Oh goody, America!
Just when you thought Arizona couldn't get any more creepily racist and crazy, the Union's original black sheep goes and does something not totally gut-wrenching and horrible, dare we say even slightly normal, and we once again find ourselves confused as to the true identity of America's favorite wayward state of Mexi huntin' desert dwellers.
In case you missed it, what with BP's oily marine massacre down in the Gulf, Rush Limbaugh's 4th lifetime vow of love and fidelity (but 1st featuring terrible gay Elton John!), and/or the any number of racist shenanigans goin' on ever since Arizona enacted their No, way José law prohibiting weird, Mexicany-looking brown people, here is a quick synopsis of the original terrible story and thankfully, its not-completely demented resolution.
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.
“We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars,” Wall said. “We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of 'Nigger' and 'Spics.'”The children depicted on the mural are, of course, little kids who go to the school — "a K-5 school with 380 students and the highest ethnic mix of any school in Prescott," with thousands of town residents volunteering or donating to the project...ya know, for the kids!
And while these children gathered at this happy mural encouraging "green transportation," Prescott's finest have been driving by, yelling "Nigger" and "Spic" at this school wall painted with pictures of children who attend the school, demanding this hideous montage be destroyed, or at the very least, the faces lightened to look like good, white American children, not brown or black or yellow miscreants who just wandered in from Tijuana or Thailand or God knows where.
Being Arizona, this "behavior" has naturally been encouraged by a city councilman, Steve Blair, who moonlights as some white power local radio host who uses the airwaves to rile up the good people of Prescott and demand the principal remove the black student's face from the mural or repaint the faces of the Black and Latino students as nice, normal light-skinned children. The way God intended.
Which almost happened!
But then suddenly, the principal of the school got himself some principles and decided "painting the children's faces white" because of the "controversy" may not be such a wondrous idea after all. Could be because of all the other people, like the millions of Americans who live outside the whites-only clusterf*ck town of Prescott outraged by this insane wingnut demand that the brown kids be "lightened" (a la Michael Jackson?) and descended on the town to protest this racist hysteria, which made the principal think, eh, on second thought, the mural would stay as it is, and that he was wrong. The End.
Oh wait! There's another glimmer of light coming from the scorched desert wasteland known as Prescott.
Vile, talk show creep and Prescott City councilman Steve Blair has been fired from his local-wingnut KYCA talk-show after bringing shame and humiliation on the town for screaming at paintings of elementary school children for being the wrong color, i.e., not pasty pale or the beautiful color of skim milk.
Guess even in good ol' Arizona, there is a limit to how unabashedly racist, unhinged, and hate-mongering local radio personalities can be.
But will Prescott give Blair the boot as town councilman too, or do their limits on repulsive Grand KKK wizards not extend to their local elected public officials? Perhaps they just love hateful sacks of children-bashers who crusade against colored 10-year-olds too much?!?
In 2010 Aryanzona, that sounds about right, err, white!
1 comment:
I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents. This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened. All of us ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated, but this is not the case.
I know the proponents of this law say that the majority approves of this law, but the majority is not always right. Would women or non-whites have the vote if we listen to the majority of the day, would the non-whites have equal rights (and equal access to churches, housing, restaurants, hotels, retail stores, schools, colleges and yes water fountains) if we listen to the majority of the day? We all know the answer, a resounding, NO!
Today we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. In a time of domestic crisis men of good will and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics and do what is right, not what is just popular with the majority. Some men comprehend discrimination by never have experiencing it in their lives, but the majority will only understand after it happens to them.
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