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

[onestepforward]

From Wonkette:
http://wonkette.com/415809/arizona-school-demands-black-latino-students-faces-on-mural-be-changed-to-white

snip-

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.
This is America, in 2010, and there’s a dozen more states and endless white-trash municipalities ready to Officially Adopt this same Official Racist Insanity.

From the Arizona Republic:

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.
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Read more at Wonkette: http://wonkette.com/415809/arizona-school-demands-black-latino-students-faces-on-mural-be-changed-to-white#ixzz0puwje200

Added: :grouphug: to our Democratic brothers and sisters in Arizona.

[nebenaube]

1. war is coming! n/t

[Tesha]

28. It's not coming, it's here.

It's been here ever since the 1860s. It never ended because we
never actually forced its end. (You can't really force the end of
an ethnic war anyway).

And more and more, one-and-a-half of our political parties* has
used the warriors on one side to win their political battles and so
aided and fomented the war.

The only difference is that now, partisans on the other side are
finally starting to be universally-aware that the war is still going
on as more and more of the vile racism and policies bursts back
into the open, obvious to anyone not comatose.

Will it fracture our country again? I'd say the odds are pretty high
that it will.

Tesha


* Republicans, obviously, but also conservative Democrats as well.
Both are very happy to play the race card to gain and hold power.

[Ozymanithrax]

2. A boycott is not strong enough...We need to build a wall around Arizona...n/t

[Iggo]

18. No shit. Let 'em have their wall. (n/t)

[LaurenG]

3. dear artists, just say no

I don't understand how anyone could find fault with a mural of children. :(

[Xipe Totec]

4. Paint me some Black Angels

Translation for my English speaking friends:

Black culture in Latin America - Let us never forget, what an important part of our heritage this is.

Oh world, to that black woman, Juana
what a bad hand was dealt,
Her black man has died,
yes sir.

—Ay, my dearest compadre,
¡he was so healthy, my black man!
I could not feel his folds,
I could not see his bones;
as I became thinner,
I used my body as measure,
and he began to thin out
as I thinned out as well.

My black man has died;
as God willed it;
he will be next to him now
like an angel in heaven.

Face reality, comadre,
black angels don't exist.


Oh Painter who paints bedroom saints,
painter who's heart knows no land,
that while painting these saints
never remembers your countrymen,
that when you paint virgins,
always paints such beautiful angels,
but never remembers
to paint a black angel.


Painter born in my country,
with a foreign paintbrush,
painter that follows the path,
of so many painters of old,
even if the Virgin is white,
paint her some black angels.


There are no painters to paint
angels for my countrymen.
I want some white angels
next to the brown skinned ones.
Angels from good families
are not enough for my heaven.


If there is a painter of saints left,
if there is a painter of heavens left,
to make a heaven for this land,
with the hues of my countrymen,
with angels of fine pearl,
and angels of auburn hair,
with blond angels,
and brown skinned angels,
with white angels,
and Indian angels,
and black angels,
walking along eating mangoes
through the neighborhoods of heaven.


If I go to heaven someday,
I will search for him there,
my devil of an angel,
my dark black seraphim.

If you know how to paint your land,
you should paint your heaven thus,
with a sun that toasts the whites,
and makes the black ones sweat,
for that’s what it’s for,
warm and good to all.
So even if the Virgin is white,
paint me some black angels.


Is there no church anywhere,
Is there no church in any country,
where they have allowed
black angels on the canvass?
If not, where do they go,
the angels of my country,
the little vultures of the Guaribe,
or the black crows of Barvolento?

Painter that paints this country,
if you want to paint your heaven,
when you paint angels,
remember your countrymen
and next to the blond angel
side by side with the brunette one
Even if the Virgin is white
paint me some black angels.

Andrés Eloy Blanco

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FLWnX1iLY4

[onestepforward]

17. A very beautiful poem.

Thank you for posting it.

[Xipe Totec]

27. Thanks!

The music is not half-bad either.

:hi:

[11 Bravo]

5. Holy shit! I just assumed that this was satire!

[smoogatz]

6. Holy shit.

The wingers really are losing their fucking minds. I guess there's no point in asking "have you no decency?" Or even "have you no shame?"

[smoogatz]

7. dupe

[jillan]

8. For those of you that saw my thread on republicans full of hate, this is what sparked it.

I'm so fed up with these people!

[onestepforward]

12. So sorry, Jillan.

Living in Texas, I can relate. Hang in there!

[DevonRex]

15. Aw, sweetie, I'm so very sorry you have to deal with this.

At least you can come here to vent and that we will listen. It's not much, I know.

I'm beginning to think that Democrats in red states need to procreate more or something. Or that all of us should move to AZ and help you take it over.

[Lilyeye]

20. Me too. They're so sickening and disgusting.

[alstephenson]

9. "after complaints about the children's ethnicity"...

WTF???? I mean really, WTF!?!

[MattBaggins]

16. I feel ya

I thought I had heard just about every story that could leave me speechless and then along comes something like this.

[Dappleganger]

10. Welcome to Aryanzona.

These people have no SHAME around little children???

[SargeUNN]

11. Sad indeed

I talked to a woman the other day here in the Phoenix Area and she supported SB1070. As I told her of the track record of such a bill and went into more detail than she had heard all she could do was shrug her shoulders. She used the old stand by that the "illegals" were taking up all the space in the emergency rooms and she was tired of paying for their healthcare, and then she excused herself from the conversation and left.

The failure of knowledge and even an interest in getting all the facts before jumping on board a side of this issue is shocking but dominates the way these issues are historically and currently done. I wanted to ask her more questions about who these people were and suggest more productive methods, but she took off and honestly wouldn't have listened anyway.

[HockeyMom]

14. It is what it is

I work at a Title 1 school in Florida which is 90% Hispanic and Black. Why would these kids paint Anglo looking kids to represent THEM? Why did Mattel even bother to make Black and Hispanic Barbies? Just trying to pretend they don't exist, won't make them go away, Arizona.

[indy legend]

19. These people are morons but the real problem is

most of them get ALL of their info from Fox News and righty talk radio so they really think they have all the "facts'. We will never completely win this battle until there is meaningful media reform in this country so the truth can be heard and not just the right's version being spewed on 95% of the talk stations 24/7/365.

[nichomachus]

13. Stalin used to do this

He would just have people painted out of pictures and removed even from photographs.

[WolverineDG]

21. Hope the artists say no

funny how the more Reichmaster Brewer insists AZ isn't a Nazi state, the more racist bullshit falls out of the closet.

dg

[BreweryYardRat]

22. 1. I can't believe it's not satire.

2. Holy shit, the principal ordered the bleaching of art depicting his own students. Anyone that spineless (and yes, I'm aware that spinelessness is common among school administrators) needs to be fired.

[montanto]

24. Spinelessness is precisely how they keep their jobs.

[historian]

23. is there no end to our stupidity as a nation???

[AllenVanAllen]

25. What an un-American gesture.

Does this principle have no fucking shame? I guess we'll see if he does, once this hits the main-steam.

[Kitty Herder]

26. I wonder how this principal intends to explain this to the children.

Sorry kids, your faces are too controversial? Sorry kids, grown-ups are complete and total assholes sometimes?

How incredibly hurtful this must be for those children. It blows my mind.