whip, the white man and the painting
um doing exactly what happened in those days. In other words,
showing a true event, a plausible happening event undertaking whatever scenario.
(07:53):
That's what I'm looking for um. And because of these
attacks on this he has, he's he's questioned the timing
of it, because for thirty years it was fine. And
then after you know, George Floyd, after Brianna Taylor, after
(08:17):
you know, all of these names we know you know.
Of course, recently Tyree Nichols, his artwork has come under
scrutiny when he has, in his opinion, stood as an ally.
He had to research, he had to, you know, depict it.
He recognizes that his whiteness needs to show up in
(08:38):
there as sort of the bad guy, you know, and
I might be you know, I haven't interviewed this man.
I don't know how he feels, but I recognize the
implications of attacking literally everybody who's not black when they're
trying to help us tell our stories. We need white
people to help us teach the RT, to get legislation
(08:59):
passed so that it's protected. Not even teach CRT, teach
American history because CRT, of course, is something that you
get in law school. You might encounter it, and at
a university you would never count encounter it. In K
through through twelve, that's where you would get American history.
But the fact remains is that what many people refer
to as CRT and what we know to be simply
(09:20):
American history, we will need white people who understand and
recognize that they have a responsibility to help us live
in a world that is more fair and more more
accurate and honest with itself. And I feel like when
(09:42):
we attack people because because if this had been a
black artist who had painted this, there would be nothing
to see here. The fact of the matter is that
because the artist was white, the intention was the same.
You know, you know everything else is the same. But
because the person was white, then I think that what
(10:05):
we're doing is we're um, it's kind of like hustling backwards.
You know, we need allies, and we are like actively
culling them from the herd when we do things like this. Now,
I need you to tell me how wrong I am.
I think I could have an opposing opinion without having
(10:25):
to prove yours wrong. Once again, you, sir, had noble intentions,
But once I'm offended by it, who cares. I'm talking
about the way that the art was depicted. Say it again.
(10:48):
You can draw black people without making caricatures of them.
The cartoony it was almost kind of hard for me
to take seriously once I actually saw the drawing or
the painting, because it the cartoonishness of it made it
seem at a lesson in nature. I'd been less offended
(11:11):
by it if a child had drew it, but that
an adult artist drew it and decided with intention to
make the black people look like caricatures of black people,
I thought that was interesting. I don't want to make
this argument simple, because it's very, very complicated, and that
(11:40):
wouldn't be fair. But there are certain things that when
done by women to women are not received away, but
that if they were done by men, they would absolutely
be received away, the same thing with black and white people.
(12:05):
It goes without saying, slavery depicted by a black artist
is different than slavery depicted by a white artist. Being
on the other side of that pain, on the other
side of that trauma, on the other side of that
scene that's being depicted there matters. And even if your
(12:29):
intentions were to bring attention to and to stand in
unison with me at drawing, receiving people's empathy or support, or,
as the artist even says in the article, making people
uncomfortable was kind of his intention, he says, but if
(12:55):
you draw a picture of your afro and aware that
offends you, who am I as the artist to tell
you that you're not allowed to feel that way? An
excellent point, and I think that now is the time
that we turn it over to you, our listener. Do
(13:19):
us all a favor. Check out the painting depicting slavery.
It's at the Vermont Law and Graduate School. A quick
Google search how to bring it up for you and
let us know your thoughts. We both believe that the
implications of the approach to things like this and other
(13:45):
things are much further reaching than simply pulling a picture
off of a wall or you know, making a handful
of people feel more comfortable. We think that the ripples
spread further than that. So, you know, when you look
at this, also take into account that we have to
(14:08):
strike a balance between allowing folks opportunities to grow in
their allyship with us, and we also have to, you know,
as you mentioned, kind of draw line in the sand.
We have to say, well, this is how we would
(14:31):
like to be depicted. If you're going to paint something
about black pain, it should come from a black person
who has a direct link an edge to that pain
and kind of point out something that I thought was
kind of missing even from the artist breakdown or or
or explanation of his own position. He felt it necessary
(14:53):
to remain up because slavery is still I don't know
the exact word, but because slavery is still prevalent all
over the world, not like that. Yeah, never before or
never since has slavery existed anywhere in the world except
like that and here that point almost made me angry,
(15:16):
Like I had a very very open minded approach to
this because of this exercise that we're participating in. Actively
reading that sentence changed everything, because we've seen people try
to make that point before. Yeah, you know that slavery
here is not the only time that slavery existed. It's
(15:36):
the only time that you were a slave simply because
you were black, ever before or since. Again, another great point,
and we are very much looking forward to your input,
So please reach out to us. I am Ramsay's job
on all social media. I am q ward. It's actually
(15:57):
my handle, though he is Ramsy's jobs. What he is saying,
I am qward is how you find me, and of
course you can use the red microphone talk back peature
on the iHeartRadio app. We'd love to hear from you.
Let's talk about it and let's be better together. How
about that? Very much? Looking forward to it all right, y'all. Hey,
(16:20):
this has been a production of the Black Information Network.
