In modern day America tattooing isn’t much of a taboo thing to do anymore nor is piercings but there seems to be a favor for taboo actions being more excepted on the white body. This also includes white bodied asians, latinos, and any white passing body. When race plays a part in our everyday actions it can create conflicts when whiteness is favored. Tattooing on the black body tends to have more negative remarks then it being on a white body (and when i mean white body i don’t mean only white people). Tattooing on the black body completing washes away what could be the artistic value, freedom of expression, and any other means of having the choice to do what you want.
So what does that mean for the way people of color (brown, black people, actual colored people) express themselves? It means that this fixed lens that we are living, this white lens only allows us to favor artistic expression of the self on the white body because of conditioned thinking like “white is right”. We may not do it in a conscience state but sub consciencely we are still perceiving what the black body in an undermining way, in a way that prevents black bodied people to feel unconformable expressing themselves fully. Being in a black body and in a world that views life through a white lens does fog up what people of color have to offer to this world. We are living in an under world that tries to seek for constant freedoms and liberation, having control over ones body is a huge sign of control of the self but then thats being disturbed by other beings that are conflicted with fear they don’t know how to oversee.
Unruly Bodies 