Who determines what is valuable? Is value determined by those who have power? Or is value something subjective? When I saw this painting I stopped in my tracks. I was reminded of a phrase I learned in my English 120 class: Internalized racism. The phrase refers to “when a person believes negative messages about their own, and other’s, cultures and races” (Rodriguez-Knutsen 2023). To me, it seems like the black men, women, and children are conforming to British culture. This constant conforming causes one to feel inferior and in the wrong. It makes one believe that they have to ”fix” themselves. According to the summary of the painting it was created to “affirm eighteenth-century British racial and social boundaries in the colonies, they also reveal the contradiction and instability of those same ideas”. I agree that this work’s purpose is contradictory. If it truly aimed to overcome social boundaries in the colonies it would have the people within the paintings wearing garments from their culture, not the garments they were forced to wear to fit in. British colonizers believed they were the ones who could determine value. Similarly, the painting undermines the value of black culture and suggests that peace is achieved when one culture conforms to another.

https://www.ywcaworks.org/blogs/ywca/types-racism