Margaret Parker
Strip It Off | Cast Cotton, Copper, Plaster, Acrylic, Felt | 44 x 50 x 7 inches
This is not a normal artist statement. My artwork has been about creating metaphorical spaces where complex issues play out in public. But what happens when being inside your own skin is the problem?
This is a confession. In this exercise of listening to a recitation of all the methods white supremacy uses to suppress, degrade, and deny the rights of people of color, I came to realize that by merely having a white skin, I’ve benefited all my life.
When I say that I’m not a racist, it’s these tremendous benefits that demand of me that denial. I feel these benefits are naturally mine, I was just born this way. What I am is a person born with a white skin in a country that has completely encoded white supremacy in its laws, customs and enforcement practices, for the benefit of white skinned people.
My own deep denial was what I found.
Words On Skin
How do we talk about race
where there is so much shame
words break off and shatter
fear of harm and fear
of harming words
stops up our mouths
history of slavery
rises up and twists
our throats to stone
words can’t recover
say we’d like to be friends
all the harder
speaking nearly different languages
each person tied up in a different history
anger dancing on a hot stove
so I wanted to make
some permanent words
out of copper
that wouldn’t run away
first written then pounded flat
flowing into a line
that stays in place
on my skin
because I sewed them down
words about white
and the curse it put
on me
by the brainwash techniques
of white supremacy
words I hate
to hear, see, taste
or think about
a word castle built
of white marble
that stacks up benefits
for me, my family, our
family history and excludes
in an orderly brickwork of
laws, tricks, gerrymanders, exclusions
insults, dirty jokes,
built into a fear of darkness
so fearless it spits
in children’s faces,
makes us shoot the upstairs neighbor
when we’re on the wrong floor.
This is brainwashing
so severe
once you have it
it’s nearly impossible to recognize
the generations of benefits
that screw it in
admit it
pull of that white skin
and look at it
as the fake idea it is
DNA proves
there is no difference
between races, between skin tones
make the words stick
so they can’t escape your sight
see the centuries of brainwashing
get out of your system
recognize the white slave master
in you
and all of its mind tricks
so many chandeliers
Scarlet O’Haras,
on our private Terras
Stand your ground
get ready
to molt off that skin
get ready
to be done with it
be glad it’s gone
this is not replacement
this is renewal