Millennials and college students just can’t seem to bear the site of statues dedicated to past presidents and historical figures. Every week, there are different stories of artwork removed after student protests. Several presidents, including founding father and author of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson, have been targeted by activists — and the statues dedicated to them have been quietly removed or even destroyed.
The latest wave of outrage comes from students in a California high school, who are targeting the nation’s first president. A painting of George Washington is so traumatizing for students that they are asking for it to be removed from sight at once. The difference in this instance is that alumni are supporting keeping the murals in place — stating that they are not offensive and are progressive for their time.
The murals of George Washington that students find so disturbing adorn the walls of George Washington High School in Northern California. There are 13 panels in all, and some students are calling them racist and traumatizing. The murals were painted in 1936 and portray scenes from the time of the nation’s founding, including the president the school was named for. Two of the panels are so traumatic that students want them to be removed.
The targeted panels depict scenes from the 1770s. One shows slaves working in a field in the background, the other shows George Washington speaking to Native Americans. Benjamin Franklin is also included in one of the paintings. A group of teachers and students have called for the immediate removal of all 13 panels because they represent “white supremacy”, not a historical moment or image.
According to the traumatized, frightened students:
“We come to these recommendations due to the continued historical and current trauma of Native Americans and African Americans with these depictions in the mural that glorifies slavery, genocide, colonization, manifest destiny, white supremacy, oppression, etc. This mural doesn’t represent SFUSD values of social justice, diversity, united, student-centered. It’s not student-centered if it’s focused on the legacy of artists, rather than the experience of the students.
If we consider the SFUSD equity definition, the “low” mural glorifies oppression instead of eliminating it. It also perpetuates bias through stereotypes rather than ending bias. It has nothing to do with equity or inclusion at all. The impact of this mural is greater than its intent ever was. It’s not a counter-narrative if [the mural] traumatizes students and community members.”
The removal of murals based on the reasoning provided by the students and teachers doesn’t sit well with many alumni, who passed by the murals daily and emerged from the school unscathed by the experience. A recent petition was delivered to the school board and governing body and detailed why the murals should be retained. It reads:
“I ask the San Francisco Board of Education Superintendent and Commissioners to reject the proposal to paint out or dismantle the Victor Arnautoff “Life of Washington” murals in George Washington High School, a priceless example of WPA art painted by a left-wing artist and unusually progressive for their time. The murals include forthright depictions of the injustices experienced by Native Americans and African-Americans during Washington’s lifetime. ”
While students continue to demand removal, there is no final decision of whether George Washington’s historically accurate images should be removed from the high school bearing his name at this time.
~ Conservative Zone
Perhaps the “Washingtons” should be removed from their budget and see how they react to that bit of revisionist history!
EXCELLENT suggestion. I suggest that the Washingtons, Lincolns, Grants, Franklins, ALL be removed from the little punks.
cut off any federal funding. the monies are a product of those very values you hold so dear. not a problem. just dont accept public funds cause your offensive to me and my tax dollars will work for me . you cant get them when the tax payer demands your offensive nature are grounds to with hold public tax monies.
This is the problem with teachers and kids today. They are so brainwashed that anything ro do with history is racist that they do not even know what racism is. The fact that they continue to try and erase history so that as years go by democrats can some how remove their evils from learning when that evil is exactly why kids need to learn it. All history is a lesson to teach kids that many things were done wrong in the past and should remember everything not to do. But continuing on this past well cause many to repeat. If you look at facts due to teachers not doing anything about bullying there has been a huge increase in school shootings because of this. Teachers today are horrible and push their beliefs on kids and if kids have a different opinion the teachers talk down at them and get their classmates to join in. The liberal democrats are going to destroy this country yet
…. Good points David! … This is just how the Nazi Party started out in the last century, and you see what that did to the world. History is to be learned from and without that, we will fall victim to the same mistakes of the past. … Ignorant liberal professors will suffer the same fate as their students, only they are to stupid to realize it if this sort of thinking continues. …
Maybe some of today younger teachers should/could describe the earliest examples of racism BEFORE America even existed. The Arab slave trade starting in Africa during the seventh and eighth century is well documented. Is that even mentioned in today’s textbooks about the Europeans bringing slaves to the New World?
Suppression of historical facts might be more traumatizing than teaching those facts.
