Hate (2019)
Words by Antoine Ivory
Even In quarantine, black people are still on the outside. COVID-19 has created yet another view into the often broken lives of black Americans. Black Americans are dying at much higher rates than white Americans from the virus that has a worldwide death total of 282K. They are being sent home from hospitals and left to die. Their communities are being hardest hit not only economically but by the ways in which they are being policed.While white people in America are protesting their right to get a haircut, flaunting their hostility and immense privilege, young Black boys are still being murdered in the street by police with their deaths streamed for the world to see. In the midst of a global pandemic Black folks are still fighting for their humanity. A fight they’ve been fighting for generations. A fight that has not ceased because the world is on lockdown. In a post-COVID-19 world Black people should not have to explain their humanity. Black people should be able to exist in their own images and do so unapologetically. In America, we cling to the notion that we have choice, and if so what would it look like if Black people actually did? Shayne Olivers Hood By Air represents the “others”, the phantom images of an opposite society, the kids casted out into the world because they were unapologetically themselves. They are the glimmers of light on the way down to the pavement. The true champions of change
