Arizona School Changes Latino And Black Students' Faces On Mural To White
Arizona School Changes Latino And Black Students' Faces On Mural To White
Update:
I am happy to report that the school has reacted to public outcry and rethought their outrageous decision. Principal Jeff Lane apologized, declaring that he had made a mistake, and that they would "go back with their original theme."
It's great that Lane apologized but still tragic that this incident happened in the first place. Sadly, the underlying attitudes still remain.
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Did I read that correctly? Hard to believe but yes, I did. An Arizona elementary school mural, featuring the faces of kids who attend the school, has attracted the constant yelling of racial epithets and slurs from passing motorists, and demands that the non-white students' faces be removed from the mural. In response, the principal of the Prescott school has ordered that the faces of the Latino and Black students in the mural be repainted as light-skinned children.
This is a principal with no principles. How can Jeff Lane, the school prinicpal, believe that he is promoting educational excellence for all his students by denying who they are? Ironically, Miller Valley Elementary School has the highest ethnic mix of any school in Prescott. The "Go on Green" mural was designed to advertise a campaign for environmentally friendly transportation and features four children. A Hispanic boy is the central figure, and all the faces were taken from photographs of children enrolled in the K-5 school.
But R.E. Wall, director of Prescott's Downtown Mural Project, said that he had been asked by Lane to lighten the faces of children depicted in the giant public mural "because of the controversy."
What lesson can these children, many of whom have been involved in creating the mural, possibly get from this? Will they learn that when bullies are mean to you, you should appease them and hope that they leave you alone? Will they yet again feel that slap in the face, just like my friend Juanita who entered kindergarten in Phoenix forty years ago, speaking only Spanish, and was told to come back when she could speak English?
Arizona has taken some extreme and racist stands in the past few weeks: first there came the passage of SB 1070, which allows police to ask for legal documentation of anyone who appears to look illegal; next Governor Jan Brewer signed a second bill, this time banning the state's schools from teaching ethnic studies; after that Senator Russell Pearce announced his intention to push for legislation to deny citizenship to children of undocumented aliens. Following this came news that the Arizona Department of Education is telling schools to remove any teachers with heavy accents from English classes.
But this latest action reveals even more fear and loathing. Are we witnessing the last, desperate stand of a white majority, afraid that they will one day be a minority? If they keep this up, it seems pretty clear that we are moving along a disastrous path, and things will not turn out well.
When I moved to the U.S. from my native England, I was excited to be entering a country of immigrants, where I would encounter many diverse ethnicities and cultures. I believed that welcoming such diversity was what this nation was about. What's going on in Arizona, and in some other parts of the country, is shameful and tragic, but it is also alarming. We must work to put a stop to this hatred.
I am happy to report that the school has reacted to public outcry and rethought their outrageous decision. Principal Jeff Lane apologized, declaring that he had made a mistake, and that they would "go back with their original theme."
It's great that Lane apologized but still tragic that this incident happened in the first place. Sadly, the underlying attitudes still remain.
_______________________________________________________________
Did I read that correctly? Hard to believe but yes, I did. An Arizona elementary school mural, featuring the faces of kids who attend the school, has attracted the constant yelling of racial epithets and slurs from passing motorists, and demands that the non-white students' faces be removed from the mural. In response, the principal of the Prescott school has ordered that the faces of the Latino and Black students in the mural be repainted as light-skinned children.
This is a principal with no principles. How can Jeff Lane, the school prinicpal, believe that he is promoting educational excellence for all his students by denying who they are? Ironically, Miller Valley Elementary School has the highest ethnic mix of any school in Prescott. The "Go on Green" mural was designed to advertise a campaign for environmentally friendly transportation and features four children. A Hispanic boy is the central figure, and all the faces were taken from photographs of children enrolled in the K-5 school.
But R.E. Wall, director of Prescott's Downtown Mural Project, said that he had been asked by Lane to lighten the faces of children depicted in the giant public mural "because of the controversy."
What lesson can these children, many of whom have been involved in creating the mural, possibly get from this? Will they learn that when bullies are mean to you, you should appease them and hope that they leave you alone? Will they yet again feel that slap in the face, just like my friend Juanita who entered kindergarten in Phoenix forty years ago, speaking only Spanish, and was told to come back when she could speak English?
Arizona has taken some extreme and racist stands in the past few weeks: first there came the passage of SB 1070, which allows police to ask for legal documentation of anyone who appears to look illegal; next Governor Jan Brewer signed a second bill, this time banning the state's schools from teaching ethnic studies; after that Senator Russell Pearce announced his intention to push for legislation to deny citizenship to children of undocumented aliens. Following this came news that the Arizona Department of Education is telling schools to remove any teachers with heavy accents from English classes.
But this latest action reveals even more fear and loathing. Are we witnessing the last, desperate stand of a white majority, afraid that they will one day be a minority? If they keep this up, it seems pretty clear that we are moving along a disastrous path, and things will not turn out well.
When I moved to the U.S. from my native England, I was excited to be entering a country of immigrants, where I would encounter many diverse ethnicities and cultures. I believed that welcoming such diversity was what this nation was about. What's going on in Arizona, and in some other parts of the country, is shameful and tragic, but it is also alarming. We must work to put a stop to this hatred.
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