When you have president-elect Donald Trump and his bandwagon of racist cabinet members only weeks away from the white house, seeing a picture of the KKK on the wall of your university’s art gallery is probably one of the last things you want to deal with. When the painting went up only a short while ago, many students, especially students of color, were offended. They expressed their outrage, scribbling their complaints in the guest book and even complaining to the faculty and staff.
Their feelings are legitimate, and it’s especially understandable considering the time we are in. Emotions are high. Discrimination towards minority groups are increasing. Hate crimes are on the rise. However, there are two problems with this situation.
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The first being that regardless of this time of our lives, this is still very much censorship and trying to strip away someone’s first amendment rights. If they knew what the gallery was about, they’d know it was a “State of the Union” exhibit in response to the 2016 presidential election, presenting artwork that represented people’s hopes and fears for the future. Also, the guest book that is left near the door has a detailed description of each piece, noting each artist’s intentions. If the students actually did some research before erupting, maybe the issue wouldn’t be this serious.
And this is the thing about art: it’s not always direct. It has different elements of meanings left for anyone to analyze. Just because someone paints the KKK doesn’t mean they support the KKK. It’s very much like if a museum hung the confederate flag on a wall; that doesn’t mean the museum is racist or supports the past sins of slave owners. The confederate flag is there for history purposes.
You are allowed dislike the painting; you can hate it. You are allowed to assume that it means something negative. However, you cannot take it down simply because it triggers you. No one can assume that a painting, the painter, and the whole university is racist when there is little context to the claims. That’s like me accusing Google of being an anti-semitic organization simply because they’ve allowed images of Hitler to be seen on google images.
Still, the university was responsible enough to hold an open discussion about it, which contradicts what was said beforehand concerning how faculty initially responded. According to Liz Embree, when the issue came up, administration did not take them seriously.
“From what everyone told me, students were crying and professors were laughing. Professors were taking it as a joke and telling students to go educate themselves…,” she wrote on Facebook.
If this is true, then this leads to the second problem: how the administration handled this. When students show up at your door, making serious accusations, claiming that the painting/painter is racist, the best thing to do is not to be condescending, and it’s especially worse to mock and laugh. Then that makes you look even worse and also unprofessional. There were even white students at the event that made racist comments at the gallery, which didn’t seem to be handled to my knowledge.
What professors and administration should have done was calmly explain what the piece and the exhibit was about. They should have reassured them that the painting was in no way trying to promote white supremacy, and any other students who were making racist comments should have been disciplined.
The gallery had been closed off before administration decided to completely censor the gallery. There were at least two emails apologizing to the student body about the painting.
The painting itself, in my opinion, is truly creepy. You have people clad in white standing in an open field while the whole sky is pitch black. Just seeing the KKK in general should incite disgust. I am in no way a supporter of the KKK and neither should any rational person be, but maybe, just maybe, this was the point of the piece? It was supposed to incite disgust or anger or fear or sadness. Maybe it’s supposed to be a representation of what the KKK is all about, dark and evil. Or maybe it represents Trump’s America. At least those are my takes anyhow.
But trust me when I say that I get it. It was only a short couple of years ago, when the Charlie Hebdo drawing was published. For months, I had to deal with that Mohammad drawing being flaunted in my face both on the news and on social media and there was no way for me to censor any of it. People even put it as their profile pictures. And while people claimed it to be “freedom of speech” or “satire”, I knew that whatever it was, it was still discriminating against a religion they knew nothing about.
Still, as uncomfortable as it made me, I could do nothing about it because regardless of how offensive it was and how much I didn’t like it, it was still freedom of speech. And that’s the scary thing about it: it could be used to help you and it could be used to hurt you. No one should assume that freedom of speech is a single-edged sword.
