There is alot of crossover between the two. Alot of students who want to study law start out as an undergrad in poly sci some schools political science departments offer specializations in public law. Also they often offer constitutional law as poly sci class also many international relations courses are in Human Rights and international law. Also polticans tend to be Lawyers or business owners, so often they choose political science for a BA, before going for an MBA or JD. So political science degree is just as good or better then declaring oneself pre law. Also there nothing stopping poly sci students from taking law courses.
I tried both this link and the one below.
My computer refuses to load it because my security programs don’t trust “indystar”.
I choose to believe that my computer is like “content from Indiana? No thanks!” And is thus protecting me from it.
Thank you for sharing the link! That is … something else. It may be a weakness of image resolution, but the only African-American respresentation I see in there are the presumed targets of the cross burning and the child on the hospital-bed. As if it were impossible to portray them as anything other than victims of white people or being saved by white people. I understand people’s grievances with it. Who is the artist?
Ah. It’s Thomas Hart Benton, and I feel it’s worth reproducing here a key piece from the article about the controversy.
“””Hart prevailed in keeping it in his work because he wanted it to be an honest portrayal of Indiana’s history — “even the ugly and discomfiting parts,” as Robel’s letter said.”””
Apparently it can’t be moved, and they don’t want to censor it. What it is supposed to show is the horror of a klan burning and a sign of hope that people can be better. Yet it still reveals the internalized biases of the period when it was made.
I’m not sure if it’s fair to judge biases based on seeing only one panel out of a 22-panel work. Quite possibly it does display internalized biases, but we can’t honestly tell when we’ve seen less than 5% of the work.
Wow, I really failed my perception check when I had a class there a few years ago, as I definitely remember that painting, but I somehow failed to notice any of the KKK stuff in it, granted I don’t tend to pay much attention to art and it is in a higher part in the background, but still…
Huh. I mean intention behind the mural aside, isn’t that kind of a distraction? I’m all for aesthetics in a learning setting to improve mood, but this kinda seems like it screams at you from across the room, at least to my ADHD brain
Yeah uh. Even in its intended context decrying the racism, I would not want to sit in that classroom for an hour or so several times a week and try to focus on… well, literally anything else in said room.
It’s like trying not to think of a pink rhinoceros, only in this case it’s a depiction of a hate crime. In the room. Just… right there.
two kinds of people, those who get art and those others. I get it I also recognize the era it’s from. 🙂 There is a lot of WPA art work that’s been painted over by the hypersensitive of all sides. Art isn’t just to be pretty, it makes you uncomfortable with yourself, with others etc and so on and so forth. I’m no qualified to give this dang art class okay? I can’t even do stick figures. I prefer Dada to baroque and find most Low Brow better than anything Pollock ever did.
Huh, when I went to IU ~10 years ago they still used the room! In fact I think it was the room used for my freshman orientation. I definitely had at least two classes in there over the years. It was definitely controversial then too, though.
Noting from the linked article that this occurred in 2017 (in the real world). So we now know that as of this particular strip, Dumbing of Age is taking place during the past four years.
Which means we can reasonably expect references to things that have happened at least up to that point (such as Trump’s run for POTUS).
I mean… we know the strip takes place in a floating timeline comic book time setting where it’s always “this year” (but, like…not this year this year.)
Not a Hoosier, a New Yorker, but the same guy lived here 20 years so we know about him too. Thomas Hart Benton did a bunch of murals depicting the social, economic, and cultural history of Indiana through the 1930’s. This includes a mural about the 1920’s which depicts the Klu Klux Klan in the back. In the foreground is a reporter at a typewriter, (in the late 1920’s newspapers began attacking the clan as a whole), and there is also depicted a nurse administering to both a black and a white child, which in the 1930’s would be a pretty big statement on integration of health care. (In short, it’s not a pro-klan painting)
To summarize the Smithsonian article google pulled up, it’s controversial for the same reasons as Huckleberry Finn. It depicts racism, but doesn’t glorify it. So its a question of either rubbibg that dark side of Indiana’s history in people’s faces or pretending it never existed.
According to the IU page on it (which is surprisingly convincing, especially given the background nature of the imagery in question, and how that bears a familarity to similar such imagery in historical works decrying dark events such as massacres), it actually acts as a counterpoint to racial discrimination and even as such, the KKK imagery was viewed negatively from the start. Which, if true, means that opposing the mural could in fact be opposing something with a history of pro-equality sentiments and, thereby, be marginalizing past efforts towards such. Well, it’s an interesting read, anyway, so get your own take on it: https://murals.sitehost.iu.edu/history/woodburn.html
That said, it’s a HELLA distracting mural and, y’know, the KKK aspect is going to be distracting regardless of its intentions- that in the same way the earlier referenced massacre or fascism or other such paintings highlighting and criticising darker periods of the past would be. They’re great to look at within a gallery or display but, not so great if you’re in any classroom that isn’t history-related or otherwise contextual to the work. Or, to put that another way, you can only look at a massacre for so long in one sitting without being extremely uncomfortable.. and since the KKK imagery is in the same general spectrum..
So, in short, the mural is likely far less offensive than we expected when reading the comic (and, since it can’t be removed without damaging it, there’s legitimate basis for not removing it given that its message is puportedly a positive one) but, at the same time, still entirely inappropriate to be matched alongside most classes. Moreover, IU comments I came across were a bit underwhelming in their defense of the mural, unlike the defense the university website provided. That likely also doesn’t help.
In sum, this is another case of “where’s the line between opposing propaganda supporting negative outlooks, and ignoring the existance of past dark events and our overcoming of them entirely”. With that in mind, closing the classroom while retaining mural (again, keeping in mind it apparently can’t be removed) actually seems like the best approach IU could have taken to the matter.
Yeah, if it genuinely can’t be removed, then that does seem like one of the better options. (Though the ‘covering it with a cloth would be tantamount to censorship’ comment in said article is… not particularly convincing to me, I admit. Then again, I’ve dealt with enough college professors with draconian policies about use of computers even for notetaking because they’re a Distraction – always a delight outing myself as disabled on the first day of class like that when you bring it up in the syllabus, Professor – that the concept of classroom murals would likely just annoy me in general. I would be genuinely shocked if not a single professor on IU campus had one of those policies, and it seems likely any given mural without depicting the Klan would still be at least a little distracting.)
And since it IS depicting a LITERAL HATE CRIME which huge swathes of students would find justifiably traumatic, yeah, I do not blame said students for saying ‘we don’t want to have to sit through lectures in this room.’ Given it’s apparently one of the bigger lecture halls in the building, I could see students having genuine difficulty finding other sections if the campus is accounting for said hall being in use.
As I mentioned, it’s enough that it’s just hella distracting by its colors, size, and placement. You don’t even need to bring in the context of the painting’s topic to argue that students have reasonable grounds for not wanting to sit through lectures in a classroom with that mural in it. 😛
Again, as I noted, the context [of hate crimes, etc] of the mural is occasionally useful [for certain lectures, etc], as with such materials in a textbook but, as with a textbook, you really need to be able to move on from a topic when it’s no longer relevant.
Given the age of technology we live in, it’d be easier and more worthy to just put up a digital display with rotating painting and murals..
But, again, there’s no reason to attack or want to destroy the mural itself, given that it itself isn’t based in anything damaging. There’s a big difference between blindly wanting to remove and erase the existence of the mural and its associated context, and simply just not wanting to have regular classes in the same room as it.
All my arguments have been against the immediate jump in the comments to “it has the KKK associated with it, so it’s automatically evil and needs to be destroyed and then forgotten about, regardless of proper contextualization of the mural’s intentions and history”.
So, given a lack of alternatives, closing the room was the best option the university had. That said, as you noted, they DID have an alternative, of just covering the mural. It’s laughably nonsensical to claim that closing a room off entirely is less censoring than covering the mural with a cloth that people can brush aside if there’s interest in doing such.
That would, of course, also be far more efficient in terms of building resources, since it wouldn’t waste the classroom. Or, if they insisted, they could just convert the hall into a gallery and emphasize the mural.
So no, the university could have handled things better. But still, it’s not reasonable for individuals to baselessly call out for the destruction of the mural, while insisting that such an action is any better than the actions of the kind of individuals we associate with such dark topics, as with the KKK.
That, and proper contextualization of what the mural represents, is really just the one counter-argument here. After all, the original Star Trek series was considered very progressive for its time but, in retrospect, it’s a terribly bigoted, extremely shallow mess (by modern standards). It’s entirely reasonable to feel discomfort towards it in the modern era but, at the same time, entirely unreasonable to claim it’s pro-bigotry and shouldn’t be aired at all and, further, should have its masters destroyed.
That’d be missing the intent and history of the show being contrary to what the show is being accused of promoting, ignoring that it still has modern contextual uses, and engaging in mindless destruction of things that one doesn’t disagree with regardless of the validity, morality, or ethics of doing such. Y’know, just like the KKK/etc do.
While I wouldn’t agree with destroying the mural, I object strongly to the idea that it wouldn’t be any better than the KKK. Destroying a mural might not be good, but it’s a far cry from lynching and terror.
Different only in that it’s usually the first step. Denying history is usually the first step to a full on re-enactment with new faces replacing both attacker and victim. It begins with removing or hiding uncomfortable images, followed by trying to remove or hide uncomfortable words. The next step in the progression, is to try to remove uncomfortable thoughts-and since thoughts are contained in heads, removing heads often becomes the next step. At each step, right up to the one where you’ve got sanctioned violence and mass executions, is ‘completely reasonable’ when viewed in a vacuum and while willfully ignoring what the next logical step in the progression is.
