There is a Reading Room set up at Gallery Kayafas as part of my exhibition there called Family Pictures.  These are the texts I included:

• Going to Meet the Man (stories) by James Baldwin
• Without Sanctuary Lynching Photography in America by James Allen, essays by Hilton Als, John Lewis, Leon F. Litwack, and James Allen
• Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror by Equal Justice Initiative
• Black Misery by Langston Hughes
• The Inaugural Address 2009 by Barack Obama
• Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
• Blacks by Gwendolyn Brooks
• Sambo: The Rise and Demise of an American Jester by Joseph Boskin
• Riot and Remembrance: America’s Worst Race Riot and Its Legacy by James S. Hirsch
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
• Violence: Six Sideways Reflections by Slavoj Žižek
• The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter
• Free at Last a History of the Civil Rights Movement and Those Who Died in the Struggle by Sara Bullard
• On Lynchings by Ida B. Wells-Barnett
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Other Works by Frederick Douglass

Prototype of button designed by Girl Scout Troop leader Shelly Kang of St. Louis Park, MN

I received a lot of feedback in response to “I Fit the Description…”  Some of the emails and comments were down right hateful, so much so that I shut down comments on my blog and I stopped reading the emails.  When I finally went back to them, I found a couple from a Girl Scout Troop leader in Minnesota. She wrote to me about what she was doing with her girls in response to the blog post.  I want to share part of our conversation.

 Dear Mr. Locke,

My name is Shelly Kang, and I’m a stay at home mom to two girls, and a troop leader for fourth grade Girl Scouts in St. Louis Park, MN (an inner-ring suburb to Minneapolis).  

I know you’re busy. I know that you probably don’t want your life defined by the moment you described in your “I Fit The Description…” blog post. I’m sorry to pester you. I e-mailed you a couple weeks ago about my plans to share your story with my Girl Scout troop, and I wanted to follow up with you to ask once again if we could chat with you briefly – or if maybe you’d be willing to talk to me briefly about what we’re doing. 

My girls were very moved by your story – it would have been hard not to be moved. We are going ahead with our project to make pin-on buttons to share our feelings in the anti-racism/hating/discrimination movement. Your story resonated so deeply with us – and the part of your story about your friend in the red coat – it connected in my brain with the Fred Rogers quote about looking for the helpers during a crisis. In case you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about – here’s a link to the video of it – yes, I’m talking about Mr. Rogers from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

I think we’re going to use a phrase something like “I’ll be your Neighbor”  on the buttons, but I think it would also be really cool to put the image of a red coat in the background to symbolize the power of a witness who cares. I had the girls brainstorm ideas of what to put on the buttons, and they came up with lots of enthusiastic ideas, but their innocent brains settled on the unfortunate phrase “Everyone Matters” which is such a simple, loving thought when taken literally, but in the context of the backlash against the Black Lives Matter movement, it is the opposite of what we intend to convey – and we really are hoping to simply share our love and acceptance for everyone rather than to focus on the hateful reasons for the need for our support.

I’m really hoping that we can make a small-to-medium to even semi-large or really big movement out of this, at least in our region. I want to help my girls get enough people wearing our buttons that we can get some press coverage and spread it even farther. If that happens, I would want to feel free to talk about how your story inspired us, and how we came to the meaning of the red coat as a symbol…but I would want to make sure you’re ok with that first before we start printing up a bunch of pins and potentially holding you up as an icon. I’m visualizing how cool it would be to live in a community where you can’t walk down the street or go to the grocery store without seeing our pins on strangers and knowing that we are all working together to share light and love. Our cookie-selling season is coming up in February, and it will be a great opportunity for us to hand out the pins and explain our project while we are selling cookies too.

If you’re not comfortable with it, we can just leave off the red coat and use some other symbol or no symbol at all. But it would be really cool if you’d be willing to connect with us briefly and give us a thumbs-up, thumbs down on our idea. We’re going to work on some version of this for the next few months at least no matter what, but your participation would add fuel to our spark.

Whether I hear back from you or not, I want you to know that you have made a huge difference, that your words were incredibly powerful, that I am grateful to you for inspiring me to take a step beyond just feeling awful about the situation and trying to actually do something.

Thank you.
Shelly Kang

P.S. Oh! and yes, you have my permission to post about our exchange on your blog. You can use my name too – just if you notice any bad grammar or misspellings please feel free to correct them for me! And if I said anything that you found offensive, please let me know personally rather than share it with the world. Anything I said wrong would have been through ignorance and I’m always willing to learn!

