Mural creates quite a stir in Prescott after artist is asked to lighten faces
PRESCOTT, AZ - Recent changes made to the colorful mural on the front of Miller Valley Elementary school have some in this town like Barbara Braswell turning every shade of angry.
"Do you see? Do you see where they tried to lighten that guy's face up there?," she asked her children.
"I think it's absolutely unbelievable. I think it's teaching our kids that racism is alright," Susan Griffin agreed.
Two months in the making, the mural depicts children escaping a crowded cityscape into more natural surroundings, but some in the city have taken exception to the colors in the mural.
Some have called for the colors of the children's skin to be changed. School board officials approached the artist, R.E. Wall, demanding they be lightened.
Hate is a strong word. Prejudice is real in Arizona and it not as simple and black and white. The so-called brown people which I feel is insulting to use but the term has not yet been banned to the wrong side of PC yet. For the native Mexican Americans in Arizona, many have been there many more generations than any recent white visitor or residents.
These brown people are the subject of discrimination and are under attack for merely being who they are, the children of God – perhaps not the one true white god – but legitimate children never the less.
I can remember listening to a co-worker well over a decade ago about how her son was an ace soccer player and how he got discouraged from participating in the all white soccer team at an exclusive Catholic high school in Tucson. I say exclusive in the money sense and not any class sense. White trash with money got more respect from the religious males and females that administered veiled hate and prejudice there like a lot of other institutions, parts and geographies around the country.
Prescott was one of many territorial capitals of Arizona. Barry Goldwater would announce every campaign for Senate and the Presidency on the steps of the old state capital building. It is north and high in the mountains and somewhat on the way to Flagstaff.
When talking racism in Arizona, Phoenix and Tucson are big cities and relatively cosmopolitan compared to Prescott which is part of the original Mormon territory of Deseret which I think they still plan to annex and secede with one day, no doubt in their dreams.
I guess that the recent anti-immigrant legislation let demons fly out of Pandora’s or I should say Robert E. Lee’s box. This recent sponsored by the lunatic cracker default governor Brewer legislation gives people the desire to keep the front door pure in that public display of white people only in murals reflecting the unrealistic bubble world of the tea baggers and their toxic Tea Party.
It is okay. I am glad that the liberal east coast media is outraged by this blatant racism in the fictional state of Deseret or one of its counties called Arizona.
The front door in the Global reality can be as pure as you want it to be. The true reality is that the Internet, DVDs, communications technologies are making the true world of the very near future a reality – and through the back door so to speak of our culture.
While the rednecks of Arizona are little different than the rednecks of Afghanistan or Pakistan, the new global reality is taking shape and it is about people first and foremost and the color of people have no color anymore in any common globalists’ eyes.
