Arizona Elementary School Will Whiten Faces Of Mural - UPDATE

An elementary school in Arizona called Miller Valley Elementary School hired artists to work on a school mural. The mural project caused a lot of racial controversy as well as a racial debate.

The “Go on Green” mural covers two walls outside Miller Valley Elementary School, and it aims to advertise a campaign for environmentally friendly transportation. It features portraits of four children, and a Hispanic boy as the predominant figure.

The Arizona Republic reports that faces in the mural were drawn from photographs of children enrolled at Miller Valley, a K-5 school with 380 students and the highest ethnic mix of any school in Prescott.

Here is a quote from the Councilman Steve Blair who was not happy with the original theme of the mural.

"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?"

According to R.E. Wall, Director of Prescott's Downtown Mural Project, as the mural was being worked on for two months, there were people driving by in their cars hurling racial slurs for blacks and Latinos even when there were young African American and Latino students of the school painting on the mural with the artists.

Initially, the school's administrators bowed to pressure and the decision was made to whiten faces in the mural.

UPDATE: Good news - Jeff Lane, the Principal of Miller Valley Elementary School, and Kevin Kapp, the school Superintendent showed up at a protest to apologize for initally giving in to the crazy racists. They have decided that the mural's finished look will reflect its original theme.

It is also being reported that Councilman Steve Blair has been fired from his KYCA AM radio show which he used as a platform to speak out against the mural.