Dear Ms. Kang,

Thank you very much for writing to me.  I have to apologize for not responding sooner.  I was very focused on getting my students through the end of the semester.  In addition, I started to receive a lot of email and not all of it was as supportive and positive as your message from you on behalf of your charges.  The hostility in some of those messages made me decide to take a break from email.  While that was the right choice for me emotionally, I regret that it caused a delay in my responding to you and your Girl Scout Troop.

As I am writing this, a grand jury in Ohio has refused to indict anyone in the murder of Tamir Rice, a 12-year old African-American boy.  Officer Timothy Loehmann shot him within 2 seconds of rolling up on him in a park where he was playing with a toy gun.  Some of your girls may be close to his age.  

On 23 December, a grand jury in Texas refused to indict anyone in the death of Sandra Bland, an African-American woman who was forcibly dragged from her car and arrested by Officer Brian Encinia for refusing to put out her cigarette during a traffic stop. She was found dead in her cell days later.  Officials in Texas say she committed suicide.

I bring these current developments up because I want your girls to know something that is very hard to hear.  What happened to me happens to black people every day in this country.  Every. Single. Day.  I think it is vitally important to talk with your girls about why this is the case and how did it get this way.  When and how did it become acceptable to treat people like criminals based on the color of their skin? 

In Akron, Ohio, not far from where Tamir Rice was killed, a white man named Daniel Kovacevic walks around the neighborhood with an assault weapon on his back in full view of everyone.  Ohio, like Minnesota, is an “open carry” state. When a local barber shop owner called the police to tell them that a man was walking through the neighborhood with a loaded rifle, he was told by the police that Mr. Kovacevic had the right to carry his weapon.  Deone Slater, the man who called the police, is African-American.  He said, “They (the police) were more concerned about me than him, as if I were the threat,” he added. “It it were me with a gun, they would have shut the whole block down.” http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/12/ohio_barber_confronts_white_man_walking_around_black_neighborhoods_carrying.html

With the demonstrations happening as we speak at Mall of America, there are people in your area who are thinking deeply about the way policing happens in this country.  I am certain that there are people in Minneapolis who could have written “I Fit the Description….”  

I think the girls need to ask themselves and others why white people are not treated the same way by the police.

Ask the girls if they think the police are there to help them.  Ask if they feel like they could go to the police if there was a problem, or if they were frightened.

Ask them if they are afraid of the police.  Ask them if they think they, like Tamir Rice, could be killed by the police.

This is the crux of the difference.

I understand the girls’ wish to put positive and inclusive messages in the world.  They are mature enough to know that public messages are received in a larger context.  If I yell, “Who wants ice cream!” it could be a great invitation to enjoy something great.  But if I do that in a context where everyone is allergic to milk. it can come across as self-serving and insensitive.  As an artist, I think about audiences a lot.  I think not just about what I want to say, but I also have to think about what other people might hear.  That’s what makes a public message harder to manage that a message among a group of friends who all share the same ideas.  Of course, “everyone matters,” but to say that in this moment, in this larger context when black people are being targeted and sometimes killed, it will be seen as insensitive and careless at best; the exact opposite of how you and your girls feel about the situation at hand.

It is very uncomfortable and scary to talk about race.  That is just fine. Nothing worth doing is ever easy and nothing important can be solved in a day.  It can make people feel guilty and scared of saying the wrong thing and can sometimes feel terribly personal and shameful.  But this is the work we have to do together if we are going to change anything at all in this nation.  But please know that you are part of a great legacy. Women have long been on the front lines of the fight for racial justice in America.  Some of them you all may know like Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King.  I would encourage your girls to learn about one of my heroines when I was growing up.  Her name is Viola Liuzzo.  She was part of the march in Selma and she gave her life in the fight for racial justice.  There are many people like her, white and black, who did the right thing against incredible odds and at great personal risk.  

I do not know much about Girl Scouts, but I do know that Citizenship is an core value.  I think your girls have a tremendous opportunity to talk and demonstrate what real citizenship is in this crucial time in our country.  Issues of racial justice are at the core of what it means to be a good citizen.  Badges like Public Policy, Truth Seeking, Behind the Ballot, Inside Government, Independence, Celebrating Community, My Best Self, Making Friends, and Giving Back sound to me like they are deeply linked to the work of justice that has long been the purview of women from the Progressive Era (when the Girl Scouts were born) until now.  

