I ask because of This:
R.E. Wall, director of Prescott’s Downtown Mural Project, said he and other artists were subjected to slurs from motorists as they worked on the painting at one of the town’s most prominent intersections.
“We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars,” Wall said. “We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics).”
*snip*
City Councilman Steve Blair spearheaded a public campaign on his talk show at Prescott radio station KYCA-AM (1490) to remove the mural.
In a broadcast last month, according to the Daily Courier in Prescott, Blair mistakenly complained that the most prominent child in the painting is African-American, saying: “To depict the biggest picture on the building as a Black person, I would have to ask the question: Why?”
Blair could not be reached for comment Thursday. In audio archives of his radio show, Blair discusses the mural. He insists the controversy isn’t about racism but says the mural is intended to create racial controversy where none existed before.
“Personally, I think it’s pathetic,” he says. “You have changed the ambience of that building to excite some kind of diversity power struggle that doesn’t exist in Prescott, Arizona. And I’m ashamed of that.”
The children in the painting were based on photographs of four children that attend the school…
Filed under: Culture of Life, Insanity, Politics |
Afarensis: Anthropology, Evolution, and Science 
My daughter is Hispanic (Quechua, born in Peru, came to U.S. at 2 months of age). We both feel that, to be safe, we would have to carry her U.S. passport if we visited Arizona. Why should a U.S. citizen feel that she has to carry a passport in her own country? Some people say that Arizona’s recently passed immigration law only targets people in the country illegally. What these individuals don’t understand is that the law in effect targets people in the country legally (including citizens!) who look like someone’s idea of an illegal immigrant (i.e., brown). After all, all protestations to the contrary, no one seriously believes that police will be routinely asking Caucasians to prove that they are in the country legally. City Councilman Blair provides a noteworthy example of this mentality. Apparently it is not possible for a student who actually attends a school to serve as a representative of the student body unless he is ‘white’. Nope, because everyone knows that ‘white’ is the default setting. (The whole thing reminds me of the days when the Crayola company included a ‘flesh’ crayon in its boxes–yep, ‘flesh’ was Caucasian-colored.)
My late mom loved the “Mural Mice” working in Prescott. I have no idea what she’d think of this, but I think it’s pretty horrible…