Respect Your Mother

This week's post is regarding our new design "Respect Your Mother."

We are choosing "Black Friday" as the release date, pun intended. :-)

This design was inspired during a march for Black Lives Matter in our town following the death of George Floyd. It is important to us, to help bring attention to the historic and ongoing economic and systemic inequality, as well as police violence regarding minorities. Black lives matter. Remembering the victims' names matters. However there is an often unnoticed detail: Women of color, and especially women of Native American ancestry do not get the same attention as male victims, never mind white female victims. It’s the hidden hierarchy within the hierarchy. And it is especially hurtful as women are holding up men, whether it be by raising children or organizing the marches, and historically by voting! When they disappear, like 19-year-old Oluwatoyin Salau, our hearts ache as we wait for a public outcry....

Native American women especially are apparently regarded as easy bait, and when they become victims of violence there is barely any mention in the media - even though eighty percent of the reported sexual violence against Native women is committed by white men.

The intersection of sexism and racism is often overlooked, and the way it impacts women of color on so many levels. The medical world is just now coming to terms with the abuse inflicted upon black women to advance research in the area of gynecology.

So we created this new design "respect your mother" as a message to uplift women! At the same time, it is depicting Africa as the source of life, origin of mankind, and the mother we all have in common.

The term respect is derived from Latin, to "look back". An invitation to examine the past to heal the present. But it also means to listen, and honor women of color.