Today's show is produced by Chris Thompson. Have some thoughts
you'd like to share? Use the red microphone talkback feature
on the iHeartRadio app. While you're there, be sure to
hit subscribe and download all of our episodes. I'm your host,
ramsa job on all social media. Join us tomorrow as
we share our news with our voice from our perspective
(16:40):
right here on the Black Information Network Daily Podcast
That this is the Black Information Network Daily podcast and
I am your host, Rams's Jah And sometimes the amount
of stories that make their way to us means that
we simply can't cover everything that comes our way. But
from time to time, a story just stays with me
and I feel compelled to share it with you and
give you my thoughts. And now one more thing. Okay,
(00:33):
so most of the time on the show here, when
I want to do one of these, what I'll do
is play a newsclip and you'll be able to hear
a little bit about what's going on in the world,
and I will try to provide some context that I
believe is missing from the narrative, or an alternative perspective
(00:57):
or something like that. But you'll have to forgive me
today because I have no news clip. Rather, I have
an article from the Grio, and I'm going to approach
this one a little different because I have q Ward
in the studio with me today and we're going to
(01:20):
have a conversation. This is something we haven't done before,
not the conversation, but the type of we're going to have.
And then we are going to as always open the
floor up to you, the listener, to help us to
continue the conversation, so I will read again. This is
from the Grio. The article was posted February twenty second.
(01:45):
The headline says a white artist painted murals at a
college depicting slavery a black administrator once then removed. And
then there's like a subheading that says, the two murals
at Vermont Law and Graduate School show the brutality of
enslavement through images of a slave market and enslave brandishing
a whip and a dog attacking someone. I'll try to
(02:07):
describe the visuals to you, but there are these almost
caricatures of slaves. I'm not sure if it's intentional or not.
I can't say it's not artistic, but you know, you
do see the really big lips, you know, that are
(02:30):
painted really starkly in contrast on the skin. And then
of course you see the white slave master with a
long red whip and a long handlebar mustache, and you know,
there's a there's a dog attacking someone as mentioned, and
the slaves look very fearful, and a couple of them
(02:52):
are on the ground. One woman is on her knees
with a ball and chain attached to her ankle, and
a very sort of cart tuonish. Look. Cartoonish is the
word I was going to use to describe it as well. Okay,
so before you jump off the porch and run down
the street, I want you to pick the side, and
(03:15):
what I will do is pick the other side. I
guess the question is should this be taken down a
white author that has painted this art installationist mural on
the campus of Vermont Law School. And whatever side you take,
(03:38):
I will take the other side because I do think
that these are conversations that are important to have. And
oftentimes when we hear about a lot of stories, we
hear one side of it, and the end of feeling
is created when we encounter the information rather than the
(03:58):
information being conveyed to us, and we have a little
bit of time and space to develop feelings about it.
And so after reading the article, which side would you
say you fell on? Or which side would you choose?
You don't have to actually feel that way. I certainly
I have conflicted thoughts, which is why I wanted to
have this type of conversation. Leave it to my brother,
(04:22):
put you on the spot, well, put me on the spot,
not an issue at all, just to present me with
something so challenging. Sure, the nature of what you and
I do requires nuance. Yeah, it is very hard to
just pick a side because we're My mind is trained
to seek out the nuance and every story that we
(04:43):
read it and something like this, it gave me more
questions than feelings. I didn't read it and feel away.
I read it and it had literally a bunch of
questions I wanted to ask. Right, there are things that
are by nature not racist when done by a black person,
(05:06):
that are by nature racist when done by a white person.
And I have to ask, is the person viewing this
art determining that before they know the answer? Did you
see it and get offended? Or did you learn that
(05:26):
the person that did it was white and didn't get offended? Right?
I asked that question because no one can tell you
that you're not allowed to be offended. But I feel
different about you being offended if it's just based on
you knowing that you know what I mean. It's the
question that you're opposing should it be taken down? There's
(05:51):
something that happens when we want to tell people you're
not offended or that's not offensive, and I don't think
we're allowed to do that. A student saw this, it
was offended by it. Yeah, a faculty member. But yeah
so someone at the school and yeah not you're fine.
(06:13):
So at that point, what are we talking about. Okay,
so let's do this. Let's do this. To make it easy,
I will have a conversation, brief conversation in support of
keeping the mural at the school. Go for it, And
(06:34):
I would like you to have the opposing opinion with
respect to this topic. And in having this conversation back
and forth, we can tell more of the story. So
this mural was painted over thirty years ago on the campus,
(07:00):
and the mural was intended initially to be something that
was oppositional. It was it was not something that was
painted in support of slavery. The artist know what, no
one is claiming the artist is a racist man, who
is you know, laughing all the way to the bank,
(07:22):
having gotten paid and painting this, you know, this image
he did depict the slave master, I guess, or the
person with the whip, the white man and the painting
um doing exactly what happened in those days. In other words,
showing a true event, a plausible happening event undertaking whatever scenario.
(07:53):
That's what I'm looking for um. And because of these
attacks on this he has, he's he's questioned the timing
of it, because for thirty years it was fine. And
then after you know, George Floyd, after Brianna Taylor, after
(08:17):
you know, all of these names we know you know.
