Un-fucking-believable!
Arizona School Demands Black & Latino Students’ Faces On Mural Be Changed To White
Read more at Wonkette: http://wonkette.com/415809/arizona-school-demands-black-latino-students-faces-on-mural-be-changed-to-white#ixzz0q2VrOJp2
A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school. The project’s leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children’s ethnicity ….
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).”
The racist charge is being Steve Blair, a city councilman who had a AM talk radio program in which he complained about the "black guy in the middle of the mural", preceding his statement with the hilarious qualifier, "I am not a racist individual."
But the lion's share of the blame should also fall on the lily-livered school administrators:
Wall [director of the city mural project] said school Principal Jeff Lane pressed him to make the children's faces appear happier and brighter.
"It is being lightened because of the controversy," Wall said, adding that "they want it to look like the children are coming into light."
Lane said that he received only three complaints about the mural and that his request for a touch-up had nothing to do with political pressure. "We asked them to fix the shading on the children's faces," he said. "We were looking at it from an artistic view. Nothing at all to do with race."
WTF is wrong with this country????
Edit: Looks like the school has decided to back down. Which is good but...still. It's fucking 2010. Why are we still dealing with this bullshit?
http://thestir.cafemom.com/in_the_news/104514/the_sad_arizona_school_mural
Read more at Wonkette: http://wonkette.com/415809/arizona-school-demands-black-latino-students-faces-on-mural-be-changed-to-white#ixzz0q2VrOJp2
A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school. The project’s leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children’s ethnicity ….
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).”
The racist charge is being Steve Blair, a city councilman who had a AM talk radio program in which he complained about the "black guy in the middle of the mural", preceding his statement with the hilarious qualifier, "I am not a racist individual."
But the lion's share of the blame should also fall on the lily-livered school administrators:
Wall [director of the city mural project] said school Principal Jeff Lane pressed him to make the children's faces appear happier and brighter.
"It is being lightened because of the controversy," Wall said, adding that "they want it to look like the children are coming into light."
Lane said that he received only three complaints about the mural and that his request for a touch-up had nothing to do with political pressure. "We asked them to fix the shading on the children's faces," he said. "We were looking at it from an artistic view. Nothing at all to do with race."
WTF is wrong with this country????
Edit: Looks like the school has decided to back down. Which is good but...still. It's fucking 2010. Why are we still dealing with this bullshit?
http://thestir.cafemom.com/in_the_news/104514/the_sad_arizona_school_mural