It all started when the first Confederate statue was removed and the News Agencies spun it into a righteous act to spurn racism. That set up the movement to take down all Confederate statues with the (News Station’s) blessings that they are symbols of racism. That started the defacing and removal of Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson and any others who had owned slaves. A fact of life in those days.The removal of the “N” word from all new publications of Mark Twain’s books (Huckleberry Finn & Tom Sawyer), which like a grass fire will spread to take all old books with such words out of libraries or any current reprints of popular books.
These SNOWFLAKES now want and approve erecting statues of mass murderers like Nat Turner, an escaped slave who started a reprisal that murdered 60 white people, including infants in cribs, cutting off their heads and parading the heads on pikes. These confused, crazy, misguided students want to remove ALL references and statues of slavery as offensive to them, yet also want to embrace a slave revolt and the horrendous murders as accepted history to be displayed in public.These liberal “Socialist” and also Communist leaning teachers/professors are pouring their rhetoric into the maluable brains of today’s students. Laws are needed to make it illegal for any teachers to influence students with their personal views as dogma, instead of teaching various views and unbiased attitudes about history and historically notable persons.
I’ve said it before California is not part of the united states. We need barrier fences to keep them out. Nothing but a filthy third world country. With sick perverted twisted @$$wipes that need flushing.
California has become the worst state in the union. Their political officials have all become treasonous monsters that should be banned from America. The rest of the nation has made California the great state that it once was and now these brazen SOBs are ruining it in the name of stupidity! The Hollywood faction are completely out of control and deserve no respect or attention. The governor and his parrots deserve to be exiled..right, exiled. Why should America turn over a perfectly good state to a bunch of radical maniacs and traitors! The Democrat party should be disbanded so their base can start a real political party instead of the crooks and wackos they have in it presently!
It’s our history, good or bad in the liberals eyes. Leave it alone. People should grow a pair and tell them all to take a flying leap off a high cliff. Bunch of whackos.
If you cannot learn from mistakes made by us imperfect humans, history will repeat itself. If it was not for George Washington and the founding fathers, we would still be ruled by the British and the policies of King George III.
Dumb Asses
Read his “Excellency”!
Read Chernows “Washington”!
He is an Amazing American hero, bigger than life.
Bigger that 20 of your modern hero’s.
The man had 2 horses shot out from under him.
Imagine that happening to Obama. He would have left for Kenya!
The man was challenged whether to become King or President. He chose President. Obbummer would have chosen King. Read the books if you feel the same way, find another country! What an incredible mistake. What an amazing hero Washington was. My hero!
This is pathetic. Adults have done this to the children and should be ashamed of themselves.If the school decides to remove the murals I am sure another will be proud to hang them.
So snowflakes, you gonna replace these with murals of Poncho Villa or maybe Stalin or Marx or Hitler? What a bunch of fukn losers you are!
Without knowledge of the history of our country and understanding of how our demographics have changed over the centuries, the educational process is voided. How can history and government be taught to the students? What kind of education are these poor, frightened and traumatized students getting? Where is opportunities for healthy discussions? What is happening in these students homes that they go to school frightened and traumatized by pictures on the walls? These are not healthy, well resolved students and perhaps Child Protective Services CPS and Mental Health Services for intervening.
Wake up students and realize the U.S. is not built around only your feelings, which are extreme and programed by teachers that are liberal extremeist, with only one view count, theirs. Wrong. If you don’t like it, too bad.
it is apparent that the people who are educating these children are the real racists, if these educators had been real Christians they would have read in the bible how Washington was chosen to be our nations leader picked by our god, a reference book for these ignorant educators would be Herbert W Armstrong “The United States and British Commonwealth in Prophecy” which would give these ignorant educators the truth as to why they are ignorant and they are the real racists!!
CA NEEDS to be kicked out of the United States Of America……Nothing but trash any more..
Maybe they will replace it with Lenin or Castro or Stalin or Guevara. Just a few suggestions.
Good article, interesting comments. The comments have good content (therefore I need not add my own), but they apparently were written in great haste, and show the lack of attention to grammatical construction that should have been part of their writing. Poor spelling, poor punctuation, poor sentence structure… all these take away from what are really good thoughts.
Try to share, racist FB says it goes again their policy…lol
They just hate the truth.
While I disagree with those mostly uneducated students and the few teachers who carry on their inability to put
the past behind them, by moving forward on how they can improve racial relations into days world.
Just because you remove pictures of what happened in the early development of our Republic, don’t mean it didn’t
happen.
