A public mural in Prescott, AZ has drawn the ire of racists who have demanded that it be destroyed, but as a compromise it’s been decided to simply caucasian-up the children depicted in the piece. As the Arizonia Republic reports, “The “Go on Green” mural, which covers two walls outside Miller Valley Elementary School, was designed to advertise a campaign for environmentally friendly transportation. It features portraits of four children, with a Hispanic boy as the dominant figure.” The children depicted in the mural are based on photographs of actual children who attend the school.
As the piece was being painted some passersby would stop and shout racial epithets at the artists and children working on the mural. Prescott City Councilman Blair then began to attack the mural on his radio talk show, and demanded that the mural be removed. Blair has said, “I am not a racist individual, but I will tell you depicting a black guy in the middle of that mural, based upon who’s president of the United States today and based upon the history of this community when I grew up, we had four black families … to depict the biggest picture on that building as a black person, I would have to ask the question, ‘Why?” Of his constituents Blair said, “What these people don’t like is somebody forcing diversity down their throats.” (note: it seems strange that people of color are always suppose to see themselves in representations of caucasians, but the reverse is never true.) In response to the “controversy” R.E. Wall, director of Prescott’s Downtown Mural Project, was asked to lighten the faces of the children depicted.
What’s particularly disgusting about this story is not that a bunch of bigots object to a prominent public depictions of darkly colored children, but that the paintings they object to are based on actual children who attend the school. Mr. Blair and his people have said to these children in this school, and within their city, that they are not the right color to represent their community. That these children should somehow consider their skin too political or too controversial to be represented in a public mural. Imagine, for one moment, what it would be like to be one of those children: to be told that because of your skin color your depiction offends a city councilman and parts of your community.
This type of racism is one of the most monstrous because it grinds down children and robs them of their belief that they are full fledged human beings with the same potential as any other. In the end, it robs all of us of their potential and diminishes our humanity.