“it’s controversial for the same reasons as Huckleberry Finn. It depicts racism, but doesn’t glorify it.”
Yeah, but the passages of Huckleberry Finn with racial slurs aren’t printed in big letters on the walls of a room where students of color are trying to focus on learning linear algebra or whatever.
^ This, with its contextualization in mind, concisely sums up every comment I’ve made in today’s comment section. 😛
..though now I’m feeling there’s gotta be a classroom somewhere in the US that has nothing but Huckleberry Finn (or a blend of Huck and similar) quotes on the walls.. >.<
I wonder if there’s a way to add that without damaging the underlying painting. I think it’d be a rather evocative way to make the painting relevant for scholastic discussion within a building that appears to be dedicated to social studies classes. In other words, you may have been kidding with that but, I think it’s a totally legit approach to dealing with it. :’P
I meant, kidding with promoting the actual implementation. I knew you were being sincere with the underlying comparison 😛
(Though presumably any sensible person has already long since recognized that equivalency- rather, even beyond equivalency, Trump’s supporters typically pull directly out of hate groups like the KKK, meaning they’re already fundamentally the same group [at the points of overlap] to begin with).
Just use a projector to broadcast an image of the appropriate iconography of hatred. Heck, it could be a slideshow and cycle different over-layers, maybe even colour shift some of the workers to include diversity. It could become a chronology of progress, with the persistence of the burning cross illustrating the challenge of both overcoming our history, but of getting free of that hatred that does persist, even today (see: MAGA).
See, I questioned your grasp of my sentiments on the utility of the mural just below but, in this comment you seem to be exactly on board with where I’m coming from. Though again, the context of “display piece” still doesn’t work well for general classes. Would make the chamber rather useful for unaffiliated lectures on the given topic, though.
Honestly, I’m liking Needfuldoer’s take the most, though. We can just have the students markering all over it as they please. Eg, having a dinosaur nomming on the KKK. Walky’d approve, I’m sure.
If it were a straight forward bit of old racist art outright celebrating the KKK, I’m sure student activists *would* have already simply destroyed it. But the piece is overtly anti-Klan, intended to be stark recognition but also condemnation of the darker parts of Indiana’s state history. Even so, though, it’s unreasonable to expect black students to simply focus and learn about whatever a class’s topic is supposed to be with that mural sitting above their heads the entire time. If it could be easily relocated, I’m sure that would have been done, but that’s not really possible either. I don’t think anybody believes “just not using the room” is anything more than a short term option to put off making a real decision on what to do, but then again there’s nothing so permanent as a temporary solution.
Speaking as a Hoosier, I don’t want them to paint over it. For a long time I didn’t know this bit of history about my home state. I’ve lived in Indiana all my life and didn’t get taught about it in school. I didn’t hear a single peep about it, in fact. That is pretty shameful, in my opinion. I am uncomfortable with the idea of erasing the evidence of that history, because I know racism is still alive and well in this state and the rest of the country.
Well i guess that’s why they’re not using that hall anymore. Personally I think they should just make it a mini free museum and build a new lecture hall
Turn it into an art room to display historical and current student art. Dedicate the room to illustrating and destroying the stereotypes and hatred that racism promotes.
I was just thinking the same thing. Leave it up so the ugly parts of history aren’t ignored, but dedicate the room to art with a similar theme and intent. It can also serve as a discussion piece for teachers who want to talk about the controversies of censorship.
-Let me clarify real quick here: the controversies of censorship which erases something glorifying the negative parts of history vs. censoring something which depicts the negative parts as a warning. Because there is an important distinction to be made there.
Sounds like that’s pretty much what they’re intending to do (or did?), according to the article linked above. Ends up that it’s right next to the art corridor, and so both the art and the students are much better served by turning the room into an art gallery (especially, as both you and they say, of additional artwork that puts the original mural into context), where, when you come into the room and are faced with the mural, it is because you came into the room to see the mural.
Context definitely matters for these kind of things. If the classroom has a context similar to that of a history book (ie, it is oriented towards discussions over past negative events, while properly framing them for constructive discussion) then there’s no real legitimate reason to remove the painting, anymore than it would make sense to remove photos of nazis from a WW2 section in a history book. That’d be different if the image was flattering towards the KKK or especially grisly and troubling but, as it is, it’s a worthy discussion piece (even if, as I noted above, it’s just way too visually distracting in its placement and style and overt emphasis on the given topic).
Basically, it’s not the kind of work that’d traumatize anyone who is in a rational state, unless the contextualization for it was mishandled. Or, rather, if it did poke at trauma, that’d be a good thing, as it has the right context and mildness to allow someone to properly frame such stress into something constructive.
So again, I don’t feel it should be the distraction that it is but, at the same time, it’s not reasonable to view it as racist propaganda (versus constructive historical reference) given its apparent lack of historical intention as being such.
This, of course, is rather significantly different in concept from seeking to remove statue celebrating enemy generals who actively fought to defend slavery. There are things we should remove but, after a point, trying to erase the past becomes extremely counterproductive and sabotages the gains we made from overcoming that past in the first place.
*To be clear, ” overcoming that past in the first place” was meant as a general comment. Within the scope of the mural, it’d be referencing overcoming “the KKK getting away with mass lynchings while running around dressed as vengeful ghosts” rather than racism on the whole.
Maybe not traumatize, but I don’t think it’s irrational for say, a black student with a personal family history with the Klan not wanting a Klan burning painting hanging over their heads in every class they have in that room. Nor would it be a good thing to have that poked at every day.
Which is different than having a session of an appropriate class talk about the Klan and their historical significance – even using the painting as reference.
You nailed it Jeff. It’s one thing to briefly study a particular picture in a text book that you can close. It is completely worse to have to have an image in your view for several hours a week, when you still live in a society that carries the same hate, and has arguably institutionalized it into the police force. I wonder how many students have lost loved ones to racial violence and have had to sit in that classroom?
As I already said, the mural just doesn’t work for general usage. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have contextual utliity, or that it should be removed at the cost of destroying it.
In that regard, I think Demoted completely and radically missed the point, given the bizarreness of their argument. To be clear ‘it shouldn’t be ignored or destroyed anymore than any other recognition of the past should be’ does not by any means equate a mural to a textbook. That’s a rather forced interpretation, in fact.
Again, a textbook properly contextualizing misdeeds of the past has utility and, a mural with similar positive historical consideration has utility. I’ve already stated (in other comments – ctrl+f is your friend) that the mural didn’t work for various reasons and that the university closing the room was likely the best option given the factors involved.
But stating something which isn’t racist is racist, trying to ignore the past, or trying to destroy art.. those are things I’m arguing against here and, frankly, it’s hypocritical to argue in favor of those, given the context in question. Rather, that’s exactly why we need these lessons of the past to reference.. so we don’t repeat them again, just with a different justification.
JR said, Wait, so they just opt not to ever use the room, instead of…painting over it? Come on, this could be fixed in an hour.
One cannot learn from history by ignoring it – or by destroying any reference to it (which is why I deplore the so-called ‘cancel culture’ so much). I would have thought everybody would have at least learned that lesson from Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”.
Thomas Hart Benton’s murals are historic artworks, and they should not be ‘painted over’ for that reason alone – unless you also think we should replaster the wall with the mural of Michelangelo’s ‘Last Supper’ because depicts Christ and the apostles as white males in robes and finery at a fancy banquet instead of devout Jews celebrating a Passover Seder, or it’s OK to ban books because they use words and terminology consistent with the times in which they were written (“Huckleberry Finn”). And just to let you know, if you do you’re going to come off looking as stupid as the people who decided to ban certain movies in certain areas because the dialogue had one of the cast members uttering the word – gasp! – ‘virgin’.
So-called “cancel culture” has always been with us, and the people who complain about it the most (conservatives) are usually the first to resort to it in their efforts to maintain the status quo. They only call it cancel culture when they are the targets, just as they only call it Identity Politics when it isn’t their identity.
There is a huge difference between remembering the uglier aspects of the past and glorifying them. Like, say, putting up statues to Confederate generals who literally committed treason as defined in the U.S. Constitution. Funny how so many self-professed “constitutional conservatives” tend to overlook that part. By that logic we should erect statues of Benedict Arnold at West Point, Osama Bin Laden at Ground Zero and Isoroku Yamamoto at Pearl Harbor. I’d be happy with a statue of Robert E. Lee if it showed him lying prostrate at the feet of George Gordon Meade (he doesn’t deserve Ulysses S. Grant) on a pile of bloody corpses. Lee got the commemoration he deserved when they buried thousands of Union war dead in his front lawn. George Thomas, a fellow Virginian who did not commit treason, put it best: “He killed them, he can look a them.”
I have not viewed this Benton mural to judge it’s value, but it does document an ugly period in Indiana’s history, which lasted less than a decade and ended rather abruptly when the KKK imploded from its leaders’ fundamental corruption (sound familiar?) The Benton murals I have seen in the Indiana State Library and Martinsville post office are nice. With that said, I wouldn’t hesitate to paint over the mural in the Indiana Statehouse House Chamber, historical or not, because it’s irredeemably hideous. but that’s an aesthetic judgement and not a political one.
There’s a lot of middle ground between leaving hurtful images/words up in public spaces and erasing all evidence of those negative aspects of history.
Simply not using the room is one option in that middle ground, but if it really is such an important piece of historic art, surely a museum would be a better place for it than a room that’s never used and no one visits. Keeping the room unused seems little better than painting over it or putting up a covering. Take a photograph or even move the entire mural to a museum for remembering this stuff. It could be displayed in a more appropriate place, and they could also make use of the room without making some students needlessly uncomfortable.
