OUT OF THE PICTURE

I think several generations of Yale activists have had the chance to gather in protest or at least reflect on the outrageousness of the university's top decision-making body gathering beneath a portrait of the university's namesake with a slave. Looks like the next generation will have to come up with a new rite of passage. Yale is finally taking the goddamn thing down. But god forbid you should think that Yale's leaders feel regret about leaving it hanging there the past few decades:

Since the portrait is confusing without the explanation [that Elihu Yale did not own slaves], I have decided it would be prudent to exchange that portrait of Elihu to another one in the University’s collection,” Lorimer said.

The quote, from Yale's VP and Secretary, leaves you with the sense that Yale is taking down the portrait, which involves adjusting the moldings around the mantelpiece around the painting (the classic explanation of yesteryear for why the thing had to stay up), because it's easier than putting up a plaque explaining that the man was not a slave owner. But it's a portrait designed to honor Elihu Yale by painting a chained Black man at his feet. It honors him with the imagery of White supremacy - an ideology of which the colonial Governor and the university named for him have been no small beneficiaries. It's a painting that belongs in a museum. It has no place hanging over Yale's president as he meets with the Yale Corporation to try to chart a course for the university. It never did. (That's the difference between engaging and exulting the problematic) To suggest that the racist graphic is being taken down to avert misunderstanding is to make abundantly clear that you don't get it.