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Silence.  Painting by June Edmonds

Silence was painted days after the George Floyd murder by police and the string of protests that occurred afterwards.  For many African Americans like myself, we have been agonizing alone for years over police murders of Black men and even police murders of Black Women and children.  I remember being in a large room at an all staff meeting with fellow educators and administration a day following young Trevon Martin’s murder and this group who years later had a black box on their instagram page, made no mention of this heinous, painful event at the time.

The recording of George Floyd being brutally murdered by this team of police was running on repeat in the early summer of 2020.  Many white people around me began to realize at the moment (for a moment) that the police brutality people of color have been speaking of for scores of decades might actually be true and some of them felt bad about it.  Being approached by some of these individuals that were in tears felt like another form of violence because I was expected to absolve them of the blindness they chose for themselves for all those previous years of their life.  They wanted to transfer their moment of pain on me as if I had an obligation to nurse them back to their positive self regard.  This act of oppression felt violent and added to my own pain of the moment.  My experience of this cloaked racism and sexism was not unique, but these tearful women seemed to see themselves as innocent victims.

Silence was painted in response to these types of interactions as well.  It speaks of an assumed innocence that has always been violent and destructive and is detrimental to the progression of human and civil rights for all.  My hope is that once the viewer realizes that this candy-confection colored painting is representing a confederate flag, some introspection occurs.