Of course, recently Tyree Nichols, his artwork has come under
scrutiny when he has, in his opinion, stood as an ally.
He had to research, he had to, you know, depict it.
He recognizes that his whiteness needs to show up in
(08:38):
there as sort of the bad guy, you know, and
I might be you know, I haven't interviewed this man.
I don't know how he feels, but I recognize the
implications of attacking literally everybody who's not black when they're
trying to help us tell our stories. We need white
people to help us teach the RT, to get legislation
(08:59):
passed so that it's protected. Not even teach CRT, teach
American history because CRT, of course, is something that you
get in law school. You might encounter it, and at
a university you would never count encounter it. In K
through through twelve, that's where you would get American history.
But the fact remains is that what many people refer
to as CRT and what we know to be simply
(09:20):
American history, we will need white people who understand and
recognize that they have a responsibility to help us live
in a world that is more fair and more more
accurate and honest with itself. And I feel like when
(09:42):
we attack people because because if this had been a
black artist who had painted this, there would be nothing
to see here. The fact of the matter is that
because the artist was white, the intention was the same.
You know, you know everything else is the same. But
because the person was white, then I think that what
(10:05):
we're doing is we're um, it's kind of like hustling backwards.
You know, we need allies, and we are like actively
culling them from the herd when we do things like this. Now,
I need you to tell me how wrong I am.
I think I could have an opposing opinion without having
(10:25):
to prove yours wrong. Once again, you, sir, had noble intentions,
But once I'm offended by it, who cares. I'm talking
about the way that the art was depicted. Say it again.
(10:48):
You can draw black people without making caricatures of them.
The cartoony it was almost kind of hard for me
to take seriously once I actually saw the drawing or
the painting, because it the cartoonishness of it made it
seem at a lesson in nature. I'd been less offended
(11:11):
by it if a child had drew it, but that
an adult artist drew it and decided with intention to
make the black people look like caricatures of black people,
I thought that was interesting. I don't want to make
this argument simple, because it's very, very complicated, and that
(11:40):
wouldn't be fair. But there are certain things that when
done by women to women are not received away, but
that if they were done by men, they would absolutely
be received away, the same thing with black and white people.
(12:05):
It goes without saying, slavery depicted by a black artist
is different than slavery depicted by a white artist. Being
on the other side of that pain, on the other
side of that trauma, on the other side of that
scene that's being depicted there matters. And even if your
(12:29):
intentions were to bring attention to and to stand in
unison with me at drawing, receiving people's empathy or support, or,
as the artist even says in the article, making people
uncomfortable was kind of his intention, he says, but if
(12:55):
you draw a picture of your afro and aware that
offends you, who am I as the artist to tell
you that you're not allowed to feel that way? An
excellent point, and I think that now is the time
that we turn it over to you, our listener. Do
(13:19):
us all a favor. Check out the painting depicting slavery.
It's at the Vermont Law and Graduate School. A quick
Google search how to bring it up for you and
let us know your thoughts. We both believe that the
implications of the approach to things like this and other
(13:45):
things are much further reaching than simply pulling a picture
off of a wall or you know, making a handful
of people feel more comfortable. We think that the ripples
spread further than that. So, you know, when you look
at this, also take into account that we have to
(14:08):
strike a balance between allowing folks opportunities to grow in
their allyship with us, and we also have to, you know,
as you mentioned, kind of draw line in the sand.
We have to say, well, this is how we would
(14:31):
like to be depicted. If you're going to paint something
about black pain, it should come from a black person
who has a direct link an edge to that pain
and kind of point out something that I thought was
kind of missing even from the artist breakdown or or
or explanation of his own position. He felt it necessary
(14:53):
to remain up because slavery is still I don't know
the exact word, but because slavery is still prevalent all
over the world, not like that. Yeah, never before or
never since has slavery existed anywhere in the world except
like that and here that point almost made me angry,
(15:16):
Like I had a very very open minded approach to
this because of this exercise that we're participating in. Actively
reading that sentence changed everything, because we've seen people try
to make that point before. Yeah, you know that slavery
here is not the only time that slavery existed. It's
(15:36):
the only time that you were a slave simply because
you were black, ever before or since. Again, another great point,
and we are very much looking forward to your input,
So please reach out to us. I am Ramsay's job
on all social media. I am q ward. It's actually
(15:57):
my handle, though he is Ramsy's jobs. What he is saying,
I am qward is how you find me, and of
course you can use the red microphone talk back peature
on the iHeartRadio app. We'd love to hear from you.
Let's talk about it and let's be better together. How
about that? Very much? Looking forward to it all right, y'all. Hey,
(16:20):
this has been a production of the Black Information Network.
Today's show is produced by Chris Thompson. Have some thoughts
you'd like to share? Use the red microphone talkback feature
on the iHeartRadio app. While you're there, be sure to
hit subscribe and download all of our episodes. I'm your host,
ramsa job on all social media. Join us tomorrow as
we share our news with our voice from our perspective
(16:40):
right here on the Black Information Network Daily Podcast
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.