For my Diary of Systemic Injustice presentation, I would like to talk about an injustice that I encountered in my History of Art class. We were tasked with reading an article that discussed how polychrome and white statues perpetuate racist beliefs in our modern western society. To briefly summarize, the beautiful white marble statues that we see today were not always that way. In fact, they were once filled with bright, vivid colors, but after millennia of being exposed to the elements, they have become very pale and white. While this may seem like a mundane and unimportant detail at first, many scholars have brought up the idea that these statues have helped to facilitate the beliefs of white supremacy in our current society. The majority of these sculptures were made by the Romans and Greeks whose empires spanned from North Africa all the way up to pieces of modern day Scotland, so naturally these groups were very diverse; however, this idea may not be understood by the average onlooker. When an observer is surrounded by highly esteemed sculptures, and they all happen to be white, they may consciously or subconsciously believe that the creators of these pieces were also white. Throughout the 19th and even 20th century the idea of polychrome in these sculptures was dismissed and was often regarded as an issue not worth discussing, and “the accidental destruction of the ancient coloring” had been “exalted into a special merit, and ridiculously associated with the ideal qualities of the highest art” according to classical scholar Alfred Emerson. A proper historical context will help us to realize that these racist and white supremacist beliefs associated with these works of art are simply illogical and fallacious. I am most closely able to relate this injustice to Persepolis. In Persepolis, Marji was forced to feel like an outsider and someone who did not belong solely due to her looking differently and having a different culture to those around her. Likewise, these white statues have caused some people to believe that they do not deserve to be talked about in history books and that they are different for no reason other than being a different color or of a different culture. In conclusion, it is very important to be aware and literate of the world around us so that we do not either consciously or subconsciously take part in perpetuating a systemic injustice.
Works Cited:
This post is very interesting as it it relies heavily on very ancient works. Most intersting to me is the fact that the idea of the color white has been regarded as symbolizing purity. Literature, art, and many others usually use white as the basis of what is good in the world. It is intersting to see how that could easily be formed and changed. This idea of the statues being colored originally and faded down to white makes one ponder how symbolism of color could have been influenced throughout history. We can only assume what caused writers or artists to choose certain things and colors in their work. Additonally, we can look at dinosaurs and the constant changes based on new discoveries that change how we think about and reconstruct them. We do not know 100% what they looked like or what color they were. We can only guess. When we compare this to that of human scultures, why is it so much easier to accept new descriptions of dinosaurs but not the color of the staute?