Diversity-Washing The Past
No, this is not a parody.
Yes, it's said that a WPA-era mural of George Washington "traumatizes" students.
Seriously.
Because of that Graham Piro writes at The College Fix "a Northern California public school district may remove a mural of George Washington from the halls of George Washington High School."
Personally, I'd be traumatized without George Washington and all the rest of the Founding Fathers -- who made it possible for whiney pantywads to use their free speech rights to complain about 1930s art.
Piro reports:
Two of the 13 panels are coming under fire for containing objectionable images, according to the Richmond District Blog.One of the images involves involves Washington gesturing toward a group of explorers who are walking by the body of a presumably deceased Native American depicted in the color gray. Another depicts Washington next to several slaves performing various types of manual labor, a YouTube video of the murals showed.
The Richmond District Blog reports the group's conclusion:
We come to these recommendations due to the continued historical and current trauma of Native Americans and African Americans with these depictions in the mural that glorifies slavery, genocide, colonization, manifest destiny, white supremacy, oppression, etc. This mural doesn't represent SFUSD values of social justice, diversity, united, student-centered. It's not student-centered if it's focused on the legacy of artists, rather than the experience of the students.
Meanwhile, consider the actual meaning and intent of the person who painted it:
Fergus M. Bordewich, a historian, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that the intention of the artist should be taken into account when considering the intent of the images:The mural's painter, Victor Arnautoff, was a protégé of Diego Rivera and a communist. He included those images not to glorify Washington, but rather to provoke a nuanced evaluation of his legacy. The scene with the dead Native American, for instance, calls attention to the price of "manifest destiny." Arnautoff's murals also portray the slaves with humanity and the several live Indians as vigorous and manly.Bordewich, in a phone interview with The Fix, said there "is a deeply wrongheaded habit to project today's norms, values, ideals backwards in time to find our ancestors inevitably falling short."
"It betrays a very troubling intolerance of art and the ambiguity of art and the aspirations of art," he said.
It won't be long before the name of the school itself "George Washington" will be traumatizing students and will need to be changed. After all, he owned slaves.
That the slaves' eventual freedom is a large part of Washington's legacy does not matter. That, if not for "Manifest Destiny," California would still be the Mexican state of Alta California, and would likely be, like the rest of Mexico, largely corrupt and poor, does not matter.
And it won't stop at Washington.
A statue of Thomas Jefferson at Hofstra University is already under fire. How long until the Jefferson Memorial must come down?
We must condemn these things that don't fit into the modern worldview of political correctness; things that blue-collar Americans, in their ignorance, revere.
Our national heroes must be socialists - Che Guevara, Cesar Chavez, Eugene Debs, Emma Goldberg, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Alger Hiss, et al.
Conan the Grammarian at May 27, 2019 6:54 AM
"This mural doesn't represent SFUSD values of social justice, diversity, united, student-centered."
Someone's values don't include grammar. "Social justice", as practiced, isn't a value. It's a cost. And what is "united"?
I hope, for that group's sake, that someone miswrote what they said.
Just when I think my opinion of university "students" can't get any lower, it does.
Kent McManigal at May 27, 2019 7:19 AM
Um, Kent, this is about a high school - the George Washington High School in the Richmond District of San Francisco.
SFUSD = San Francisco Unified School District.
Conan the Grammarian at May 27, 2019 7:30 AM
If they didn't have a picture of dead indians and working slaves, they'd be accused of ignoring the past.
NicoleK at May 27, 2019 7:34 AM
It's not student-centered
And that's the crux of the problem and the complaint.
Kevin at May 27, 2019 10:07 AM
In order to understand that we have progressed, we need to understand where we came from. Eliminating all art depicting slavery because it hurts our feelz ends up erasing the very fact that slavery existed. Like a certain politician who claims that the jewish ghettos in germany in WWII were only a temporary hardship till "they were moved somewhere else". right.
cc at May 27, 2019 12:49 PM
Erase history. In "Waking Up White", the author refers to what might be called family capital. Stories of courage, ingenuity, endurance, compassion, etc.
Erase history and there is no cultural capital. The individual is naked and alone before the state.
richard aubrey at May 27, 2019 4:01 PM
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