Point is, “Don’t erase history” is not an argument for making people experience hurtful stuff like that. That’s a false dichotomy.
One of the problems was it can’t be moved without damaging it. I still think turning the room into an exhibit/display where people could have lectures on the mural and similar works and see it by choice is their best bet.
The article addressed that: by covering it with a cloth, they would be censoring it. They would rather not. It isn’t glorifying the KKK, but exposing their crimes, and the foreground shows a white nurse, tending to a black child, to show hope for the future.
There is no pleasing everyone.
Cover it with a cloth: Censorship.
Cover it with stage curtains that are clearly meant to negate ‘censorship’ claims: Now there’s a distracting curtain instead of a mural.
Put a content warning with interpretive signage/required reading before the first class about the context of the mural: You’re still leaving a source of trauma openly on display.
Don’t use the room: Wasted space.
Use the room as a mini-trip for lessons on Art History/American Historyl:Might be difficult to schedule.
Can they turn the furniture arrangement around 180 degrees so only the professor faces it, or is this one of those lecture halls with theater seating and an angled floor?
You ever try to read with someone hanging over your shoulder reading your book?
Maybe it was meant as a joke, and Khyrin is right, people will complain about scheduling and access, but turning the room into an art display is not a bad idea. Not perfect, but it preserves the piece, and if the room is dedicated to challenging and defeating racism, it won’t be glorifying that which Benson decried.
It also won’t be forcing people to pretend to ignore symbols of hatred against them while learning calculus, or whichever.
That would be my opinion. Cover during classes where it would be a distraction. Then you can still use it for a lesson when appropriate or open it for public display when classes aren’t being held there.
Yeah, you really can’t avoid using one of your biggest lecture halls forever, and it does have historical value (and isn’t remotely sympathetic towards the Klan,) but I can’t imagine that helping anyone’s focus. (Again, I can’t really imagine any other mural in a huge lecture hall being anything but a distraction.) Lecture classes that size are not particularly engaging to start with.
So they’d rather not censor it by covering it with a cloth, but they are totally fine with censoring it by not allowing the room to be used for lectures. Makes perfect sense.
Thomas Hart Benton was a significant regional painter in the first half of the 20th Century. I have a thick coffee table book about his career and work. Painting over the IU mural raises the issue of defacing a public work of art for ideological reasons even if it presented the KKK in a positive light – which it doesn’t. If I remember the mural correctly, the Klan rally looks sinister.
A political science class could – but that’s unlikely to be focus of an entire semester of an entry level polisci class. And certainly not of every class routinely using that room.
The rest of the time, the mural just sitting there going “remember the KKK”
I’m a bit confused too, but what I’m thinking is obviously the mural exists but I’m not sure if Becky knew about it. I’m guessing she’s surprised by the information and the joke “more like dark reality” is that it’s Indiana and thus has a history of racism and Becky shouldn’t be surprised since she’s assumedly lived there all her life.
Extra irony being that the mural exists in fact because the artist didn’t want anybody to forget that yes, the clan had a disturbing amount of prominence in 1920 Indiana.
**is also confused**
**reads comments below**
**rereads comic**
OH! I get it now.
This comic would have worked better animated. I didn’t realize that the no-dialogue panel was supposed to be a reaction beat and that Becky’s initial “…what?” was supposed to be a flat-affect “WAT?” rather than a questioning “why are you guys staring at me” what.
Read in that context, with Becky dropping a flat-affect “what” rather than a confused what, the rest of the dialogue makes sense.
Ok. I read the first “what” as disbelieving and questioning (not flat) and when no explanation was forthcoming, the second as stronger and more demanding,
Well, it’s a large step from „shows a burning cross“ to „shows a KKK ralley“.
That Dorothy say „a burning cross“ is interesting (if Willis actually refers the picture that is the reason a room is no longer used in real life), by she might expect her two (formerly) (fundy) christian friends to react strongly to that imagery.
I wonder if she is trying to get Joyce to be more open about her changing beliefs? Or she decided to start poking back at Becky?
And if the mural someone above linked is the ne that is now hidden in real life: if I hadn’t started searching for a burning cross in it, I might have overlooked the KKK stuff in the background. The foreground very much draws the eye. Though if you sat through a boring lecture, you might start to examine the picture more closely and once seen, it‘d probably hard to forget.
Are you American? In my opinion, it’s not a big step from a crossburning to the KKK. It’s, like, half a step at most, if that. But I will say that it’d make sense for people of Becky and Joyce’s upbringing to not understand that. I just also think it’s something that Dorothy could easily think would be understood.
Things I learned today reading up about this mural:
Apparently it was an old Scottish thing. A way of mustering the clans for battle. Like a beacon fire, but with a cross.
The First KKK (during Reconstruction) didn’t burn crosses. The first KKK cross burnings were fictional – in Birth of a Nation and novel it was based on.
Explicitly based on the Scots version – rallying the white people together. The second Klan in the 1910s and 20s took cross burnings from the movie and turned it into a real thing.
Nope, I live across the pond. And school never covered the KKK, so no, actually no association between burning crosses and the KKK. We’re they actually anti-Christian or why did they burn crosses?
(One could argue that hate-mongerers are always anti-Christian, but….)
I can’t read the tone of this comic. Someone please tell me Becky is shocked that it exists (surprised what?) and not confused why it would be controversial (indifferent what?).
I’m reading it as “why is there a mural of crosses being burned?” kind of incredulous anger because while Becky has been hurt by HER church, she’s not turned away from Christianity like Joyce has. Course it could just be “WHH IS THIS A THING?!” I don’t know the US well enough.
My kid studied junipero serra last year. Fourth graders have to do a big mission project. We burnt his partway down, and his report was about the kumeyaay revolt. Incidentally he wanted to burn the cross he put on on the model until we explained the implications of cross burning in america and that it can’t just mean “eff colonizers”
To bring things full circle, kinda, Oregon does not officially recognize Columbus Day. This is not because the legislature was particularly woke regarding indigenous people, but because, in the 1920’s, it was controlled by the KKK. And Columbus was a Catholic.
Yeah. The elevation of Colombus into an historical figure in the USA was part of a program to address discrimination against Catholics. The invention and promotion of Columbus Day was a project of the Knights of Columbus.
It hard to understand now how controversial John F Kennedy’s religion was in 1960.
Plus Columbus Day marked that Italians were officially White. Like the Irish, they weren’t Nordic enough to be classed as white originally. The Irish were commonly portrayed as apes. The Italians and Jews were considered dirty and criminal. All the Slavs (like Poles) were obviously not white but an inferior breed. Eugenics was a huge thing in the US and the Nazis studied it. But they thought Jim Crow went too far.
I mean in fairness it is America in general. Pretty sure it’s everywhere. I’ve seen more than one confederate flag on the back of a truck in my lifetime. I don’t even know if it’s to support the south or just some idea of counter culture trigger the libs thing now.
Somehow the same people that are all about patriotism, but flying a traitorous flag. I’ll never understand how it’s accepted given what has historically happened to people even loosely associated with enemies of the state. You sure couldn’t have flown a soviet flag from the 50s to 90s without drawing some serious heat…maybe it’s the time gap?
Britain took all the stupid genes and sent them overseas. Two and a half centuries of interbreeding while avoiding smarter, better people because of the color of their skin or the shape of their nose was never gonna do anything to fix that gene pool.
The Northern Elitists stopped the Southern “States’ Rights” Confederacy from running their states as they pleased, and began the culture of tyrannical Federalism and governmental overreach that continues today. True Americans love Freedom and reject Tyranny.
It’s wrong, but it hides all its racism by omission. Who doesn’t love Freedom?
Maybe partially the time gap but also the unique circumstances. The civil war was a failed rebellion within the country, whereas the Cold War was a conflict with a separate country.
Imagine if the Cold War ended with the US annexing Soviet Russia and Soviet Russians making up half the government and running a large number of US states and holding a senate majority. Since that’s basically what happened with the confederate states and their status today. They lost the war but managed to weasel into power via slower & less openly warlike means such as voter suppression.
Plus it was useful to keep demonizing the Soviet Union and Communism as a way of attacking any movement towards the left, while earlier it was useful to minimize the rebellion in order to prop up white elites.
Some people see it as a “Rebel” flag, while ignoring, or not knowing, that the rebellion in question was to keep a racist political and economic system intact. I seem to remember seeing someplace where a Confederate flag was in a window next to a pro First Nations flag of some sort.
And as I said below, I think The Dukes of Hazzard helped popularise it for people around in the late ’70s.
It happens the same way we have uneducated radicals having freedom rallies and assaulting barristas. They’re protesting mask orders as un-constitutional (which don’t actually violate our constitution)*. We also have murderous anti-abortion folks and redneck pro-confederacy nuts. Many Canadians forget what makes us Canadian when watching all the news and culture that flows south to north. Sometimes I wonder if thats why we send so many Canadians to Hollywood. Like changing the course of a river by diverting the headwaters.
* Instead of Life/Liberty/Pursuit, our foundation is peace, order and good government. This is why it isn’t wrong for our gov’t to issue lawful mask requirements. And yes, frankly it sounds more like the Empire than the Rebel Alliance, but it works, probably because our monarch and her representative (the “symbols” of our country) have no real political authority and thus can’t abuse their position beyond the script that is given to them. (n.b. I am a monarchist, at least for now. But that is a matter of luck that Liz is a respectable symbol. I could salute William and Kate, but if Chucky is king, things will have a grim cast for a while, despite not changing anything more than our currency pictures).