I am deeply touched by the girls’ desire to do something public about the issue of racial profiling I wrote about in “I Fit the Description..”  I think their heartfelt and beautiful gesture must be honored and supported. I love this idea of them watching out for each other and watching out for the people in the community who may be marginalized or under threat, like the lady in the red coat did for me.  I remain deeply grateful that she stood by me.  Standing by each other is something that we can all do.

If you are not familiar with it, I would like to recommend the work of Jane Elliott (http://www.janeelliott.com).  Her very simple “Brown Eyes/Blue Eyes” exercise is enlightening and powerful.

I will reach out to Trina Jackson, the “woman in the red coat.”  Also, thanks for allowing me to put our exchange on my blog.  You have said nothing at all to offend me and even if you had, I think we need to risk offending each other if we are going to get to any kind of deeper shared understanding. 

Ms. Kang, you are very fortunate to be working with young people with such a deep sense of justice and empathy.  I am humbled by their simple desire to do public good.  They are amazing and I am so glad that the world will be in the hands of such capable citizens. 

Thank you for standing by me,

Steve

My conversation with Ms. Kang continues.  Recently, Trina talked to the troop via video conference.  She’s going to send me some buttons when they are finished.  Also, I let her know that my blog was open to her and her girls if they wanted to talk about their experiences in working on this project.  

Black people do not have the presumption of innocence.  The law is not organized for their protection, rather it is organized around their annihilation.

There are highly funded media outlets and personalities that perpetuate racist stereotypes and hate speech against black people.

When black people are attacked or killed by the state, their attackers are not subjected to a vigorous prosecution.

Cases of black women who are missing or murdered are ignored or not given priority, even in the case of a serial killer preying upon a community.

Unarmed black people are perceived as more dangerous than armed police officers.

Black girls are so dangerous that officers need to subdue them with force.

Any offense a black person commits is punishable by incarceration or summary execution.

Images of black people being brutalized by the state are used to affirm black criminality.

Agents of the state who kill unarmed black children in their homes are rarely (if ever) charged or convicted.

A police officer, even off-duty, can kill a black girl and expect the benefit of the doubt, paid leave, and counseling upon their return to work.

Black people of any age are not allowed to carry toy weapons in open carry states.

In interactions with the police, black people should abandon any expectation of a right to life.

Black people can be arrested for resisting arrest even if they have not been advised of any other charges against them.

When your black loved one is killed by the state, you will be subjected to video of their death on all forms of media.

Racism allows legal activities of black people, including the President, to be framed in criminality under the guise of “debate.”

Dear Senators Warren and Markey:

I am sick to my soul at the news that two pieces of vile, oppressive legislation from Texas and New York have been reinstated by the DC Court of Appeals. The notion that the abortion restrictions and “stop and frisk” being reinstated troubles me, but what troubles me more is that these decisions are being made by a court with vacancies that are being maintained for clearly partisan reasons.

The Republican Party in this country has outed itself as a group of “know nothing” ideologues whose sole purpose is to undo the legitimacy of the President. This strategy is based in the deep seated racism that is now clear as this hallmark of that party. You may disagree with my assessment of some of your colleagues, but that is the only conclusion I can reasonably determine from their actions. They have tried on stop every thing the President has tried to do for the country. They have undermined him at the expense of the safety of the nation. They have pandered to the sickest elements of racism and misogyny in American life.

Please, Senators, the courts have traditionally been the saving grace, the final protection for the disenfranchised. They need to be balanced, fair and accessible. The court vacancies, a continuation of the government shutdown, are another attempt to undo the democratic election of a president. It is seditious and unworthy of the oath of a United States Senator. This cannot stand. The women of Texas, the black and Latin people of New York need your courage. We are suffering, Senators. Please, act on our behalf.

I sent this message to all of the menswear designers who have their clothing at Riccardi, Boston.

Dear Madam/Sir:

I am an artist who lives and works in Boston. Recently, I opened a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston titled there is no one left to blame. It has been very well received and as a result, I have had many speaking engagements. These have required additions to my wardrobe and because I love your clothes, I went to one of your local stockists, Riccardi on Newbury Street, to make some purchases for my lecture at the museum scheduled for 19 September.

To say that the staff was rude would be an understatement. The two people in menswear were clearly busy and so engaged in their own conversation that they barely managed a strained response to my hello, but they did watch me walk around the store. I was going to ask for some information but they resumed talking to each other. I walked upstairs to womenswear and spoke with a woman working on a laptop. I said hello and told her I was interested in suits and skirts for men. She told me that she did not work there.

