Posted on 04/16/2019 10:40:00 AM PDT by PBRCat
A Depression-era mural depicting white children playing outside in the winter was removed from Percy Julian Middle School in Oak Park because school officials said it failed to represent the school’s diversity.
While some said the mural was upsetting to students of color who felt it excluded them from the school, a local historian likened the removal to a “modern-day book burning.”
Cynthia Brito Millan, a coordinator for the middle school’s Social Justice Club, said the push to remove the mural began in February at a district school board meeting. Students expressed frustration about an atmosphere of exclusion for students of color — who make up 45 percent of the student body — and cited the mural as an example.
“This mural made students feel invisible because it doesn’t reflect the current student body,” Brito Millan said. “How can a student learn in a healthy environment when they don’t feel they are being seen?”
“There is nothing offensive with the mural; it just shows all white kids playing,” said Sokol, an author and Oak Park resident. “Just because it doesn’t have any black kids, doesn’t make it offensive. It doesn’t display any stereotypes at all. That’s how Oak Park looked back then. You can’t erase history.”
Barbara Bernstein, a founder of the New Deal Art Registry, said the removal of the mural is a missed opportunity for students to learn about the history around them.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicago.suntimes.com ...
Who said you can’t erase history? It’s being done by the fascist left every day.
It would have been so easy to add some black kids and adults to it or even do a color wash on some figures... I think they want rid of it because it shows a time when kids could have fun and probaby because all the fun activities are “white.” There is no knockout game, no bullying, no lurking drug dealers, nothing leftists would enjoy.
Besides, the poor African-American transgendered horse is getting whipped.
Mural is really charming. Charm went out with the sixties.
The commies did this and are still doing it ERASE HISTORY AND MAKE UP YOUR OWN SH##, burn books, take down statues, re write history, remove the cross its offensive to Muslims, anything depicting whites remove immediately. How is it that the majority in this country is allowing the minorities to sh## all over them?
Pretty ironic, considering that the WPA is a symbol of the grandeur of socialism brought on by FDR.
Only a matter of time before they come for the Norman Rockwell artwork.
All white people in the mural, and no people of color? In San Francisco, they want a WPA mural removed from a school because it depicts Indians and blacks.
Yes, many of those who worked for the WPA in it’s “art” programs were at the least socialists and trying to advance that thru the WPA and other FDR programs. Certainly not every young man who rebuilt parks etc. under the WPA, because that was the only work he could get during the Great Depression, was some kind of political activist but some were.
>Why are the students dictating how they should be taught?
You are falling for the scheme.
The administrators want socialism but they can’t justify it to the public and legislators who pay them on their own.
So the administrators quietly hire only leftist teachers.
The teachers quietly indoctrinate the kids.
Then the kids launch loud “spontaneous” public protests that demand and justify what the administrators wanted to do anyway.
The fish rots from the head.
This is sad. That is a sweet mural and at the time that was exactly what the demographics probably were.
They should have left it and put up a modern one also, with the demographics of today’s town.
You are pre-supposing that the "students" at Oak Park School are Americans.
What are they going to do about the Mona Lisa?
Statue of David?
Sistine Chapel ceiling?
It is getting pretty stupid in the USA today.
The real objection to the artwork is that it activity-shames all the kids whose only activity now is social media on their iPhones.
This WPA mural is a lot different from ours
Ours were brawny working man Steinbeck looking
Several years ago, in another manufactured crisis, Oak Park removed another WPA mural in a school library which was offensive because it depicted children throughout the world in traditional clothing associated with their nations and cultures. No complaints about the Dutch, the Eskimos, the Chinese, or the American children in the painting (the American boy was attired with a straw hat and overalls like Huckleberry Finn) — it was all about the “racist” portrayal of African children in native dress. The painting would not have been inaccurate if republished in “National Geographic Magazine.” It is all about empty virtue signaling and the Left forcing the majority to capitulate.
What would be wrong about doing a new mural to show how much things have changed? They could have some of the diversity holding knives and stealing sneakers....
It’s OK to be white
Pathetic.
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