Keith Knight

10-28-15

 On October 24^th I went to an artist talk presentation given by Keith Knight titled “They Shoot Black People, Don’t They?” Mr. Knight is a cartoon artist whose cartoons are often satirical and express the racism of today’s modern society.  He has been an artist for about twenty years now, and has submitted his comics to multiple newspapers and websites.  His most well-known comic strip is the “K Chronicles”, and his “(Th)ink” works are also well known.  The forms of racism that he comments on in his works come from his personal life and what he has seen and noticed in the world around him.  In his slideshow one of his comics in particular shows how black people are viewed when they are with a white person and when there is no white person to be seen around them.  Some of his more satirical comics have focused on “colored” people, whether they are green, blue, purple, or some other color, something Knight finds to be quite humorous.  Another comic strip series of his is “The Knight Life”, which has some stronger characters than the “K Chronicles” and is currently being featured on the website GoComics.com.  Overall, Mr. Knight’s work depicts almost all forms of racism, from the simple comment on the “colored people” to the police brutality against blacks, which they fear every day and is something that he and others have to teach their children to be aware of.

During his presentation, Mr. Knight gave us some insight to his life and how he has to teach his son to basically fear the police because if he is not careful then he could be harmed or killed when he was doing nothing wrong.  Most of the comic series are based off of the things that have happened in his life, and the characters in those comic strips are real people in his life, including himself, his wife, and his kids; therefore, his “K Chronicles” and “The Knight Life” comic series are semi-autobiographical comic strips.  When commenting on police brutality against blacks, Knight’s comics have shown how police forces are taught from the beginning to target blacks.  One such comic, a part of the “(Th)ink Series”, and titled “Police Officer Application: Question #6” shows four African American kids standing around with the question being “What do you see in this picture?” and the answer of ‘target practice’ being checked as the correct answer.  Another features Mr. Knight himself being shown a police target practice area and realizes that all of the silhouettes are obviously black people, as shown in the comic of a silhouette with a big afro and the letters FUBU across the chest.  Many others of Knight’s comics go along with the similar line of how police are unaware of how they are being trained to explicitly target black people, and thus is the reason for why blacks have to be careful of what they do, even when they are simply out for a walk.

I really enjoyed this presentation given by Mr. Knight and even though not many people did attend the presentation, I am glad that I did. I think he can be quite clever in how he comments on some aspects of police brutality and how black people are viewed in multiple situations. Although I may not have understood the point being made behind all of his comics, I did find most of them to be quite true and humorous for the ones that I did understand.