More BS from the wacky world of Arizona
 

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 (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics).”

The children depicted on the mural, as we mentioned before but feel compelled to repeat, are little kids who go to the school — “a K-5 school with 380 students and the highest ethnic mix of any school in Prescott. Wall said thousands of town residents volunteered or donated to the project.”
And these children, for the past several months as this happy mural encouraging “green transportation” was being painted by local artists, have been treated to the city of Prescott’s finest citizens driving by and yelling “Nigger” and “Spic” at this school wall painted with pictures of the children who attend the school. And this has been encouraged by a city councilman, Steve Blair, who uses his local radio talk show to rile up these people and demand the mural be destroyed.

And now the faces are being painted white, “because of the controversy.”
Remember where you were, when you could still laugh about teabaggers and racists and Arizonans, because funny time is almost over. If the unemployment keeps up — one in five adult white males has no job and will never have a job again — and people keep walking away from their stucco heaps they can’t afford and the states and cities and counties and towns keep passing their aggressive racist laws to rile up the trash even more, shit’s going to very soon become very bad, and whether it’s the National Guard having wars in the Sunbelt Exurbs against armies of crazy old white people who are finally using their hundreds of millions of guns, or whole Latino neighborhoods burned to the ground the way the Klan used to burn down black neighborhoods a century ago, we are in for a long dark night and no light-colored paint is going to fix that. [AZCentral via Wonkette operative AZW88]


Read more at Wonkette: http://wonkette.com/415809/arizona-s...#ixzz0pw8pvaA7

There's a story on this where a guy basically pulls every "i'm not racist but... " line in the book.

If I can find it I'll post it. This was just ridiculous. Although I don't think they're repainting the kids "white" they were "lightening them, making them look like they're entering the light." Or some bullshit like that.

http://www.prescottenews.com/images/...e/themural.jpg

"The pressure stayed up consistently," Wall said. "We had two months of cars shouting at us."

He attributes the start of the racial controversy to recent comments that Prescott City Councilman Steve Blair made on his KYCA radio talk show about the mural.

On his May 21 show, for instance, Blair said, "I am not a racist individual, but I will tell you depicting a black guy in the middle of that mural, based upon who’s president of the United States today and based upon the history of this community when I grew up, we had four black families — who I have been very good friends with for years — to depict the biggest picture on that building as a black person, I would have to ask the question, ’Why?’"

On Wednesday, Blair again emphasized that "I’m not a racist by any stretch of the imagination, but whenever people start talking about diversity, it’s a word I can’t stand."

Blair questions whether the mural is representative of Prescott, noting, "The focus doesn’t need to be on what’s different; the focus doesn’t need to be on the minority all the time."

link

and BTW...the kid that is assumed to be black...is Hispanic


If this keeps up, what's going to happen with some of these kids that winds up going to a college that requires them to have credits in minority studies to graduate?

Talk about a racist article.

Congrats DamonSeid!

That's the one DS, "I'm not a racist but...." "We had four black families, who I have been friends with..." "based upon who’s president of the United States today and based upon the history of this community when I grew up,"

Dude needs to learn how to make complete sentences and learn that the line "I'm not a racist but..." is equivalent to "With all due respect..."

Ya know, I had a feeling I would see your username over here, making your usual dumb contributions to "racial" discussions.:)

:rolleyes:

I was lurking on that page because I've never heard of that site before, and I can see why. I'm sorry but any site/article that's against racism and bigotry yet freely uses "white trash" and stereo-types whites as gun owning nazi bigots loses credibility in my eyes.

Have you looked around on that site; the language in some of those posts? Do you not see that it can be polarizing to people not on the " Everyone who is white is evil, racist, bigot, white-trash, Nazi" bandwagon?

Wonkette has a bias, but there are plenty of other articles about this topic.

I agree.

I don't consider that racism, but such bigotry should not be tolerated and is indicative of the ignorant trying to call out ignorance.

I know

It was stupid, leave the damn mural alone. He got his 15 seconds of fame and he lost his radio gig, hope he feels it was worth it.