Mind you it’s not unConstitutional for our government to issue mask requirements either, whatever some reactionaries think. It absolutely isn’t on the state level and the only reason it might not be on the federal level is if it counts as a power reserved to the states. Federalism reasons, not some alleged right not to wear a mask.
It was helped by the fact that our own rebel flag, the Eureka Stockade flag, had been co-opted at the time by the Builders Labourers’ Federation, a controversial union.
Yes. But they were federal in Canada as well is the point. We also had a family killed near the y2k by a Japanse balloon firebomb. (they found it in a tree, didnt know what it was…)
Also, Canadian native reservations were an inspiration for apartheid. We do some stuff well here, but treating our first nations, métis and inuit as we do is reprehensible.
And then whitewashed them out of history. Funny how the only western movie to acknowledge the true role Chinese laborers played in the west is “Blazing Saddles” and that was in an off-hand way. Nobody watching any of movies about the gunfight at the OK Coral would know that Tombstone had a large and vibrant Chinatown.
I’m a California resident and there’s a restaurant down the street from me that is having regular Trump rallies/covid-denier protests on a nightly basis in defiance’s of state health orders, and my local nextdoor group contains such “lovely” posts from neighbors as “a black person is ringing my doorbell, should I call the police?”
So…yeah…California has some things going for it but the poison of racism and the confederate legacy of harm unto one’s fellow citizens in the name of ignorance and bigotry is a poison that pretty much infects everywhere in this country.
Same, but in Massachusetts. They were still teaching a heavily whitewashed version of colonial American history when I was in school, but from what I understand that’s been shifting toward a more balanced account since then.
Yeah most of my in-depth understanding of the history of racism in this country has come from independent reading and well-written threads by experts on Twitter. My California school education glossed over a LOT.
I am hoping it’s gotten better. It seems like it might be. My kid is in kindergarten and she just did her thanksgiving unit and instead of the very whitewashed “everyone was happy and thankful!” version I learned in elementary school, she got her first brief discussion of the horrors of colonialism (put in careful, digestible for a 5 year old terms obviously).
California is the only state whose history of outright genocide is so strong, obvious, widely supported and well-funded at local, state/territory, and federal levels, as well as nearly uncontroversial in press, that even most historians who deny that a national genocide happened will admit genocide happened there. From 1849 on, it was not only legal, but openly encouraged, to enslave, kidnap, rape, and murder Native people en masse. This followed up the Spanish colonial history of open enslavement via missions.
As far as I can tell, judging by my Californian students’ memories, they mostly teach the 1849 history in the lens of “Pioneers and ’49ers! Yaay!” and the mission history by making kids build models and talking about how cool they were.
Oregon isn’t any better, but at least they finally – FINALLY – tore down those goddamned pioneer statues.
Yup, your description of overly sanitized California history education sounds pretty spot-on from my own experiences. I had to learn most of the details through independent reading as I got older (and am probably still uninformed on some of it).
My kid is only in kindergarten so it’s too early for me to tell how much it’s improved since the 90s but I am hopeful it’s gotten at least a little better. Her teacher briefly discussed some of the horrors of colonialism in their kindergarten thanksgiving unit, which my teachers definitely did not do in my 1991 kindergarten class.
Not sure about that. In the second panel, before Becky says anything, Joyce is already looking back. I suspect she’s as confused as Becky.
What I’m curious about is if either of them have made the cross-burning=Klan connection or if they’re thinking of it in more religious persecution terms.
My read was that Joyce was looking back at Becky in the panel to see her reaction, especially since her eyes don’t move in the next panel and she seems to have moved on by the last panel. If the comic only went to the second panel, I would agree, but as a whole, I see it differently. It is hard to know for sure where Joyce is looking exactly, though.
I could see that first paragraph interpretation if it were not for the fact that the final word balloon sounds far more like a Joyce explanation than a Dorothy one.
Do you mean delicacies, as in the subtlety and nuance? Or delicacies in the sense of delectable morsels to be nibbled upon and savored? Because to anyone who enjoys studying the horrible things people do and have done to each other it sounds more like the latter.
Funny fact about IU: The Intramural Sports Building has Honest to God swastikas as part of the decor.
No, it has nothing to do with the Nazis. Yes, I am sure of that statement. The frescoes were added to the building long before the Nazis were a thing. Believe it or not, swastikas used to be a legitimate religious symbol (the frescoes depicted a repeated sequence of religious symbols from around the world) before the original shitstain edge lords ruined the symbol for everyone.
No, there’s only money to pay sports team coaches significantly more than anyone else at the university and build stadiums. Certainly not money to paint over swastikas, and definitely not enough money to pay the athletes.
Yes, but I don’t think it’s even remotely unreasonable for a Jewish person or anyone else oppressed by the Nazis to not want to see them outside those religious spaces.
This particular Jew could tell the difference between a Nazi symbol and random decoration.
As I recall it was one entrance of one gym building, small tiles. You would have to pay attention to even notice them, it’s not like a mural dominating your visual field in a classroom.
But apparently they got sanded over last year. I am disappoint.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing. They’re even parallel to the ground as in the normal religious depiction, instead of rotated 45° as in the nazi depiction. If they are going to (did) sand down those, they should have done all the tiles as a process of removing religious symbols from a funded public institution, but I really don’t know enough about American colleges or IU’s funding in particular. However, tiles aren’t that hard to remove. Why not uninstall them and move them to the same exhibit with Benton’s mural?
It’s fine to have whatever feelings you have about them. Other Jewish folk (as I’m pretty sure Leorale is) feel differently and like I said, I don’t think they’re unreasonable for not wanting to see them outside a religious space (or hell, even IN a religious space, but with some religions you’d kinda expect them if you know anything about the religion).
Yep, I’m Jewish.
Interestingly, I’ve never seen the “Jewish symbol” in the graphic that defends things that visually resemble swastikas. (Might be Yemenite, Ethiopian, or made up for the meme — I’ve not seen everything on earth, but I’m a Jewish educator who has never once seen that one that’s labeled as Jewish.)
I also would of course have zero problem with Hindu signs in places that have lots of Hindu people or Hopi signs in places with Hopi and so on. I’m only trying to consider a sport center in Indiana, with an unobtrusive decoration that might give momentary but unpleasant pause in somebody’s day. It’s chill.
Also, my tone probably isn’t coming across here — for me, this is just a lighthearted, interesting discussion. Checking in: if this discussion is hurting anybody’s feelings at all, it won’t be remotely worth it, and I’m cool to stop immediately as needed.
I hope this has been only mutual curiosity and happy internet times to all.
Haha, I was going to mention those! From 1917, I think. Tiles rather than fresco IIRC. There’s a placard explaining the context, it amused me to perceive a subtext of “please don’t sue us”.
They used to be on Arizona highway number signs.
And lots of SW Native stuff like moccasins.
The USA 45th Division had a swastika shoulder patch, but around the time they were nationalized (they were a National Guard formation) the insignia was replaced by a thunderbird.
Yeah. I’m perfectly aware that Hindus, some Native Americans, etc used it for centuries, but now the symbol is wrecked, and it still makes modern people think “nazis” when we’d rather be thinking “sports go sports”.
It’s not a particularly Hindu or Hopi space, having it there doesn’t benefit anyone at all in any way. So it’s neutral at best, but highly creepy at worst, there’s no particular reason to keep it. I’m glad they took the moment to sand it off.
Hindus STILL use it. For much of the world’s population it is not wrecked at all; saying so is pretty Eurocentric. Swastikas mark Buddhist temples on maps in Japan and Taiwan. Young Indian women are named ‘Swastika’. A swastika is part of Jain temple design, and I think Germany has an official exception to its “no swastika” rules for them.
Alright then, happy to update it to “the symbol is wrecked within the Western world. It’s double-wrecked in places with a history of nazis and/or neo-nazis.” Hindu temples are exempt.
So says me, the arbiter of symbols! 🙂
The article Yumi linked to explains that the mural panel (one of 22 spread around buildings all over campus) was created not to glorify the Klan, but to expose it so that Indianans don’t forget their dark history. It was put there to educate, but many students objected to having to sit in that room for classes, so the decision was made not to use the room as a classroom anymore. It’s apparently too fragile to move.
I’m also unsure what their reactions mean. Is Becky reacting to the existence of cross-burning, of a mural depicting it, or to the fact that the classroom can’t be used anymore because of it? “This is Indiana” doesn’t make much sense as a response to the first, because the cross-burnings occurred all over the nation, to my knowledge. “This is Indiana” might be an appropriately cynical response to the fact of the existence of the mural, if the mural were actually in support of cross-burning, but it isn’t.
The news articles are interesting. I don’t really know what’s the proper response to the petition to remove it. It doesn’t seem like a cut-and-dry situation to me.
Art that exists to make people uncomfortable has a place, but I don’t think that place is as a mural in a classroom, always there, whether or not it’s relevant to the lessons at hand. If I’m trying to learn something while images of violence that hit home for me, it might make it so I’m not in the best place to learn.
Shockingly enough, not everyone in these classrooms is a white Christian and many of them do not want to see fucking Klan paintings when they’re trying to learn something entirely unrelated.
Agreed. I’m just about the last person to ever advocate destroying a work of art, and Thomas Hart Benton *is* a major U.S. painter. This mural would be perfect for a course on U.S. History, African-American history, Race and Racism, etc. held in that room because it would engage directly with the subject matter. To me, the problem is that presumably classes on subjects completely unrelated to the themes of the mural take place in that room (since it’s a large lecture hall) and students don’t have the ability to “opt out” of seeing those murals when they come to class.
