Recently, a couple of Black journalists have commented on social media about a new mural at the corner of San Pablo Ave and Castro Street in Oakland depicting Tom Hanks and Too Short. For those that aren’t Oakland natives or haven’t been in the Town long this might seem like a tribute to Oakland diversity and two of its most famous native sons. However, that would be skipping over the complexity of the politics that privileges white artists to express their versions of culture and history on the valuable visual real estate of Black Oakland’s community walls.
The walls carry value because in the hands of a few select artists they become the location for what privileged history is told and what is not. The white gentrification phenomenon doesn’t stop at housing real estate. The walls available for murals and advertising are visual real estate. They are an essential part of white urban colonialism’s project to either erase or control local Black history. Artists wielding white privilege are given permission to express themselves on Black Oakland’s community walls. A primary example of this is the difficulty that African/Black artist Refa One had gaining permission from a grocery store owner to paint on their wall at the corner of 14th and Peralta in the historically Black community of West Oakland. However, two white women artists could walk into the store and gain permission without even defining what they were going to paint. They eventually painted a Black woman laying on her back talking on a cell phone. After great difficulty Refa got permission and painted the only mural in Oakland by a Black artist that was created specifically to honor the legacy of Huey P Newton and the Black Panther Party. Property owners passive aggressively interrogate the proposed content of independent Black artists who want to express unapologetic Black history and culture in their own community, but will give white painters artistic carte blanche (pun intended) with images that not only don’t represent us but that are openly anti-Black. The artists who painted the Tom Hanks/ Too Short mural (one of which is white) were approached by Black community artists about the inappropriate content of their mural and the white privilege that allows them to complete it. They agreed that the space should be made available to Black self determined artists.
The mural at the corner of Castro and San Pablo is an unwitting collaboration with the colonization of Oakland’s visual field. Castro and San Pablo is directly next to the Greyhound bus station which many years ago was a seedy locale for pimps to victimize under-aged runaway girls. San Pablo Ave. throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s was location for a lot of Oakland’s sex trafficking. A painting of Too Short AKA “Shorty the Pimp” with women’s disembodied, bent over, thong clad behinds illustrated alongside a picture of a train running into a tunnel at this location is just toxic. There’s no commentary in the way that it is presented that indicates that it is acknowledging the ugly history of exploitation in that area.
The image of Tom Hanks in that location is strange because despite his huge media footprint as an internationally recognized Hollywood actor he’s never been known to make statements about the social conditions of Oakland. Despite the fact that the rampant displacement of Oakland’s Black populace has created a homeless population that is two thirds Black, Tom Hanks hasn’t made a single public statement about the dehumanizing conditions in his hometown. He’s been known to describe himself as, “…a white boy from Oakland.” However, his silence is deafening. Positioning his white image in a suit directly next to Too Short accompanied by sexist images of women seems like an effort to reduce the image of Black men to being oversexed. Especially after we consider how many other Black men or Black women could have been painted next to Tom Hanks. San Pablo Ave and Castro Street are notable for having a large homeless encampment adjacent to it, just under the freeway overpass. In addition, the wall under the freeway overpass was once the location of a notable mural depicting many notable Oakland residents painted by Juan Carlos.
The fourth point in the Black Panther Party’s Ten Point Program reads, “We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.” Rather than some fake multiculturalism that seems like a bad joke painted right next to the violent displacement of Oakland’s Black populace, a mural for our times is required. Artist Refa One and his AeroSoul Arts organization along with the Oakland Maroons Art Collective are organizing to execute a mural at the corner of Castro and San Pablo that reflects the above words of the BPP’s Ten Point Program. It will be another mural for our times that serves the voice of the people.
-OAKLAND MAROONS ART COLLECTIVE