A Tale of Two Hoodies: Painting Inspired by Trayvon Martin


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I chose not to post a picture of the painting on the site because it's artwork and I don't want to take away from the artist. But A Tale of Two Hoodies is a painting by Michael D' Antuono. Obviously, it is a play off of the Trayvon Martin shooting.

Abagond did a great analysis of the painting, he writes:

Many whites see blacks and whites as being equally racist and equally powerful. Yet blacks are outnumbered by whites by more than 5 to 1. Whites have a hundred times more wealth. They run most of the institutions of society. That would not matter if they were not racist, but they are, so it does.  The picture shows that imbalance: not only does the white person hold the gun, he is older and bigger and is pointing the gun down at the black person, making it even more asymmetric than the Vietnam War picture. The picture can also be read as “stealing candy from a baby” – which pretty much sums up the relationship that whites have had with blacks from that moment some 500 years ago when they arrived in Africa with – guns.

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I see a big, greedy police officer violating the innocence of a Black child. I can relate to the painting, although I've not yet been physically brutalized by a police officer (hopefully, I never will be) I feel that my innocence has definitely been tainted by racism. From the earliest age, I was inundated with the message that Black is inferior and this has defined my existence.

What do you all think about this painting?