For example, imagine you’re a Black student whose ancestors were terrorized and killed by the Klan. You sign up for a biology lecture and your schedule says it’s in that room. Now you get to sit in the same room with a picture that reminds you of your family’s trauma and the racism and trauma Black people have suffered in the U.S., during a class that doesn’t deal with and discuss those issues at all.
(And no, as a current college professor and former college student, it’s not always possible for students to switch to a different section in a different classroom, depending on their personal schedule and the schedule of classes.)
For example, I have taught American Literature and often teach part of all of “Huckleberry Finn” in that class. The difference is that if you’re taking a higher-level American lit. course, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’re going to read stuff about racism and probably something by Mark Twain, who is a major U.S. author. That book is listed on my class syllabus so students know to expect it. Moreover, I’ve got a policy that if any student is seriously upset by any of the required readings, if they come to me and let me know they are excused from those classes and instead will work with me directly on an alternate reading and assignment.
Overall, I think it’s possible as a student – if not always easy – to avoid content that is going to be too traumatic for you by choosing your classes carefully and doing some research into the course content. I don’t think any student should be forced to sit in a classroom with a mural of Klan activity and a burning cross. Imagine if, instead, this classroom contained a beautifully-rendered famous artist’s portrait of Adolf Hitler!
To be fair, an equivalent picture of hitler’s work would be (spitballing here) of the smoke stacks from the crematoriums in the background with him doing a fascist salute so we can never disassociate him from the horror he inflicted and… something hopeful about german people coexisting with judaism in the foregound? I don’t know. All the positive stuff is so polarizing I’m not sure if there is a modern stand-in for the nurse and child.
Benton’s picture is not about glorifying the klan, but not forgetting the mistake it is.
An equivalent certainly would not be about gloriying Hitler.
Also, make no mistake, a LOT of north americans favoured Hitler, fascism and eugenics before the war. (sadly some still do). So it also wouldn’t be *that* surprising if such a portait of Hitler was done. (Jaime’s description I mean, just a Glory shot). Presumably such would have been removed during the war.
I think turning the room into a permanent display/exhibit would be cool. But there’s good reason for Black people, as well as any other groups targeted by the KKK to not want to see it for hours while they’re in class.
We aren’t sure if Joyce or Dorothy says it, but it’s possible neither is aware of the context of the painting and the cynical response is coming from a place of expecting it to be in support.
As a European who doesn’t know the backstory of the lecture hall, I thought at first they were waiting for Becky to get offended over a mural that depicts a cross burning.
After following up on the articles linked in the comments it reads very differently.
Ikd, just the first three panels would serve as a silent judging by Dorothy that Becky doesn’t know this already. Leaving her hanging after she asks “what”, feels disingenuous.
in general I’m not really a fan when the punchline of a snide remark is that a character didn’t “get” a silent implication. We’ve got characters like Dina and Amber who don’t get social conventions and silent implication and we’re meant to be sympathetic with them, but if the secret knowledge is a local racist mural, it’s ok to silently judge them?
especially with racism, sexism, homophobia, where the taboo is actually contributing to not critically processing the current and past iterations of them in society?
I know Joyce has gotten herself into situations that appear similar and her friends put her down in quippy remarks, but the difference was that she insisted on her ideology in the past, and now keeps putting her foot in her mouth while still sprouting well-meaning but ignorant -ist remarks.
Dorothy here is pussyfooting around the fact that the mural depicts the KKK, the reason the mural is actually controversial. It feels more like an euphemism than anything else, which makes it seem more harmless at that. Or maybe they’ll talk about it in the next few strips, that would be good.
tldr: I don’t mind Dorothy’s behaviour as a character, but I don’t like it when the joke seems to be “you’re ignorant/unwoke for not already knowing about [racism]” while also hiding the implication that it was racist in the first place.
Best I understand the mural is sort of “The history of Indiana”, and it includes a KKK cross burning as one motif among many saying “this is also part of our history”. So not really something I would consider controversial unless I wanted to forget about that part of history.
I don’t know that I’d say Dorothy is “pussyfooting around the fact that the mural depicts the KKK.” As an American, when I hear “crossburning,” I think “KKK.” I guess it could have been thrown in to make it clearer, but I don’t know that that’s a fair judgment on Dorothy.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprising if Becky doesn’t know. Or at least if that’s not the first implication that came to her mind. Joyce as well, for that matter. She seems as confused in the second panel.
Remember that both of them grew up in a “we, the true Christians, are the persecuted minority” world.
As a Brit, I also think “KKK” when I hear “crossburning.” I don’t think it’s something only Americans will get. Anyone who has a passing knowledge of American history should.
Pretty sure the look wasn’t judgement over not knowing about it, it was an awkward silence of something hey don’t want to think or talk about being said.
Let’s not pretend that anywhere doesn’t have a history of racists that runs right up to the current day. It just makes it that much easier for them to run around unopposed.
The so-called Second Klan of the 1920s was all over the place. For example at one point they had 40 thousand members in Detroit, reportedly half their members in Michigan. Worcester, Mass. had a brief period where the Klan grew rapidly, until it was countered by local newspapers and the well established Catholic population of the city.
That was also the period where the Klan set up shop in Canada and had some success for a time. Saskatchewan, the province I live in, had the largest Klan presence, with as many as 25 thousand members in the late ’20s. There were only a handful of black people here at the time, but there were plenty of Roman Catholics, immigrants from Eastern Europe and elsewhere, and the “threat” of Saskatchewan being made French speaking to whip up the idiots.
When my dad was a kid in the 1920s, the Klan marched in my small Wisconsin home town. Burned a cross at the Catholic Church. Then paraded down Main Street. The locals were not best pleased and nearly shot them. But there were a lot of Klan members around on the 1920s. Plus anti-Chinese and Japanese laws on the west coast. Immigration “reform” and eugenics. Teddy Roosevelt was a eugenicist and Wilson was a straight up racist.
I also had (security) problems with the indystar link, but after checking the article in the internet archive, I can see that a large chunk of the article is the statement from the provost, which is here, and causes no problems securitywise:
Understood in the light of all its imagery and its intent, Benton’s mural is unquestionably an anti-Klan work. Unlike statues at the heart of current controversies, Benton’s depiction was intended to expose the Klan’s history in Indiana as hateful and corrupt; it does not honor or even memorialize individuals or the organization as a whole. Everything about its imagery—the depiction of the Klan between firefighters and a circus; the racially integrated hospital ward depicted in the foreground suggesting a different future ahead—speaks to Benton’s views. Every society that has gone through divisive trauma of any kind has learned the bitter lesson of suppressing memories and discussion of its past; Benton’s murals are intended to provoke thought.
That reminds me. My denomination is on the verge of splitting. Initially over LGBT inclusion, but it is expected that the Liberal branch will eventually remove parts of the Doctrine pertaining to the divinity of Jesus Christ.
In any case, our current symbol is a cross and flame. I wonder if both future branches will take the opportunity to retire it, or if one will claim it.
Methodist, right? I’ve never seen that emblem as similar to a KKK cross-burning. The flame is not coming from the cross. But then, I was raised Methodist so I don’t know how it looks to people who didn’t grow up seeing it every Sunday (and don’t know the “flame = Holy Spirit” symbolism). At any rate, it wouldn’t surprise me if they innocently (naively?) kept it.
There’s a “First United Methodist” church near the bell tower where I live, and they’ve got a cross-with-flame symbol, kinda like you’re saying. The flame is sorta whispy and coming off the left side of the cross. No idea what it’s meant to symbolise, but it looks kinda neat.
Adopted shortly after the merger of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, the symbol relates the United Methodist church to God through Christ (the cross) and the Holy Spirit (the flame). The flame is a reminder of Pentecost when witnesses were unified by the power of the Holy Spirit and saw “tongues, as of fire” (Acts 2:3). The two tongues of a single flame may also be understood to represent the union of two denominations. x The two separate flames represent the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church coming together to form the United Methodist Church.
I think it might work better as “what?” – beat panel – “what?!”, since a lot of people seem to be confused by the comic as is. I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be being confused, then angry confused, about the existence of said mural. Although I was also confused by it on initial read.
Having the beat panel come after the first “what” would imply that Dorothy is refusing to explain. How else would you explain Dorothy staying silent? Beat panel conveying shock, confused “what”, and angry “what” works better IMHO.
No one gets lynched because of Benton’s painting either. Blacks got lynched by the Klan. Jews get murdered because of antisemitism – in particular theories of powerful Jewish elites conspiring to control the world.
You’d have a better point if this particular mural glorified the Klan and the cross-burning, rather than depicting it as a negative part of the states history – and a relatively small part of the painting at that. This isn’t like the various Confederate monuments, which were built to support segregation.
I do want to point out that unfortunately/fortunately I don’t live in Indiana and don’t have experience with these murals, and unfortunately from the limited context provided in comic it sounded like the usual historical hate art that gets defended bc history.
I still think the mural being kept there instead of photographed and recorded is a mistake, but I am relieved its not a hate art. And reminded that DoA takes place in real Indiana so I can’t just rely on the context of the story.
I just mean… the main use of a college or university lecture hall is to deliver lectures. Not to be an art gallery. They just salt the ground and declare it UnRoom, and never use it again?
Yeah, this is a thing all over. There’s a lot of Oregon’s history besides the Trail, loggers, and where they eventually drew the border that was never taught in schools back when I was a kid.
Even if the mural isn’t a celebration of the KKK, but a celebration of its weakening, it would be a big elephant in the room, begging to be discussed every time, to put it into correct context.
As such, it would be a distraction and the depiction of a burning cross could most likely be an unwelcome reminder to a lot of students about racism.
Thats not an environment that invites focus needed for learning.
Perhaps they should move the mural to a museum. It seems like a much better place for it.
