Who is Seneca Scott? Coretta Scott King's cousin calls $10M MLK statue a 'woke waste of money'
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA: Even Coretta Scott King's relatives are upset with the new $10 million monument dedicated to her and her famous husband, a civil rights hero, in Boston, and one cousin claims it looks like a penis The giant bronze sculpture, titled 'The Embrace,' depicts two pairs of arms clutching each other, an artist's version of the iconic photo of Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr, embracing after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
“The mainstream media … was reporting on it like it was all beautiful, ’cause they were told they had to say that,” Seneca Scott, Coretta’s cousin, told The New York Post by phone Sunday, referring to the new artwork in The Boston Commons. “But then when it came out, a little boy pointed out ‘That’s a penis!’ and everyone was like, ‘Yo, that’s a big old dong, man,” said the 43-year-old Oakland, California, resident. “If you had showed that statute to anyone in the ’hood, they’d have been like, "No, absolutely not."
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'Quite simply, bizarre': $10M Martin Luther King Jr statue receives mixed reactions on social media
The artwork was unveiled last week by members of the King family near the campus where Coretta and MLK first met. The artwork was created by conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas for the group Embrace Boston and approved by Martin Luther King III. According to a statement on the City of Boston's website, funding for the artwork was made possible through a public-private fundraising campaign. However, it is not known how much taxpayer money was used to fund the sculpture.
“When we recognize that all storytelling is an abstraction, all representation is an abstraction, hopefully it allows us to be open to more dynamic and complex forms of representation that don’t stick us to narrative that oversimplifies a person or their legacy, and I think this work really tries to get to the heart of that,” the artist says on his Web site.
Seneca added scornfully to the Compact mag, “Ten million dollars were wasted to create a masturbatory metal homage to my legendary family members — one of the all-time greatest American families.” Seneca told The Post that "woke" society enabled the costly abstract experiment to take place. He said, "The woke algorithm is just broke, I don’t know what else to tell you." Seneca added, "If you went through all of that and that’s what you came up with, something’s wrong."
Seneca told The Post that while he couldn't speak for other members of the family, he felt the 25-foot-wide 65,000-pound sculpture was a "waste of money" and should be "melted down." “A solid bronze statue? Like, what are we doing here?” he asked. “It’s doubly insulting to the black community, who still on average … too many of us are below the poverty line,” Scott said. “You’re spending $10 million on a bronze statue without heads on it? Man, it’s a joke.” Seneca said the greatest way to honor Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday was by "action." “No performative, no photo ops, put your phone down and go do [an act of service] that no one knows about,” he said.
Seneca's grandfather was one of 25 children of Jeff Scott, the son of a slave who became one of Alabama's wealthiest black landowners, according to Seneca. Obadiah, his grandfather's brother, fathered Coretta, whom Seneca met once at a family gathering before her 2006 death.