Ironic decision is made to censor attack on Washington
The war on American memory is entering a dangerous new phase, not only by erasing symbols of history but denying students the opportunity to understand even critical historical narratives.
Earlier this month, the San Francisco School Board voted to paint over a 1930s-era mural at George Washington High School. The fresco, titled “The Life of Washington” by Russian artist Victor Arnautoff, depicts representative scenes from the life of the first president, and includes images of slaves working at his plantation at Mount Vernon, Virginia, and frontiersmen walking past a dead American Indian. The school board concluded that these images were too hurtful for students to see, so the fresco must go.
This is one of several recent moves to downplay the memory of the Founding Fathers. The Charlottesville, Virginia, city council did away with a city holiday honoring hometown (former) hero Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. But the irony in the San Francisco case is that the mural in question was not intended to praise Washington but to bury him.
Artist Victor Arnautoff was a Russian émigré and communist party member who taught at Stanford and was active in the public art movement. His mural, funded by the Works Projects Administration (WPA), is fully in the tradition and style of the era’s art of social criticism. It was clearly intended to be a swipe at the Washington myth, depicting the unheroic aspects of his life and career. The mural also negatively recontextualizes America’s westward expansion, with Daniel Boone-esque figures walking past the American Indian corpse depicted in gray tones against a colorful landscape.
Arnautoff brought this social realist aesthetic and message to much of his work; see for example his equally controversial depiction of black sharecroppers, “Cotton Pickers,” in the Linden, Texas post office.
Arnautoff later returned to live in the Soviet Union so there is no way to mistake his political message. His images are disturbing, but that was the point.the idea was to shake people from their complacency by showing a slice of life they probably had not experienced. And whether you agree with the underlying social justice rationale or not, it is hard to argue that these are not exemplary works of art worth preserving.
But the San Francisco School Board does not care about all that. The board is not asking kids to understand the Washington mural, its context, its artist or its message. The board is uninterested in discussion, nuance or understanding. They are not requiring kids to move beyond their superficial emotional triggering to try to get the point. The board would rather present a safe space where students can marinate in a warm moist bubble, free of intellectual challenges. And in this respect, they are failing in their basic educational mission.
It is the same enforced ignorance of history that stampeded Nike into withdrawing its Betsy Ross flagthemed sneakers because spokesman Colin Kaepernick mistakenly believed that the patriotic symbol, proudly displayed at the Obama second inaugural, had some connection to slavery. It is the same lack of intellectual depth that forced Brandeis University to cancel a play about comedian and social critic Lenny Bruce because fragile youngsters could not be exposed to the racially charged language Lenny used in the 1960s to denounce racism.
Students are supposed to be training their minds to engage in critical thinking, which sometimes – in fact, often – requires them honestly to address ideas they may find difficult to deal with. But in cases like San Francisco and others where words, images and ideas are blotted out, students not only lose this vital opportunity for growth, they are given the message that the proper response to disagreement is censorship.
James S. Robbins is a member of USA TODAY’S Board of Contributors and author of “Erasing America: Losing Our Future by Destroying Our Past.” Follow him on Twitter: @James_robbins