Examining myself and the white contexts I grew up yearning for, I uncover the ways my stained yellow core hides inside a white sac, which rests inside a yellow cradle, which hides from a brown room, which lies within a white scaffolding, which hides within a yellow structure… and I am suffocated by the skin fighting and hiding within skin. This is the feeling I started with when I sketched out “7th Grade.”

As a yellow object in denial and confused on a Black and white scale, the figure on the right represents a perennial “third”. It has “facial features” on both sides, inspired by WEB DuBois’ “double consciousness.” Meanwhile, the other two white figures, both cartoonish with blue/green double-lidded eyes, are facing only each other, subtly connected at the bottom of the frame. The background embracing all three, which is given no eyes, realistic or cartoonish, is a dark brown.

The only part of the canvas rendered with realism is the patch showing from under the rest of the yellow object, a mono-lidded eye, representing an obscured and fragmented Person who has no chance of being seen as whole. They are encased within an object that the other white figures do not see or recognize; and at the same time, the yellow object is only focused on fitting in with the white figures, without awakening to the brown and black they all live within.