This actually seems very interesting, I think I will check it out Saturday

some in rags, some wearing a tiny American flag fitted like a diaper.

who does this asshole think he is?

DISSECTING HATE
Jersey City exhibit explores 'intra-racial' racism

Friday, May 29, 2009
By JONATHAN MANDELL
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Melissa-Marie Johnson realizes that people don't like to talk about these things, especially now that an African-American is president, but, she says, "that's exactly why we should be talking about intra-racial racism, racism by your own people."

Johnson is the curator of "The Division Bell: Black and Blue," an exhibition at the es oro gallery in Jersey City that looks through artists' eyes at the prejudices and stereotypes that U.S.-born black people have about black immigrants, and vice-versa. She is also one of the seven artists (three from West Africa, three born-and-raised in New Jersey, one from the Caribbean) who created works for the show.

Johnson's work is a canvas made of stretched goatskins in which hateful words, phrases and accusations have been stenciled in Indian ink: "afreakan...they stink like goat....sold their own people for sandals." Every phrase on the piece, she said, is something she has overheard a U.S.-born African-American say about their African-born neighbors.

Sheik Fall, who was born in Senegal, pictures the conflict as a tug of war in a polished work that depicts small abstract wooden figures chained to a ship's hull, some in rags, some wearing a tiny American flag fitted like a diaper. It was Fall's experience being harangued simply for being African by two American-born African-Americans in a bar in Essex County that convinced Johnson of the need for the show.

Nyugen E. Smith's three satiric self-portraits make fun of assumptions about men from the Caribbean, such as that they prefer white women.

Born in Jersey City but taken as an infant to Trinidad, he experienced culture shock when he returned to the city at the age of 9. Now an art teacher at Jersey City's St. Peter's Prep, he admits to having had misconceptions about his neighbors as well, wondering for example why they dressed so sloppily. If the cultural stew of his background were not complicated enough, his Vietnamese first name comes from the last name of an actor that his mother liked in the television show "Marcus Welby, M.D."

The exhibition runs Fridays and Saturdays (and by appointment) through June 5 at es oro at 107 Brunswick St., Jersey City, five blocks from the Grove Street PATH station. There will be a performance by The Real Live Band at the gallery at 3 p.m. tomorrow.