Photo Credit AZCentral.com

Prescott, Arizona

“Lighten the faces of the children”.

Miller Valley Elementary School Principle Jeff Lane claims the directive to the artists was to make the children’s faces appear happier and brighter.

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).”

“It is being lightened because of the controversy,” Wall said, adding that “they want it to look like the children are coming into light.”

A Prescott City Councilman, Steve Blair, who has a radio program on KYCA-AM 1490 has been agitating to have the mural removed completely.

The images of the children depicted on the mural are taken from photographs of actual children enrolled in the school.  Miller Valley is the most ethnically diverse school in the Prescott district.  The most prominent child in the mural is Hispanic, but Blair, on his radio program, described the image as that of a black child.

The nut cases and the wingnuts are gaining ground in Arizona.  Is there any way to contain the idiocy, so that it doesn’t spread, or is it too late already?

See AZCentral.com for the complete story.