Oprah Winfrey was quoted as having said, “If you turn a blind eye to racism, you become an accomplice to it.” Which is another way of stating the protesters’ slogan, “Silence is violence.” Kind of like all the people that refuse to follow the Good Samaritan’s lead, huh?

In my painting, the football official is signaling a targeting infraction penalty, usually on the order of a helmet to helmet hit, which has been outlawed in football for some time now. But targeting (i.e. profiling) still exist in law enforcement in the form of excessive force administered usually by white police officers upon African American males especially. It’s called racial injustice. A Wisconsin black man named Jacob Blake was shot seven times in his back, while attempting to enter a vehicle. He is now paralyzed from the waist down–for life, so says his doctor.

Why/how is it necessary to shoot an unarmed man, at point blank range and in his back no less, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 times in order for him to heed your commands? Jesus was once asked how many times should you forgive your brother and He replied seventy times seven. A ridiculously far cry of mercy than seven shots to silence were–even though Jesus’ “brother” could well have been referring to a Christian brother and/or sister only.

Too many police officers resort to becoming trigger-happy when faced with circumstances beyond their capacity to think straight. And the guys with the most guns (police officers) shoot first and get asked questions later.

Yeah, that’s an outlined silhouette of a person kneeling. He could be an athlete (black or white) kneeling to take a stand against systemic racism. Or he could be kneeling in prayer thinking it’s better to kneel to Thee(God) than to police brutality. Or he could be pausing to make a split-second decision to flee or not (represented by the underside right foot of the shadowed receding figure). Trying to kill a running suspect is much more difficult than a suspect surrendering, unknowingly, to a police knee to the neck that cuts off your air supply until you die. So, unfortunately, that silhouetted image could easy also represent police officer Derek Chauvin’s murderous knee kneel on George Floyd’s pinned down neck. The gun chambers are filled with the portraits of slain African Americans by the hatred hands of mostly whites.

Bottom line: All Black Lives Matter, regardless of whether they’re our heroes on the football field and/or basketball court. Amen?