Three years before Covid-19, someone wrote NIGGER on the corner nearest my house in the oldest part of Philadelphia.
Someone else bent down and overpainted this word with the word LOVE.
A third person photographed the word LOVE on her I-Phone. “I look at it,” she said. “It gives me strength.”
I posted the whole episode on a neighbourhood web site.
My post was taken down in minutes because I used the word NIGGER (referred to by the politically correct as the N-Word).
When I questioned this censorship, I was informed that the word NIGGER should never be used on a public site. I should simply not have mentioned it at all.
I was assured that it was not my sentiment that was being censored but that prohibited word.
More important to be politically correct than to speak about injury and a gesture to contain its effects.
Language is not Transparent, 1970, chalk on paint and wall.
Mel Bochner, American born 1940. Los Angeles County Museum of Art on loan in 2016 to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Today, like every other day,
we wake up empty and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
