Friday, June 4, 2010

Arizona Determined to Ruin Rebel Girl's Summer

...and it's only the first week of June!

Take a look at this latest report:

Wonkette : Arizona School Demands Black & Latino Students’ Faces On Mural Be Changed To White


It's true!

excerpt:

"Hard to find even the Gallows Humor in this story, so maybe we won’t even try. Maybe it’s time to admit that large chunks of America are in the hands of unreconstructed racists and vulgar idiots, and that the popular election of a black man as president just might’ve pushed these furious, economically doomed old white people into a final rage that is going to end very, very badly. Ready? Here you go: An Arizona elementary school mural featuring the faces of kids who attend the school has been the subject of constant daytime drive-by racist screaming, from adults, as well as a radio talk-show campaign (by an actual city councilman, who has an AM talk-radio show) to remove the black student’s face, and now the school principal has ordered the faces of the Latino and Black students to be changed to Caucasian skin."

From the New York Daily News:

     The mural flap comes amid growing tensions over Arizona's strict new immigration law that has drawn nationwide criticism and praise.
     The ranting of one city councilman seems to have revved up the controversy in the community.
     "Art is in the eye of the beholder, but I say [the mural] looks like graffiti in L.A.," Councilman Steve Blair said.
     "I am not a racist individual," Blair said on a radio show last month, "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 — who I have been very good friends with for years — to depict the biggest picture on that building as a black person, I would have to ask the question, 'Why?'
     The "black guy" in the mural is based on a student of Mexican descent, a school official said.
*
(photo from New York Daily News - Hinshaw/AP)




Blair defends himself

UPDATE: SCHOOL DISTRICT STANDS BY THE MURAL

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat your friend,
Do it in the name of heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing
On that judgement day,
On the bloody morning after,
One tin soldier rides away..."

Anonymous said...

An apt, well-timed invocation of that good old song, 2:27.

RG, I can only join you in shaking my head, gaping, gasping, and tearing my hair. It's horrifying, stupefying, maddening what's going on in AZ and much of the rest of the country these days. I do hope that what you intimated is right: that these are a dying breed, enraged by things not going their way. The only other comfort I can offer at the moment is that the pendulum will swing back toward compassion and thoughtfulness about poverty, someday. But why must we have such pendulum swings? Social progress and the expansion of moral horizons is oh, so very, very slow....

Horrifiedly with you,
MAH

Anonymous said...

I'm waiting to see how this is defended...

JohnL said...

Gosh, I forgot that, forty years ago, liberals and progressives made "revenge fantasy" movies too! Somehow, those scenes seem less terribly acted than the did to me back then.
As I understand it, the Arizona population is very polarized between the young, who have no interest in all this craziness (and who are often Latino) and the old, who are white and, well, nearly dead.
So, if necessary, we can wait 'em out.
This particular story, though, is almost too bad to be believed.

Roy Bauer said...

This is just too stupid. My guess: they'll back off of this crazy plan. They'll 'splain it as some sort of misunderstanding.
It won't be easy, though:
"Oh, so that's not a 'black guy'? Well, then, OK, you can leave it up there. Sorry for the confusion."
Or maybe: "we have been informed that that is only the first mural. The second will be all-white!"
But I am looking forward to any kind of justification or 'splainin'.

Rebel Girl said...

Update from Prescott:

http://www.prescottenews.com/news/latest/steve-blair-fired-by-kyca

Well worth listening to the audio link too!

mother earth said...

RIDICULOUS

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...