At this point, a man came upstairs and the woman at the laptop told me he worked at the store. I said hello and repeated my request about suits and skirts for men. He replied, “Yeah, that’s downstairs. This is the women’s department.” I advised him that I was aware of that and that I wanted to know what was available in menswear. He replied, “It’s downstairs,” and just stared at me. I thanked him and told him that I would find it myself.

I left the store. I went to Barneys.

I am a 50 year old African American man and I have lived in Boston for a long time. I know when I am not welcome in a store. I know when people assume that I am going to steal something or that I do not have enough money to shop there. I know when sales people want to help me and when they don’t. I assure you that I will never shop at Riccardi again.

I am not writing to the manager of Riccardi because I don’t care about them. I am writing to you to let you know what type of store carries your wonderful clothing. In my opinion, your clothes are too beautiful to be sold by such an ugly retailer.

Thank you for your hard work,
Steve

Sent to Balmain, Boris Bidjan Saberi, Comme des Garçons, Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Dsquared2, EN NOIR, ENVISU, Giuseppe Zanotti, Givenchy, Julius, J.W. Anderson, Lanvin, Mastermind Japn, Moncler, Nighborhood Japan, ROAR, Vivienne Westwood, and KTZ.

Ken Johnson, Art Critic for the NYTimes

Unless you are in a convention hall somewhere in Miami, you’ve probably heard about the Open Letter/Petition to the NYTimes regarding the articles of one Ken Johnson who writes for the NYTimes.  Here are some links to the articles that caused the contention:  Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles and The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World.

Some websites have referred to this as an “anonymous letter” which is odd because at last count over 1,500 people had signed it. You can click on Open.Letter.Redacted and see the many people who have added their names to the letter.  (Some people wished to remain anonymous in a public forum, and we redacted their names.)

So what happened with all this?

The following was delivered to the New York Times on December 3, 2012 (Thanks Marie!):

Dear New York Times,
We are a group of artists who drafted this letter, which has been signed by 1,318 people. It is important to emphasize that this letter is not intended as a personal attack on Ken Johnson. We are not calling for his resignation or censure. While we express frustrations that Mr. Johnson’s arguments lack rigor, his articles touch on important issues in a necessary effort to understand troubling and persistent inequalities.

Many had written to the New York Times without response so we decided to write an open letter, both to allow people who shared our concerns to express them, and to encourage the New York Times to address them. We are simply asking the New York Times for a considered, public response to Ken Johnson’s published pieces, for the reasons we outline in the following letter.

Sincerely,
Colleen Asper
Anoka Faruqee
Steve Locke
Dushko Petrovich
William Villalongo

We received the following from John Landman, Culture Editor of the NYTimes on December 4, 2012:

Dear Colleen Asper, Anoka Faruqee, Steve Locke, Dushko Petrovich and William Villalongo;

Thanks for your letter about Ken Johnson’s reviews. I’m glad to acknowledge that some of Ken’s phrases could have been more precise. He has acknowledged this himself on his Facebook page, where there is lots of lively discussion of the issues you have raised. As Ken wrote, “I can see how my statement that ‘Black artists did not invent assemblage’ taken out of context seems needlessly provocative.”

At the same time, I assume that anyone who believes in the value of healthy debate would condemn any effort to stifle good-faith ideas and those who express them. I am heartened by your assurance that you are not calling for Ken’s resignation or censure, but your letter has been circulating for a couple of weeks as a petition and petitions are meant to produce action. It would be troubling, and, it seems to me, inimical to what I would like to believe is your goal, if the action contemplated by the petition involved some sanction by The Times against Ken, whom you in effect accuse of racism and sexism. To be clear: Ken is guilty of neither of those things.

The bottom line, for me, is that Ken’s work, like any critic’s, is legitimately subject to tough criticism. Yours is welcome and it has properly stimulated all sorts of reaction. Less welcome is any suggestion that The Times should publicly “address” unfair and unsound accusations against him.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Landman

(My favorite part of this response is when he refers to things said in KJ’s reviews as “good faith ideas.”  Really?  Duchamp’s work is “deracinated”?  Really?  Something about the kinds of work women tend to make excludes them from the market? Really?  These outmoded canards are “good faith ideas” now?  I expressed as much in my own letter to the NYTimes which is elsewhere on this blog.  It’s always been my feeling that the arguments Mr. Johnson puts forth in these texts are poorly researched, lazy bits of writing.  The artists under consideration deserve much better than this.)