I don't think ever in my life I've heard or seen or read so much "Us Vs. Them" talk in my life, aren't we supposed to be beyond this by now? It comes from both sides of the spectrum so no, it's not " pissed off middle aged WASPy tea baggers" behind all the contention.

That website, and others like it, IMHO sells fear and mistrust which leads to hatred. White supremacy groups use the same fear mongering techniques as well. These people are different, they have different values, they are holding you back, you are not getting a job/raise because of them.

Mind you I'm not saying that Wonkette is on par with the KKK but they are using the same playbook if you ask me.

You need to get out the house more. :)

Anyway, bigotry doesn't move me either way. I was just co-signing about that website. Racism doesn't require bigotry so I hope prejudice and racial niceties are not what your racism-o-meter (also known as the "Are we there yet?"-o-meter) is based on. I also hope it isn't based on Obama and "some of my bestfriends are Black."

I'm not racist, my cat is black.

I'm not sure I get the Obama reference. Do you mean the train of thought that racism is dead because we have a black president, or you just don't agree with/like Obama cuz he's black? Nope, I don't subscribe to either.

This. You said you thought we were beyond "this" by now and I don't know why you would think that. Despite how well people have learned to hide their racial and ethnic prejudices, they still express them in more anonymous settings or settings where they feel they are around likeminded others.

I meant in an evolutionary way. I believe its our animal instincts that bring out racism and bigotry, it's because we humans are tribal.

Like the Miike Snow song "Animal"

I change shapes just to hide in this place but I'm still, I'm still an animal
Nobody knows it but me when I slip yeah I slip
I'm still an animal

I disagree 100% with all of this. Tribal is not synonymous with (animal) instinct. "Tribes" are still human constructions and even animals (many of which also have tribal groups and hierarchies) have constructions that are arguably nurture as much as (or even more than) nature. Animals are taught, as are we.

Back to the lightened darkies in this thread, though.

Thank you.

Furthermore, I don't understand how the "Tea Party" is somehow racist or prejudice because it happens to be mostly white (although anecdotally, the Tea Parties I've attended have had plenty Hispanics, African-Americans, etc). If that was the basis for judging such prejudices, then I think you would have to consider BET (among other things) as racist. I don't, it doesn't make sense, but it would have to be the same line of thinking. [For MysticCat, I'm not responding to PiKA, I'm responding to the article.]

A common complaint is something to the effect of "well, it's racist because a few members hurled racial slurs." Whether or not that is true is one thing (I'm sure someone can provide a video where it proves it, whatever), the same line of thinking would have to follow that the Democratic party is racist as some of it's members have taken to racial slurs (speaking of course of Robert Byrd and Lyndon B. Johnson). It's just more irrationalism, on both sides.

If BET is racist then the arguement can be made that lifetime and spike TV are both sexist ;-) they are just catering to a specific target audience. As for tea partys, never been to one, but I heard there was open invites posted on online boards prior to certain events welcoming infiltrators to show up and try to make them look bad in front of the cameras.

BET and Lifetime don't have the power through ownership and group interest to be racist or sexist. Beyond the majority Black and majority women surfaces there are whites and men making many of the key decisions.

Are you kidding me? No, I didn't look at the site, but I'm not surprised. I hate it when some people blame an entire race for their own problems.


THIS
It's dumb.

That's not really the argument that was put before people over the tea party.

the argument simply seemed to be:
the group is mostly homogenous, therefore racist.

I don't care about that.

what do you mean? You don't care that people are being seen as racist just they're white?

That what EW is typing about isn't the same topic that I'm typing about or care about.

No. Sound the alarm and call the Feds.

Late back into this thread, but what's been going on in Arizona and Texas should clearly show the opposite of the US being beyond anything right now.

it's like the real nuts are coming out of the closet en masse.

I chuckle when people think just because the US has a black president racism automatically goes away...

Or is it a response to the nut in the White House?

Maybe the "real nuts" already were out and more responded to the call. (that's what she said)