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Seeing oneself behind bars is intended to personalize the problem that is so often seen as a ‘them’ issue. The mirror is intended to elicit change by way of proximity. Mo, the last piece in the installation, is a mirror. It is an intentional, efficient system that successfully targets black boys, and they are selected arbitrarily and consistently. The cradle to prison pipeline is not an abstract idea.
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“It is important to be confronted with the imagery of a child behind bars. I met the youngest boy at the Garden Brunch Restaurant, the next at Hadley Park Community Center, and the oldest comes into the gallery where I work and sells candy from time to time.
#Origin of eenie meenie miney mo code
“I have focused on three children who I met in North Nashville as references for the three paintings… The 37208 zip code which covers the North Nashville area is the most incarcerated zip code in the country. Booker’s art shows hauntingly how America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline™ is catching Black boys. He explains that many people may not realize the familiar children’s rhyme the title is based on (eeny, meeny, miny, mo, catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers let him go…) has racially charged origins: traditional 19 th– and early 20 th-century American versions use the word n*gger instead of tiger.
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“If the justice system does not change incarceration will continue to be as arbitrary as a game of eeny, meeny, miny, mo, with black kids and black men hoping to avoid being ‘IT.’”Įeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo is the title of this series of paintings by Nashville native Omari Booker, a visual artist who has spent a lot of time thinking about race and mass incarceration in America.