We responded with the following:

Dear Mr. Landman:

Thank you for your response. We welcome your acknowledgement of “imprecise language.” However, our letter speaks to the overall quality and effect of the texts. We remain disappointed that you see our letter and its stated goal as an accusation against an individual rather than a question of the New York Times’ journalistic and editorial rigor.

The many who signed the letter have hoped for a considered response in print, in the form of an opinion piece or letter. Can we infer that yours is the only response from the New York Times? If so, we assume we can share your note with the many who signed the letter and those who continue to write about this debate.

Sincerely,

Colleen Asper
Anoka Faruqee
Steve Locke
Dushko Petrovich
William Villalongo

In response, Mr. Landman advised that we are free to share his response with anybody.  Which is what I am doing on my little corner of the internet.

It was sent via email as a letter to the editor of the New York Times on 27 October 2012.

Dear Madam/Sir:

I am an artist who lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts. While I often enjoy the writing of Ken Johnson, I was greatly disturbed by his review of the above referenced show. His text is really a lazy piece of writing. It assumes that black people make art with social and timely connection and so-called white people don’t. What was DaDa if not a response to the political madness of WWI? Black and white people have lived together for 3 centuries in this country. If so-called white people cannot access the texts and sub-texts in the work of black artists it is because they choose not to, just as some of them choose to ignore the social realities of the country. These things are not beyond their comprehension or experience, despite the article’s reification of the myth of inscrutable blackness.

While it is appropriate to discuss the history and context of every artist, and race is a part of that, we need to stop pretending that black people are the only ones with a “race.” Does anyone ever talk about Robert Ryman and whiteness? Also, does Johnson not realize that the presence of the work of a black artist like Melvin Edwards, alters our understanding of what a work by a white artist like Richard Stankiewicz can mean? Johnson reinforces the spurious notion that black people make art about being black and so-called white people make art.

Also shame on Johnson for positing the notion that if you aren’t black you aren’t going to get the work, or that some of its poetics will be lost or inaccessible to you. There is one art world, and it’s long past time that people stop treating black artists like they are from some other planet. We are part of the traditions of Western art and I’m tired of people telling us that we aren’t.

Sincerely,
Steve Locke

James Baldwin

Well, it has been a very interesting couple of days.

My friend Tom runs a blog called The Good Men Project.  He was putting together a edition of the blog on race.  And he asked me to contribute.

I should say that Tom and I have been friends for well over a decade.  I’ve held his children, he’s seen me cry, we’ve have very similar experiences with mental illness in our families and have had to come to terms with a lot of our dreams and limitations as men.  He’s a great guy and I love him a great deal.  So when he asked to me to write about race I knew that he was asking me, his friend, to write.  He wasn’t asking his “black” friend to write.  He knows me, knows the range of my interests and thoughts and values that.

Tom may certainly look white, but he’s never acted white.  I will leave it to my hero, James Baldwin, to explain what I mean.

As a policy, I don’t usually talk about race.  It’s too difficult.  But as I said, Tom is my friend and because he asked me to, I figured I would tell him, in an unvarnished way, why I don’t want to talk about race.

There’s been a pretty wild response to my letter to Tom.  I am really grateful to him for the opportunity to say things that I have been thinking for a long time.  My friend Patrick sent me a link on tumblr that had “reblogged” a section of it over 300 times.  I am sort of amazed that so many people are reading it.  As of now, there about 700 reposts on Facebook.  I know that isn’t “viral” but people are sharing what I wrote.  I didn’t upload a cat video, I wrote a polemic and people are interested in it.  That is really wild to me.  The comments have been pretty interesting.  Some people really don’t get what I am saying and some people really need to not sit at the computer all day writing responses to blog posts.  I have seen the same guy on a bunch of blogs.  He really makes me glad that my home address isn’t published with the article.

One of the reasons I started this blog, or rather why I came back to this blog, was to really start to try to write.  I wanted to dismantle the notion that an artist is purely a visual person, that somehow I lost my voice because I make images.  A lot of the artists I admire were terrific writers about art and culture.  Fairfield Porter was the art critic for The Nation, at a time when the flavor of art had very little connection to his practice as a painter of the observed world.   I always loved that he loved art so much that he could write about it as well as make it.  I aspire to that.