We live in charged, racially fractured times, and constantly seek evidence to support our bias. Why was Moses Gomes Silva, a Sephardic Jewish trader and slave owner, even part of the story? It wasn’t a painting of him.
Becoming this week’s poster boy for the Conservative press, allowed a critique of the museum behind my mixed-race front, ‘our’ octoroon, a mullato mascot, and nobody could accuse anyone of being a whiny ‘white’ bigot.
This Brown, Brit, Bloke, Broke, Woke. The press could use my story as the NPG had done with Edward Fox-White and Moses Gomes Silva. We are just sliced-up scraps to be used in someone else’s collage. Paintings cut to fit ready-made frames.
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