Some people is unable to understand that art is not just a nice decoration, but something that have to make you think, feel emotions and give you catharsis.
Museum were invented at the end of xviii century. That was nice because it save a lot of artifacts from destruction. But now people think that art has to be only inside museums. This is really sad. And I can’t understand how you can study in a class without decorations. It’s like kill the life.
Wow, so many commenters defending the burning cross art! I didn’t know it made such a bit impact on your lives that its worth keeping even though it represents a racially charged history of extreme violence and prejudice. Lets make sure these hate arts stay up forever for everyone to see, its very important we share that hate art!
(Love how this crowd never shows up to defend other kinds of public art installations that are due for removal)
Ye, a violent racist period of history many americans apparently aren’t taught about and tend to forget. I’d be with you if it actually was hate art and celebrating the kkk, but it’s not. It’s a critique. I’d also be with you if they were still using the room because that’s way too much for a casual lecture. But they’re not. I’m personally not in favor of white people covering up things that depict their dirty history and acting like it never happened.
Do you support Huckleberry Finn? It also represents a racially charged history of extreme violence and prejudice.
Maybe look into this particular painting a little closer. It does depict the Klan, but it does so in the context of Indiana history and is widely considered an anti-Klan work. It is not “hate art”, unless any depiction or mention of that part of history is “hate”.
I agree that the mural can be painful for many to view when they’re there to learn, and I can agree that maybe it should be removed. I’m not here to defend keeping it in that classroom. But considering the intent of the artist (to condemn the Klan) isn’t it a little unfair to refer to it as “hate art?”
I can tell you that the general response by the “art community” to poor responses to public art is a combination of “now you have to pay to preserve this thing you hate or you’re a dictator” and “screw you, unqualified philistine” (see: the architecture of Boston City Hall). So you might get the sense that there should be public art, but not much love for any individual piece.
Okay. But lets think a minute here. The mural’s point is to make sure we never forget, right? That’s why its critical it stay on the wall in everyone’s face, right? That feels like in itself we’re making some shitty assumptions.
The BIPOC students haven’t forgotten. Making them sit in front of that and have the racism and violence they’ve experienced shoved in their face sucks. Rendering a classroom (you know, for teaching) unusable for educational purposes is… counterproductive.
It feels like that mural is staying up for the purposes of teaching white people. And I strongly feel that despite its intent and historical value that it should be documented, photographed, and displayed in a more appropriate area. Like not a classroom.
@Delicious Taffy
*gasp* I didn’t even mention my gaming status and you knew? Are we… soulmates?
I’m surprised more non americans don’t know about the burning cross. I figured it just made its way around through cultural osmosis and media n shit. Probably just bc my country is near america
A large number of Canadians, perhaps the majority,, know what a burning cross means. But we consume large quantities of American cultural products, so that shouldn’t be a surprise.
I don’t remember any murals in any of my classrooms, which is really what throws me about all this. I agree that the art holds value, but I also think it wasn’t a great decision to have it painted in a classroom in the first place.
Huh, this is quite fascinating. I’m not American, and my first association to a burning cross was an anti-Christian one, similar to burning bibles, and the “this is Indiana” thing consequently was rather confusing. Even my second one was with Emperor Nero, who supposedly had Christian tied to crosses (or was it poles?) and lit on fire to serve as torches.
The KKK thing didn’t really enter my mind until I read the comments – I’d have gotten white masks, but burning crosses is more closely tied to religious persecution to me. How come it became a KKK symbol? I didn’t think the KKK was anti-Christian…?
Looking it up, the Klan apparently borrowed it from the Scottish, who would burn a cross as a sign of war and to gather together their clansmen. The idea was introduced by a white supremacist author in a novel about the KKK in 1905.
Referring to the Scottish custom, that’s a very, uh, interesting way to announce war for a Christian nation. Kind of like burning your own flag to call people to war. You’d thing burning a cross would be more appropriate for the calling of, say, a jihad. But I guess that explains why the KKK chose it.
I read the article explaining the context behind that mural, and there is one inherent flaw to the composition. So this is supposed to be some big 22 panel work, kind of like a sequential series, but some panels can only be seen inside classrooms? So, what? Are you supposed to just take a walking tour of the campus going into classes in a certain order to see them all? These panels should have all been placed in order in public spaces where you could casually see them in their proper context instead of having them put in a place where students have to stare at it when they should be taking a class.
For comparison, this would be like if a series of pictures were made to document world war 2, but panels depicting huge crowds cheering at Hitler’s election or jews being forced into gas chambers were just stuck in rooms by themselves where some people would see just them for extended periods of time.
My point is context is key, but if you have to go out of your way to explain the context then you have failed to get the message across.
You should find a picture of the particular panel under debate though, all the context they’re talking about is in that panel. Whether or not you think it’s ok to have a cross burning up on the wall regardless of context (I’d lean towards no), all the context it’s trying to say about leaving it in the past and moving to a different future is in the same panel
I don‘t get why there are no classes in that room anymore. It‘s not an endorsement of the KluKlux Clan, quite the contrary. Wouldn‘t it be good for students to be confronted with uncomfortable truths?
So it is better to pretend that things like this didn‘t happen? Paint a happy, unrealistic image about the history of the country do that no one feels unconfortable? It is clear that the image does not intend to insult black people, quite the contrary. I think especially students should develop a sharp mind and learn how to deal with this kind of art and history. Not using this room any more means that they are treated like little sensitive children.
That’s not fair to the black students. This isn’t a matter a childhood fears or history. The Klan is active. I got a baggie with candy and a letter from them on my front lawn before I left the states. Lynching or other forms of violence encouraged by or perpetrated by the Klan are a legitimate current fear for black peeps in America
You’re asking black students to sit in a classroom with depictions of real people who want them dead on the wall. Do you expect Jewish students to study next to depictions of Nazis directing prisoners with rifles at Auschwitz?
Either my memory is messing with me, or there was a Roomies! strip with almost the exact same first panel (with someone expecting a larger hall because of some known professor).
Local library has a cloth mural that depicts Hmong families being shot and bombed. It’s part of a story cloth that ends with the refugees arriving and settling in the town. There’s another like it in a nearby Lutheran church. You can show terrible things in art. But they don’t belong on a classroom.
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Speaking of cable news talking heads, when’s Bart O’Ryan making the jump from the Walkyverse?
[not that I really WANT him to]
i assume he’s one of Sarah’s teachers
Isn’t Sarah studying law though? Does that have crossover with political science?
Wait, if its political science doesnt that mean he’ll be Beckys tutor?
There is alot of crossover between the two. Alot of students who want to study law start out as an undergrad in poly sci some schools political science departments offer specializations in public law. Also they often offer constitutional law as poly sci class also many international relations courses are in Human Rights and international law. Also polticans tend to be Lawyers or business owners, so often they choose political science for a BA, before going for an MBA or JD. So political science degree is just as good or better then declaring oneself pre law. Also there nothing stopping poly sci students from taking law courses.
My grad program offered a joint JD-PhD program .
bart o’ryan… was a lawyer??
He’s having Lawsome adventures with Mike, who faked his death.
Mike faked Bart O’ryan’s death so they could hang out and have adventures?
Too bad it happened off panel.
I think he’s Scarface’s dad.
To clarify, this is just my wild guess, but it’s a hypothesis I’m fond of. We have no info on Bart in this universe that I am aware of.
What.
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2017/09/29/indiana-university-no-longer-use-room-mural-showing-kkk-rally-classroom/717308001/
Wow. Yeah, oddly enough, not using the room does seem to be one of the better options. Though wouldn’t it be perfect for Poli Sci classes?
I tried both this link and the one below.
My computer refuses to load it because my security programs don’t trust “indystar”.
I choose to believe that my computer is like “content from Indiana? No thanks!” And is thus protecting me from it.
The mural is pretty unavoidable if you’re in the classroom, particularly as a student.
What the hell?
Thank you for sharing the link! That is … something else. It may be a weakness of image resolution, but the only African-American respresentation I see in there are the presumed targets of the cross burning and the child on the hospital-bed. As if it were impossible to portray them as anything other than victims of white people or being saved by white people. I understand people’s grievances with it. Who is the artist?
Ah. It’s Thomas Hart Benton, and I feel it’s worth reproducing here a key piece from the article about the controversy.
“””Hart prevailed in keeping it in his work because he wanted it to be an honest portrayal of Indiana’s history — “even the ugly and discomfiting parts,” as Robel’s letter said.”””
Apparently it can’t be moved, and they don’t want to censor it. What it is supposed to show is the horror of a klan burning and a sign of hope that people can be better. Yet it still reveals the internalized biases of the period when it was made.
Thanks Dara and Yumi for the links.
I’m not sure if it’s fair to judge biases based on seeing only one panel out of a 22-panel work. Quite possibly it does display internalized biases, but we can’t honestly tell when we’ve seen less than 5% of the work.
Wow, I really failed my perception check when I had a class there a few years ago, as I definitely remember that painting, but I somehow failed to notice any of the KKK stuff in it, granted I don’t tend to pay much attention to art and it is in a higher part in the background, but still…
Huh. I mean intention behind the mural aside, isn’t that kind of a distraction? I’m all for aesthetics in a learning setting to improve mood, but this kinda seems like it screams at you from across the room, at least to my ADHD brain
Oh God, I was hoping this was just a Parks and Rec reference…
Same here.
Thank you for providing that context, Yumi.
Yeah uh. Even in its intended context decrying the racism, I would not want to sit in that classroom for an hour or so several times a week and try to focus on… well, literally anything else in said room.
It’s like trying not to think of a pink rhinoceros, only in this case it’s a depiction of a hate crime. In the room. Just… right there.
