In the symposium entitled “Inside and Outside Genre: On Portraiture and Black Subjectivity”, Professor Simon Gikandi discussed the systemic marginalization of Black identity and personhood in American portraiture. The speaker presented various portraits showing a White person as the central figure with a Black figure relegated to the margin, which is intended to demonstrate the power and prestige of the dominant race. For instance, a portrait of George Washington by John Trumball shows the slave named William Lee seemingly disappearing on the margin (22:28). The painting is presented as an objective depiction of social and economic reality at the time the work was made.