by DAVID A. LOVE
Those who would consider the depiction of George Floyd as the son of God as blasphemous must ask themselves whether George Floyd as Jesus is more offensive to them than any brother as Jesus.
Very often, there are issues we are forced to confront that we did not know were controversial, solutions searching for a problem. One of these is the recent removal of a painting of Black Jesus—with a twist.
The painting in question is Kelly Latimore’s “Mama,” a 2020 work displayed at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. The artists decided to portray Jesus and his mother Mary as Black people with golden halos. And Jesus bears a striking resemblance to George Floyd, the Black man who was choked to death by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020. That Black man’s death precipitated a worldwide outrage over police violence and systemic racism, with millions upon millions of people participating in protests from Minneapolis to Atlanta, from Paris to London, and from Tokyo to Tel Aviv.
Because the lynching of a Black man at the hands of an oppressive state–in broad daylight with everyone there witnessing it– has a way of changing the world, you know?
Two prints of “Mama” were stolen from Catholic University, and a petition circulated by White Christian nationalist conservative students demanded the removal of the artistic work on the grounds it is “disrespectful” and “sacrilegious.” The petition also stated is is “extremely grave” that the university “would cast another in the image of our Lord in this way, particularly for political purposes.” One student even referred to the artwork as “just another symptom of the liberalization and secularization of our campus.”
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