I was born in 1976 nine years after the landmark US Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia, that banned laws prohibiting interracial marriage. My biological mother is white and my biological father is black. My maternal grandparents are from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and when my grandfather first met me, he said, “Where is that little Picaninny?” One popular depiction of the Picaninny caricature has the child playing along a shore while an alligator is pursuing the child. This was intended as white humor and creative for a white audience. The implications are violence to the black body. I am thinking about my journey of enduring racial traumas. I am reflecting on the implications of this word on black bodies historically. The alligators in my paintings symbolizes both my grandfather and/or systemic racism.
