Are we unable to see a beautiful black woman and powerful black man in the same image without automatically assigning them negative roles in relation to one another?

Excerpt:
... If we declare that the paintings dismiss, ignore, or (if hip-hop already has you super-sensitive to the portrayal of black women in the media) belittle the women that they depict as well as the women that are their viewers, then are we to assume that Fahamu Pecou is himself misogynist? While the women in his paintings are sensually portrayed, they are not scantily clad. They’re not getting credit cards swiped down their butts or rolling around in mud. Being one, I happen to know that we all are college-educated. We select our own outfits and choose our own poses with little or no direction from Fahamu. In fact, Fahamu himself is often more undressed than we are – a self-objectification on view for his mostly white, male audience.

Despite his portrayal as the central and macho male in his Neo-Pop paintings, Fahamu does not consider himself a misogynist in any sense of the word. His business partner, me again, is female. He is a dedicated husband, a doting father. He finds the assertion that his work, and by extension, that he is misogynist puzzling. As he sees it, “It’s a problem that the negative stereotypes we see in hip-hop have altered the perception of black men’s relationship to women and vice versa. In my work, I am always extremely cautious of the way women appear. Still, people project the negative connotations they associate with hip-hop onto my paintings. Automatically, they become Pimp vs. Ho scenarios in their minds. In actuality, my work deals with celebrity, pop culture, and the objectification of black men as much as it does with women. I use the formula of the highly stylized and flashy pop celeb to challenge our assumptions.”

Are we, the viewers, then projecting our own negative assumptions on the paintings, or is Fahamu being naïve? Are we unable to see a beautiful black woman and powerful black man in the same image without automatically assigning them negative roles in relation to one another?