Not the best test-taking environment, I imagine.
two kinds of people, those who get art and those others. I get it I also recognize the era it’s from. 🙂 There is a lot of WPA art work that’s been painted over by the hypersensitive of all sides. Art isn’t just to be pretty, it makes you uncomfortable with yourself, with others etc and so on and so forth. I’m no qualified to give this dang art class okay? I can’t even do stick figures. I prefer Dada to baroque and find most Low Brow better than anything Pollock ever did.
Huh, when I went to IU ~10 years ago they still used the room! In fact I think it was the room used for my freshman orientation. I definitely had at least two classes in there over the years. It was definitely controversial then too, though.
Noting from the linked article that this occurred in 2017 (in the real world). So we now know that as of this particular strip, Dumbing of Age is taking place during the past four years.
Which means we can reasonably expect references to things that have happened at least up to that point (such as Trump’s run for POTUS).
I mean… we know the strip takes place in a floating timeline comic book time setting where it’s always “this year” (but, like…not this year this year.)
2020 is its own IRL Dumbing of Age, it doesn’t need to be lampooned, that would be self referent.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/about/ point 6.
Joe has already made a “joke” in the past about how because of T****, his own actions have been more presidential than Dorothy’s.
sounds like indiana to me
They could start a petition to name the University after a less controversial state.
Unfortunately given the current political climate, if they renamed Indiana they’d pick something like Pence-ylvania.
What the fuck?
Hoosiers please explain
Not a Hoosier, a New Yorker, but the same guy lived here 20 years so we know about him too. Thomas Hart Benton did a bunch of murals depicting the social, economic, and cultural history of Indiana through the 1930’s. This includes a mural about the 1920’s which depicts the Klu Klux Klan in the back. In the foreground is a reporter at a typewriter, (in the late 1920’s newspapers began attacking the clan as a whole), and there is also depicted a nurse administering to both a black and a white child, which in the 1930’s would be a pretty big statement on integration of health care. (In short, it’s not a pro-klan painting)
I thought, “Hey! That looks like Thomas Hart Benton, TBH!” And you are confirming that it’s not just a knock off, but the real thing?
Yes. Yumi’s link above is very worth the read.
Wait, so they just opt not to ever use the room, instead of…painting over it? Come on, this could be fixed in an hour.
To summarize the Smithsonian article google pulled up, it’s controversial for the same reasons as Huckleberry Finn. It depicts racism, but doesn’t glorify it. So its a question of either rubbibg that dark side of Indiana’s history in people’s faces or pretending it never existed.
“but doesn’t glorify it”
According to the IU page on it (which is surprisingly convincing, especially given the background nature of the imagery in question, and how that bears a familarity to similar such imagery in historical works decrying dark events such as massacres), it actually acts as a counterpoint to racial discrimination and even as such, the KKK imagery was viewed negatively from the start. Which, if true, means that opposing the mural could in fact be opposing something with a history of pro-equality sentiments and, thereby, be marginalizing past efforts towards such. Well, it’s an interesting read, anyway, so get your own take on it:
https://murals.sitehost.iu.edu/history/woodburn.html
That said, it’s a HELLA distracting mural and, y’know, the KKK aspect is going to be distracting regardless of its intentions- that in the same way the earlier referenced massacre or fascism or other such paintings highlighting and criticising darker periods of the past would be. They’re great to look at within a gallery or display but, not so great if you’re in any classroom that isn’t history-related or otherwise contextual to the work. Or, to put that another way, you can only look at a massacre for so long in one sitting without being extremely uncomfortable.. and since the KKK imagery is in the same general spectrum..
So, in short, the mural is likely far less offensive than we expected when reading the comic (and, since it can’t be removed without damaging it, there’s legitimate basis for not removing it given that its message is puportedly a positive one) but, at the same time, still entirely inappropriate to be matched alongside most classes. Moreover, IU comments I came across were a bit underwhelming in their defense of the mural, unlike the defense the university website provided. That likely also doesn’t help.
In sum, this is another case of “where’s the line between opposing propaganda supporting negative outlooks, and ignoring the existance of past dark events and our overcoming of them entirely”. With that in mind, closing the classroom while retaining mural (again, keeping in mind it apparently can’t be removed) actually seems like the best approach IU could have taken to the matter.
Yeah, if it genuinely can’t be removed, then that does seem like one of the better options. (Though the ‘covering it with a cloth would be tantamount to censorship’ comment in said article is… not particularly convincing to me, I admit. Then again, I’ve dealt with enough college professors with draconian policies about use of computers even for notetaking because they’re a Distraction – always a delight outing myself as disabled on the first day of class like that when you bring it up in the syllabus, Professor – that the concept of classroom murals would likely just annoy me in general. I would be genuinely shocked if not a single professor on IU campus had one of those policies, and it seems likely any given mural without depicting the Klan would still be at least a little distracting.)
And since it IS depicting a LITERAL HATE CRIME which huge swathes of students would find justifiably traumatic, yeah, I do not blame said students for saying ‘we don’t want to have to sit through lectures in this room.’ Given it’s apparently one of the bigger lecture halls in the building, I could see students having genuine difficulty finding other sections if the campus is accounting for said hall being in use.
As I mentioned, it’s enough that it’s just hella distracting by its colors, size, and placement. You don’t even need to bring in the context of the painting’s topic to argue that students have reasonable grounds for not wanting to sit through lectures in a classroom with that mural in it. 😛
Again, as I noted, the context [of hate crimes, etc] of the mural is occasionally useful [for certain lectures, etc], as with such materials in a textbook but, as with a textbook, you really need to be able to move on from a topic when it’s no longer relevant.
Given the age of technology we live in, it’d be easier and more worthy to just put up a digital display with rotating painting and murals..
But, again, there’s no reason to attack or want to destroy the mural itself, given that it itself isn’t based in anything damaging. There’s a big difference between blindly wanting to remove and erase the existence of the mural and its associated context, and simply just not wanting to have regular classes in the same room as it.
All my arguments have been against the immediate jump in the comments to “it has the KKK associated with it, so it’s automatically evil and needs to be destroyed and then forgotten about, regardless of proper contextualization of the mural’s intentions and history”.
So, given a lack of alternatives, closing the room was the best option the university had. That said, as you noted, they DID have an alternative, of just covering the mural. It’s laughably nonsensical to claim that closing a room off entirely is less censoring than covering the mural with a cloth that people can brush aside if there’s interest in doing such.
That would, of course, also be far more efficient in terms of building resources, since it wouldn’t waste the classroom. Or, if they insisted, they could just convert the hall into a gallery and emphasize the mural.
So no, the university could have handled things better. But still, it’s not reasonable for individuals to baselessly call out for the destruction of the mural, while insisting that such an action is any better than the actions of the kind of individuals we associate with such dark topics, as with the KKK.
That, and proper contextualization of what the mural represents, is really just the one counter-argument here. After all, the original Star Trek series was considered very progressive for its time but, in retrospect, it’s a terribly bigoted, extremely shallow mess (by modern standards). It’s entirely reasonable to feel discomfort towards it in the modern era but, at the same time, entirely unreasonable to claim it’s pro-bigotry and shouldn’t be aired at all and, further, should have its masters destroyed.
That’d be missing the intent and history of the show being contrary to what the show is being accused of promoting, ignoring that it still has modern contextual uses, and engaging in mindless destruction of things that one doesn’t disagree with regardless of the validity, morality, or ethics of doing such. Y’know, just like the KKK/etc do.
While I wouldn’t agree with destroying the mural, I object strongly to the idea that it wouldn’t be any better than the KKK. Destroying a mural might not be good, but it’s a far cry from lynching and terror.
Different only in that it’s usually the first step. Denying history is usually the first step to a full on re-enactment with new faces replacing both attacker and victim. It begins with removing or hiding uncomfortable images, followed by trying to remove or hide uncomfortable words. The next step in the progression, is to try to remove uncomfortable thoughts-and since thoughts are contained in heads, removing heads often becomes the next step. At each step, right up to the one where you’ve got sanctioned violence and mass executions, is ‘completely reasonable’ when viewed in a vacuum and while willfully ignoring what the next logical step in the progression is.
“it’s controversial for the same reasons as Huckleberry Finn. It depicts racism, but doesn’t glorify it.”
Yeah, but the passages of Huckleberry Finn with racial slurs aren’t printed in big letters on the walls of a room where students of color are trying to focus on learning linear algebra or whatever.
Right, which is why they’re not teaching in that room anymore, but also why they don’t want to just destroy it.
^ This, with its contextualization in mind, concisely sums up every comment I’ve made in today’s comment section. 😛
..though now I’m feeling there’s gotta be a classroom somewhere in the US that has nothing but Huckleberry Finn (or a blend of Huck and similar) quotes on the walls.. >.<
I’m surprised in this era that they haven’t had students break in and destroy the mural.
Nah, just update the picture by painting MAGA hats on the cross-burners.
I wonder if there’s a way to add that without damaging the underlying painting. I think it’d be a rather evocative way to make the painting relevant for scholastic discussion within a building that appears to be dedicated to social studies classes. In other words, you may have been kidding with that but, I think it’s a totally legit approach to dealing with it. :’P
Not really kidding. Different stupid hat, identical beliefs.
I meant, kidding with promoting the actual implementation. I knew you were being sincere with the underlying comparison 😛
(Though presumably any sensible person has already long since recognized that equivalency- rather, even beyond equivalency, Trump’s supporters typically pull directly out of hate groups like the KKK, meaning they’re already fundamentally the same group [at the points of overlap] to begin with).
Paint on an overhead transparency held up by static cling.
