Cards You’re Dealt

by Kayla Hamilton

This piece of artwork addresses environmental racism, which are the corporate decisions that deliberately target certain communities. Examples of this include predominantly black neighborhoods having gas stations connected to liquor stores, pawn shops located every couple miles, and more fast-food chains than grocery stores. In contrast, when you investigate a well-off, predominantly white neighborhood, the gas stations have convenience stores connected to them, there are schools every few miles, and there are more grocery stores than fast-food chains.

The point of my artwork is to highlight the issues with “playing the cards you are dealt”.  I aim to portray how the black community is often only handed the bad cards. Within my art piece, I use similarity to demonstrate this concept. All the cards within my piece are odd; when you take a deeper look, the cards that are good (like all the Ace cards) are actually disguised as something that is harmful or detrimental to a person’s wellbeing or development.