This has nothing to do with the story but just as a point of information, George Washington High School — academically — is one of the highest ranked high schools in San Francisco and when it comes to athletics, the GW Eagles can also boast of at least two famous alumni who were sports stars in their own right:
All-American ex-USF and All-Pro running back Ollie Matson and Track Star Johnny Mathis (who also did a little professional singing as a side gig). Both attended GW High and both of whom I had the pleasure of knowing personally.
For sure there will be a civil war , created by the DEMOCRATS , it is so far left that if off the charts on being AMERICAN, SAD BUT THIS IS NOT AMERICA NO MORE, THE COUNTRY I GREW UP IN , KRUCHEV SAID IN 1964 AMERICA WILL DESTROY ITSELF WITHIN ,AND ITS HAPPENING
As a first generation American of Serbian heritage I am confident these little morons were never offended by the real history of WWI and WWII or that the Serbian people were slaves of the Ottoman Muslims for 410 years, they were denied a education, to learn to read or write, to own property and were even denied the right to use musical instruments…if these little assholes read this history instead of it being muzzled into silence they would have learned that it was the tiny state of Serbia as American Allies in WWI that helped to destroy both the Ottoman and Austrian empires that enslaved their people. It was the proud Serbs who provided the first victory in WWI at Cer, Serbia, marching from the beaches of Salonika where Serbs were “ethnically cleansed” from their own country and had to fight they way back into their country marched all the way to the Austrian border to liberate Serbia. At Salonika there are over 40,000 Serbian tombstones of the brave men who gave their lives for this victory and that was before there was ever a “WALL” IN WASHINGTON to honor the war dead…The Nazis who invaded Serbia on Palm Sunday in 1941 killed 17,000 Serbs in one day and occupied the Balkans for 4 years of war…they burned millions of Serbian books on Serbian history, religion and politics, many manuscripts from the 12th and 13th centuries…they destroyed over 350 Serbian churches and liquidated 1.4 million Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 35,000 Roma…the Serbian people had to recreate their history from the trash heap of Fascists ideology—this is where removing the paintings of our founding fathers leads. These stupid moronic students need to be offended by what they see or would they prefer that the Serbian people paint images of the Nazis that tried to conquer the Europe continent, to enslave millions and liquidate as many as possible of those who dared to resist their fascists embrace? Please read by best-selling book Jasenovac Then & Now: A conspiracy of Silence for a glimmer of the real world they were deliberately kept from learning by the left leaning teaching institutions in this nation who have tried to brainwash our new generation and to keep them stupid and blind to what real racism, slavery and history did to 120 million people in the 19th century. I suggest that if they remove these historical pieces of history they replace them with statues of Republicans who overwhelmingly voted to abolish slavery by passing the 13th Amendment, and the Republicans who voted for the 14th Amendment that gave blacks citizenship without a single Democratic vote and the 15th Amendment that gave Blacks the right to vote with ZERO Democratic votes. Or are these students afraid such images would offend their sensitive eyes with the truth?
stop all funding to these UN AMERICAN SCHOOLS..CALIFORNIA once the GOLDEN STATE is now a MEXICAN CESS POOL>RULED BY LIBERALS AND THEIR BRAIN WASHING TEACHERS<WHO LIKE HITLER ARE INDOCTRINATING THE KIDS FROM KINDERGARTEN ALL THE WAY THROUGH COLLEGE. JUST BUILD A WALL AROUND CALIFORNIA THAT INCLUDES MEXICO AND NO EXIT DOORS TO THE USA.take all our Military bases out of the GOD forsaken state, and they will go bust
George Washington was a decent man. A great president, one of most brave, intelligent military leaders we,or the world has EVER known. Without George Washington as leader of our troops during the revolution, we would be flying the British flag today. George Washington gave himself to the cause of freedom from British tyranny at Valley Forge and beyond. A true leader motivates…George Washington’s entire life was filled with events that he motivated our new citizens to be free, independent , and a bastion for religious freedom….he was a man our nation could trust, could hold as a model for fair and competant leadership. Although he owned slaves he took the position of leadership “with ” them vs leadership “over”…them.This was
truly never heard of in the 18th century……. He was a true Federalist and constitutionalist…..
Revisionists and existentialists are are a danger to our core of values in America and are counter to our basic beliefs that we are a nation of written laws in the US Constitution that all citizens must follow.