The Whole Story

The artist behind The Chancellor Segéur on Horseback (pictured below), Kehinde Wiley, said in an interview that with this work of art he wanted "to tie the urban street and the way its been depicted with elements that are not necessarily coded as masculine."  

After reading that I thought sure, he's combining two very different things in this painting, but femininity and masculinity aren't the only two things merging here. The other two things are European history and African American history. Every "olden times"  European-American painting we see in history textbooks, museums, and documentaries have always been filled with only white people, which is horrifically inaccurate from a historical perspective. 

  

         Our society praises the great works of European-American history, but turns a complete blind eye to the fact that all of these paintings only show a fraction of actual history.  During the time periods in which all these iconic paintings were painted, people deemed it unnecessary to include African Americans in paintings. They viewed them as less than human, I mean, just look up what the three fifths compromise was about! Yup, your "worst case scenario guess" is actually right, Americans did deem black slaves as 3/5th's of a "normal"person.  

          Look at Llanchie Stevenson, an African American ballerina that made history. Even after accomplishing everything that she did, she wasn't allowed to perform in  historical performances because the color of her skin would make the whole show "historically inaccurate".  The towns in which the shows happened centuries ago might've not had any black people at all, or only had black slaves, making it "wrong" to include a talented African American ballerina. Which yes, technically speaking, sure, I get that the goal of historical performances are to replicate the dances exactly as they were performed centuries ago, but why in the world would someone want to do that? Who in their right mind would think that it is okay to replay a scene from one of the most racist time periods in history over and over again? Sure, the artistry, and dances of the past must be preserved, but there is a way to do that without also preserving the racism of the past. It's called inclusion. Something the whole world needs to start practicing.