America's Finest

Vincent Valdez’s America’s Finest series consists of six individual drawings of six boxers of different ethnicities. When he first exhibited them, he displayed the following poem on the gallery wall: 

These poor men, these boxers, these representatives of multitudes 

ranked by color of skin, width of nose, and kink of hair, 

stand guard above the sacred symbols that mortared and bricked, 

hammered and sawed, planted and picked this country 

with broken, bandaged hands. 

These fighters represent, in Valdez’s words, “icons of those who have stepped up and answered the call and those who have slaved away and built the nation.” In this series, boxing becomes a metaphor for the continuous fight that communities of color wage for civil rights; those "multitudes" who are beaten down, but never broken. 

This boxer is dressed in satin shorts emblazoned with the words “Big Chief” and an incongruous, stereotypical “Indian” feather headdress. He raises his gloved hands, a useless defense against the onslaught of arrows that pierce his body and refer to traditional Native American weaponry. But, like Saint Sebastian, who survived being shot with arrows for converting others to Christianity, this Indigenous martyr symbolizes his communities’ perseverance in battling for social justice. He is not felled by the arrows, but rather appears ready to keep fighting, invincible.