Vintage

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

 

A Georgia State Trooper in riot gear at a KKK protest in a north Georgia city in the 1980s. The Trooper is black. Standing in front of him and touching his shield is a curious little boy dressed in a Klan hood and robe.

 

I have stared at this picture and wondered what must have been going through that Trooper’s mind. An innocent child who is being taught to hate him because of the color of his skin stands before him. The child doesn’t understand what he is being taught, and at this point doesn’t seem to care. Like any other child his curiosity led him to explore this new thing that this man is holding because he can see his reflection in it and that’s a neat thing and he wants to check it out. In this picture is innocence mixed with hate, the irony of a black man protecting the right of white people to assemble in protest against him, temperance in the face of ignorance, and hope that racism can be broken because this young boy may remember that a black man smiled at him once and he didn’t seem so bad after all.

From the Jadili Africa page. Thank you Leslie for the link. ~Emine