What Will WE Inherit? — Original Artwork

What Will WE Inherit? examines the inheritance of racial prejudice, not as an artifact confined to history, but as something transmitted across generations when it is left unchallenged.

A wooden image of a child sits against a tapestry of black-and-white historical photographs documenting racial violence, segregation and discrimination. Inspired by the tradition of quilting and the blankets created by my grandmother, these individual images are assembled to form a collective visual record of the past.

At the center is a child, chosen deliberately as a symbol of innocence. Across his hair appear the words “Innocent Until Black,” the original title and concept from which the larger work developed. His brown figure represents the present, while portraits incorporated into his back reference Black men from our own time whose deaths reflect the devastating consequences of racial prejudice and presumed guilt.

The child's body is made of wood and marked through laser burning. These material choices reference the history of chattel slavery, including the branding of Black bodies and the lynching of Black men from trees. History is therefore not simply pictured behind the child. Symbolically, it is carried within the material of his body.

The historical imagery surrounding the child establishes the past. The contemporary references carried on his body establish the present. Raised text panels contain rhetoric from our own time, demonstrating that although generations and circumstances change, ideas rooted in racial prejudice can remain disturbingly familiar.

Together, past and present force the question contained in the title toward the future: What will WE inherit?

The child is therefore both recipient and possibility. We inherit histories we did not create, but inheritance does not have to become destiny.

Ultimately, What Will WE Inherit? asks a second and equally important question: What will we choose to leave behind?