The Scottish National Portrait Gallery has released a music video calling White people “inbred spawn soon to die out.”
The video features a rapper from the group “Young Fathers” staring at portraits of former Scottish Kings like James III and distinguished architects like Sir William Bruce and calling them “dead, random white dudes” and proclaiming “they are a gravestone that a dog pisses against.”
Gold. Edged and decorated.
A coat framed with gold surrounding white skin,
wrapped around your body fat and muscles and bones like a magic cloak.
The signs of power.
The signs of wealth. Insignia.
Details that seem small and inconsequential but they are proof of status.
Your status. White. Powerful. Rich.
This picture confirms, you were a man, that you existed.
Your family bore fruit, burst from the tree and here’s the proof.
Does this mean I don’t exist?
That I’m not a man?
Because I don’t see a face like mine, framed in gold, hanging on the wall?
Have you taken all the space?
Sucked out all the air, swallowed all the wine, taken the goodness from the earth,
sweated the energy from my family’s living essence,
in order that you can live forever, edged in gold?
Where’s the universal balance?
Am I meant to admire the brushwork and the colours and the historical context,
without considering how you came to be here?
And people who look like me aren’t?
Am I meant to just accept that this is how things work out,
ignore the past that has survived despite attempts to gold-edge it from existence?
I am…