A BENEVOLENT HUE
2021
39” x 20” x 8”
Mixed Media

I created this piece after recently reading an article from Laura Ellis, Baptist News Global talking about how “Nice white women participate in white supremacy too.”

I have experienced many of these women at church socials and prayer groups and this article was deadly accurate. Take Emmitt Till for example. A 14 year-old black boy, brutally murdered in the prime of his youth only because a white woman said he was flirting with her. She later recanted her statement but not before her words were then forever etched in history after they pulled his weighted down, tortured, disfigured body from the bottom of the Tallahatchie River.

One of the main foundations of racism is that the “virtue of white women is threatened by the existence of Black men.” They are a “damsel in distress whose sexual virtue, and therefore value, needed to be protected and kept pure at all costs.” Men then commit unspeakable atrocities in the so-called name of honor and virtue as the women stand silent beside them.

Ellis goes on “Today, the most frequent weapon white women use to maintain white supremacy is a niceness that downplays racial injustice. The feeling of being uncomfortable about the realities of white supremacy in our communities and the desire for “nicer” conversations are borne out of a place of privilege. White women frequently respond to racism with sadness instead of outrage or optimism instead of action. White women’s niceness is particularly dangerous in churches where niceness is conflated with benevolence.”

This piece represents the women of the church who quietly and politely tuck their white supremacy in their purse and stand in front of the holy cross cloaked in privilege and disguise. Their rigid hands and arms remain symbolically locked in prayer in a benevolent charade. The definition of a Hue is a form or appearance. They are a combination of other paint pigments to emulate the real thing.

Ellis finishes with “There are nice white women in almost every church. And it is past time we take an honest look at how our congregations use the myth of white victimhood and the guise of women’s niceness to maintain white supremacy.” - Laura Ellis currently serves as a Clemons Fellow with BNG. She recently graduated from Boston University School of Theology with a master of divinity degree. She is originally from Abilene, Texas.