
“Webster’s dictionary defines Nigger as an offensive term to call a black person. Unless you are black, it is not appropriate to say it.”~Faith Ringgold
Oil on canvas
24 1/16 x 24 in.
Red White Black Nigger is the first work into which Faith Ringgold would incorporate the racist ethnic slur directed at African Americans. The painting is divided into three horizontal bands in shades of red, gray, and blue – Ringgold created these colors by mixing black pigment the respective base colors. Onto these color fields the words “Red,” “White,” and “Black” are superimposed running down the center of the canvas. Floating behind each of the color terms is the slur, filling out each of the three bands in large, darker colored and thinner capital letters, making the writing less visible at first glance. Once the viewer has seen the words, they become inexorably prominent.
With this work, Ringgold comments on the violence committed against African Americans in the United States using the color scheme of the American flag. At the same time, she places her own work into the canon of contemporary American art of the 1960s – albeit then yet to be recognized by her peers. This work specifically connects with several works by Jasper Johns, a white male American painter born in the same year as Faith Ringgold. In the mid-1950s, Johns began making numerous paintings based on the imagery of the American flag, and in the late 1950s began a series of paintings such as Out the Window (1959) in which he wrote names of colors in otherwise abstract works. While Johns received wide acclaim early in his career, Ringgold’s work that emphasizes the white cultural and political erasure of and violence towards African-Americans, remained blocked from reception.