Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar produced this work in 1995, and however it hits you will produce the best sketch of your feelings about where we stand as a country, right now, on our continuing struggles with race.
The artist found it unimaginable that so few whites would attend Dr. King’s funeral:
How could Americans of all racial backgrounds not have mourned the death of the great civil rights leader?
“When I started looking at the shocking absence of white faces, I couldn’t believe it,” Jaar said, “so I started looking for a way to represent this in a graphic and almost funny way. I did not want to preach to people. This was a way for me to express my outrage to what these images reveal.”
How, indeed. In too many ways, the distance between these dots has only grown, even if there are more of them.