To the Editor:
Re “Parents’ Little Helpers” (Sunday Styles, Oct. 4):
To be a Black mother is to be in a constant state of alertness when it comes to protecting your family from the government. As a Black woman, mother and lawyer, I am no different in that regard.
Most Black mothers wouldn’t publicly label themselves a “wine mom” or admit to smoking pot. No one remotely aware of the government’s racist practice of separating Black families for such behavior through the so-called child welfare system would.
You are correct that substance use has been “romanticized” for white parents. Your article proves that it still is. Smoking pot and drinking are seen as coping mechanisms for white families and grounds for separation for Black families. Black parents who admit to substance use are often labeled “addicts” and sent to treatment programs. Ninety percent of the parents we defend for alleged child neglect in New York City are Black, Indigenous or people of color.
You’ve asked for Black parents to share stories about parenting today: Here’s your story.
Tehra Coles
New York
The writer is litigation supervisor for government affairs and policy at the Center for Family Representation.
The Guggenheim’s Banana
To the Editor:
Re “It’s All a Piece of Work for Museums” (Arts, Sept. 19):
Lena Stringari, the Guggenheim’s chief conservator, describes Maurizio Cattelan’s work “Comedian” as “duct tape and a banana.” Duct tape is no more part of the work than a gilded frame is part of an Old Master painting. The work is just the banana.
Viewed more broadly, however, as conceptual art, “Comedian” might also be deemed to include Cattelan’s still more ironic act of depositing into his bank account the money he got for the banana, which sold for $120,000 last year at Art Basel Miami, and perhaps any accompanying laughter.
My point is not to suggest that “Comedian” is not a work of art. It is that Cattelan’s work is a trivial work of art. The “ironic humor” it allegedly embodies is so trite, and the critique of art it arguably expresses so tired at this point in the history of art, that the Guggenheim should let the “work” go brown and spotty and put it in the compost.
Would works like Cattelan’s banana and Yoko Ono’s green apple be recognized as museum-worthy had they been offered by an unknown artist? What if the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim engaged in blind evaluations of proposed purchases? Would the sly cleverness of “Comedian” have been recognized without knowing it was the work of an established artist?
If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you … but only as a work of conceptual art.
Mitchell Zimmerman
Palo Alto, Calif.