With the cupid based Valentine approaching, “Images of Black Love Under Bondage,” is a look at African American experiences of love as expressed through ART.
When it comes to affairs of the heart, there is an old saying, “How you start a relationship, is how you’ll finish it.” This statement is most relevant in defining co-dependent relationships and enablers. American Descendants of Slaves, ADOS, have many American critics regarding the state of their relationships as couples. But such criticism do not take into account the above mentioned old adage, and the history of slavery, and its reinventing forms on the Black family in America.
During the time of chattell slavery, marriage was a civil right and a religious rite, afforded to those with legal standing. Enslaved people had no legal standing, and could not make contracts. Their marriages were neither legally binding, nor sanctified by the Christian church. Enslaved people were forced to settle for conditional unions that could be torn asunder at any time. White slaveholders determined whether enslaved people could marry, they split them apart when finances dictated, or brazenly violated enslaved couples’ marriages by forcing the women to serve as their own concubines.
Once emancipated, the Thirteenth Amendment and black codes provided a legal framework for re-enslavement. The convict leasing program that arose from the black codes built such great Southern cities as Atlanta. See Douglas A. Blackmon’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning book Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.
ADOS couples have never been free to love. Call it what you want, but the American mass incarceration problem, is really just an ADOS problem.
Within the police, court and penal system, specific populations have vastly different incarceration and growth rates. The most egregious example is the vast differences in the 2010 incarceration rates by ethnicity per 100,000 U. S. residents: For African American men – 4,347, for Hispanic men – 1,775, for “white” men – 678. It’s called racism. Coalition For Prisoners’ Rights Newsletter Vol. 40-v, No. 10, October 2015.
In 2016, the C.P.R. in their Vol. 41-xx, No. 4, April 2016, reported on the same numbers, “In 2014, 6% of all African American men aged 30-39, 2% of Latino men and 1% of ‘white’ men, were imprisoned.
In the Holy grail of contemporary work on the American mass incarceration problem, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, she vehemently argues, not looking at this through a racial lens is the problem. One of her subheadings in the chapter “The Fire This Time,” is “Let’s Talk About Race—- Resisting the Temptation of Colorblind Advocacy (p. 236). The above C.P.R. statistics bear this out. Is America’s mass incarceration a People of Color, POC, problem, or an ADOS problem? ADOS are incarcerated three times the rate of Latinos, and six times the rate of Whites; while Latinos are imprisoned two times the rate of Whites. Mass incarceration is disproportionately an ADOS problem.
Why the term ADOS?
The vast majority of African Americans come from the U.S. slave class. However, Elon Musk and Charlize Theron are African Americans. They are white African Americans. The term is not exclusively for Black people of African descent. But are they the by-products of fetal-trauma due to forced parental separation from 400-years of bondage? President Barack Obama is an African American, but is his Kenyan father, the by-product of fetal-trauma due to forced parental separation from 400-years of bondage? Vice President Kamala Harris is an African American, but is her Jamaican father, the by-product of fetal-trauma due to forced parental separation from 400-years of bondage?
Southern U.S. style slavery was none existent in Africa. The French ended slavery in 1794, and the British in 1807. However, it took several decades later to become abolished in their territories in the West Indies, i.e., the Caribbean. Immigrant Blacks from Africa and the Caribbean were not subjected to Jim Crow, and passing as an immigrant Black was a well-known ploy for naturalized Black Americans to elude Jim Crow laws. See “How Turbans Helped Some Blacks Go Incognito In The Jim Crow Era” : Code Switch | NPR
The reality is, the heavy foreign accents from the fathers of our first Black President and Vice President inoculated them from Jim Crow. There is a thing in modern medicine called fetal-trauma. It can be either physical or mental, and its negative impact is diagnosed as long-term. African Americans who are descendants of Southern U.S. slavery, share in their collective DNA, the fetal-trauma of their Black Love being torn asunder from forced separation and murder, or violated from rape.
This was the state of Black Love during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries due to slavery. The 20th century due to Jim Crow, and the 21st century due to mass incarceration. This is why the term ADOS, because all African Americans don’t share in this history.
Images of Black Love Under Bondage
What is the Black visual art community saying about this? Nothing much it seems, and we encourage others to do an online digital search for this material. If you find any, please leave us a link in the comments. Here is just one of our Google search inquiries that yielded nothing:
Images of Black Slaves Being Intimate with Each Other | Google Search
https://www.google.com/search?q=images+of+Black+slaves+being+intimate+with+each+other
We know that prisoners are doing it, but at the moment, we were able to locate the works from one artist who is offering greeting card prints of his work.
Black Love Matters is a painting that was created by the world’s most prolific prisoner artist Donald “C-Note” Hooker. It was specifically produced for his epic poem It Must End! (BLACK FEMALE BOYCOTTS AGAINST BLACK MEN IN THE PEN). The poem is about the intimate relationship between the incarcerated Black man, and the free Black woman in the era of Black Lives Matter.
Black Love Matters Greeting Card for Sale by Donald Cnote Hooker
Jumping the Broom in the Age of the New Jim Crow, is a piece created by C-Note. In a 2016 interview with Darealprisonart he stated, “I was asked if I could draw a broom for a prison wedding ceremony and I decided to do one better. I decided to create a work on paper so large that the bride and groom could actually jump over the piece,” says C-Note. “For the uninitiated, the broom represents the traditional enslaved, Black American wedding ceremony. The broken handcuffs are represented in the style of manacles of that era. They’re broken to represent the end of slavery of that period and the soon-to-be hope for end of black mass incarceration of this era. Since I created my first piece, I have been receiving requests from other African American couples to do this same piece for their prison-weddings.”
Jumping The Broom In The Age Of New Jim Crow by Donald C-Note Hooker
God Is A Woman is a work created by C-Note. It was going to be the cover art to an article published by Darealprisonart, entitled “‘God Is A Woman’, Is Life Imitating Art?” The basis for the article was the tweet by comedian Pete Davidson in whom the New York Police Department mistook as a suicide note. At the time of the tweet, Davidson’s fiance, Ariana Grande had just called off their engagement. Insiders believed Davidson was distraught. Prior to this incident, C-Note submitted to the Columbia Journal’s Incarcerated Writers Initiative a 5,000 word short story entitled, “God Is A Woman.” C-Note stated, Grande’s song encouraged him to publish a piece of prose that shared the sentiment, “God Is A Woman”; he hadn’t beforehand, as he feared it would be deemed blasphemy. The story’s lead character, a prisoner with over twenty years of incarceration, had just made a near fatal suicide attempt on his life. It was these seemingly random connections to which Darealprisonart approached him for a cover art piece to the article. However, due to a recent suicide in C-Note’s own family, and another newly discovered death, they decided to let him write the article due to his long time activism in mental health.
God Is A Woman Greeting Card for Sale by Donald C-Note Hooker
We found this apparent sculptural work on Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.com/pin/771100767430554407/
Statue Commemorating the End of Slavery, Goree Island, Senegal.
Amazon.com: HSE Deep Love Poster African American Art Print: Posters & Prints