 The word "salt" that appears on the right panel of the work refers to the Atlantic slave trade, as salt was another important commodity traded at that time.Another of Basquiat's pieces, "Irony of Negro Policeman" (1981), is intended to illustrate how he believes African-Americans have been controlled by a predominantly Caucasian society.Basquiat sought to portray that African-Americans have become complicit with the "institutionalized forms of whiteness and corrupt white regimes of power" years after the Jim Crow era had ended.