Just use a projector to broadcast an image of the appropriate iconography of hatred. Heck, it could be a slideshow and cycle different over-layers, maybe even colour shift some of the workers to include diversity. It could become a chronology of progress, with the persistence of the burning cross illustrating the challenge of both overcoming our history, but of getting free of that hatred that does persist, even today (see: MAGA).
See, I questioned your grasp of my sentiments on the utility of the mural just below but, in this comment you seem to be exactly on board with where I’m coming from. Though again, the context of “display piece” still doesn’t work well for general classes. Would make the chamber rather useful for unaffiliated lectures on the given topic, though.
Honestly, I’m liking Needfuldoer’s take the most, though. We can just have the students markering all over it as they please. Eg, having a dinosaur nomming on the KKK. Walky’d approve, I’m sure.
If it were a straight forward bit of old racist art outright celebrating the KKK, I’m sure student activists *would* have already simply destroyed it. But the piece is overtly anti-Klan, intended to be stark recognition but also condemnation of the darker parts of Indiana’s state history. Even so, though, it’s unreasonable to expect black students to simply focus and learn about whatever a class’s topic is supposed to be with that mural sitting above their heads the entire time. If it could be easily relocated, I’m sure that would have been done, but that’s not really possible either. I don’t think anybody believes “just not using the room” is anything more than a short term option to put off making a real decision on what to do, but then again there’s nothing so permanent as a temporary solution.
Speaking as a Hoosier, I don’t want them to paint over it. For a long time I didn’t know this bit of history about my home state. I’ve lived in Indiana all my life and didn’t get taught about it in school. I didn’t hear a single peep about it, in fact. That is pretty shameful, in my opinion. I am uncomfortable with the idea of erasing the evidence of that history, because I know racism is still alive and well in this state and the rest of the country.
take a picture and put a plaque up explaining the history behind it. there’s no need to retraumatize people just trying to go to school
Well i guess that’s why they’re not using that hall anymore. Personally I think they should just make it a mini free museum and build a new lecture hall
Turn it into an art room to display historical and current student art. Dedicate the room to illustrating and destroying the stereotypes and hatred that racism promotes.
I was just thinking the same thing. Leave it up so the ugly parts of history aren’t ignored, but dedicate the room to art with a similar theme and intent. It can also serve as a discussion piece for teachers who want to talk about the controversies of censorship.
-Let me clarify real quick here: the controversies of censorship which erases something glorifying the negative parts of history vs. censoring something which depicts the negative parts as a warning. Because there is an important distinction to be made there.
Pretty much what I think. Turn it into a free display/exhibit.
Sounds like that’s pretty much what they’re intending to do (or did?), according to the article linked above. Ends up that it’s right next to the art corridor, and so both the art and the students are much better served by turning the room into an art gallery (especially, as both you and they say, of additional artwork that puts the original mural into context), where, when you come into the room and are faced with the mural, it is because you came into the room to see the mural.
Context definitely matters for these kind of things. If the classroom has a context similar to that of a history book (ie, it is oriented towards discussions over past negative events, while properly framing them for constructive discussion) then there’s no real legitimate reason to remove the painting, anymore than it would make sense to remove photos of nazis from a WW2 section in a history book. That’d be different if the image was flattering towards the KKK or especially grisly and troubling but, as it is, it’s a worthy discussion piece (even if, as I noted above, it’s just way too visually distracting in its placement and style and overt emphasis on the given topic).
Basically, it’s not the kind of work that’d traumatize anyone who is in a rational state, unless the contextualization for it was mishandled. Or, rather, if it did poke at trauma, that’d be a good thing, as it has the right context and mildness to allow someone to properly frame such stress into something constructive.
So again, I don’t feel it should be the distraction that it is but, at the same time, it’s not reasonable to view it as racist propaganda (versus constructive historical reference) given its apparent lack of historical intention as being such.
This, of course, is rather significantly different in concept from seeking to remove statue celebrating enemy generals who actively fought to defend slavery. There are things we should remove but, after a point, trying to erase the past becomes extremely counterproductive and sabotages the gains we made from overcoming that past in the first place.
*To be clear, ” overcoming that past in the first place” was meant as a general comment. Within the scope of the mural, it’d be referencing overcoming “the KKK getting away with mass lynchings while running around dressed as vengeful ghosts” rather than racism on the whole.
Maybe not traumatize, but I don’t think it’s irrational for say, a black student with a personal family history with the Klan not wanting a Klan burning painting hanging over their heads in every class they have in that room. Nor would it be a good thing to have that poked at every day.
Which is different than having a session of an appropriate class talk about the Klan and their historical significance – even using the painting as reference.
You nailed it Jeff. It’s one thing to briefly study a particular picture in a text book that you can close. It is completely worse to have to have an image in your view for several hours a week, when you still live in a society that carries the same hate, and has arguably institutionalized it into the police force. I wonder how many students have lost loved ones to racial violence and have had to sit in that classroom?
As I already said, the mural just doesn’t work for general usage. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have contextual utliity, or that it should be removed at the cost of destroying it.
In that regard, I think Demoted completely and radically missed the point, given the bizarreness of their argument. To be clear ‘it shouldn’t be ignored or destroyed anymore than any other recognition of the past should be’ does not by any means equate a mural to a textbook. That’s a rather forced interpretation, in fact.
Again, a textbook properly contextualizing misdeeds of the past has utility and, a mural with similar positive historical consideration has utility. I’ve already stated (in other comments – ctrl+f is your friend) that the mural didn’t work for various reasons and that the university closing the room was likely the best option given the factors involved.
But stating something which isn’t racist is racist, trying to ignore the past, or trying to destroy art.. those are things I’m arguing against here and, frankly, it’s hypocritical to argue in favor of those, given the context in question. Rather, that’s exactly why we need these lessons of the past to reference.. so we don’t repeat them again, just with a different justification.
JR said, Wait, so they just opt not to ever use the room, instead of…painting over it? Come on, this could be fixed in an hour.
One cannot learn from history by ignoring it – or by destroying any reference to it (which is why I deplore the so-called ‘cancel culture’ so much). I would have thought everybody would have at least learned that lesson from Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”.
Thomas Hart Benton’s murals are historic artworks, and they should not be ‘painted over’ for that reason alone – unless you also think we should replaster the wall with the mural of Michelangelo’s ‘Last Supper’ because depicts Christ and the apostles as white males in robes and finery at a fancy banquet instead of devout Jews celebrating a Passover Seder, or it’s OK to ban books because they use words and terminology consistent with the times in which they were written (“Huckleberry Finn”). And just to let you know, if you do you’re going to come off looking as stupid as the people who decided to ban certain movies in certain areas because the dialogue had one of the cast members uttering the word – gasp! – ‘virgin’.
The monks literally cut a hole in The Last Supper in order to install a new doorway.
So-called “cancel culture” has always been with us, and the people who complain about it the most (conservatives) are usually the first to resort to it in their efforts to maintain the status quo. They only call it cancel culture when they are the targets, just as they only call it Identity Politics when it isn’t their identity.
There is a huge difference between remembering the uglier aspects of the past and glorifying them. Like, say, putting up statues to Confederate generals who literally committed treason as defined in the U.S. Constitution. Funny how so many self-professed “constitutional conservatives” tend to overlook that part. By that logic we should erect statues of Benedict Arnold at West Point, Osama Bin Laden at Ground Zero and Isoroku Yamamoto at Pearl Harbor. I’d be happy with a statue of Robert E. Lee if it showed him lying prostrate at the feet of George Gordon Meade (he doesn’t deserve Ulysses S. Grant) on a pile of bloody corpses. Lee got the commemoration he deserved when they buried thousands of Union war dead in his front lawn. George Thomas, a fellow Virginian who did not commit treason, put it best: “He killed them, he can look a them.”
I have not viewed this Benton mural to judge it’s value, but it does document an ugly period in Indiana’s history, which lasted less than a decade and ended rather abruptly when the KKK imploded from its leaders’ fundamental corruption (sound familiar?) The Benton murals I have seen in the Indiana State Library and Martinsville post office are nice. With that said, I wouldn’t hesitate to paint over the mural in the Indiana Statehouse House Chamber, historical or not, because it’s irredeemably hideous. but that’s an aesthetic judgement and not a political one.
There’s a lot of middle ground between leaving hurtful images/words up in public spaces and erasing all evidence of those negative aspects of history.
Simply not using the room is one option in that middle ground, but if it really is such an important piece of historic art, surely a museum would be a better place for it than a room that’s never used and no one visits. Keeping the room unused seems little better than painting over it or putting up a covering. Take a photograph or even move the entire mural to a museum for remembering this stuff. It could be displayed in a more appropriate place, and they could also make use of the room without making some students needlessly uncomfortable.
Point is, “Don’t erase history” is not an argument for making people experience hurtful stuff like that. That’s a false dichotomy.
One of the problems was it can’t be moved without damaging it. I still think turning the room into an exhibit/display where people could have lectures on the mural and similar works and see it by choice is their best bet.
Don’t need to paint over it. They could just cover it, put a projector screen or whiteboard over it or something.
The article addressed that: by covering it with a cloth, they would be censoring it. They would rather not. It isn’t glorifying the KKK, but exposing their crimes, and the foreground shows a white nurse, tending to a black child, to show hope for the future.
There is no pleasing everyone.
Cover it with a cloth: Censorship.
Cover it with stage curtains that are clearly meant to negate ‘censorship’ claims: Now there’s a distracting curtain instead of a mural.
Put a content warning with interpretive signage/required reading before the first class about the context of the mural: You’re still leaving a source of trauma openly on display.
Don’t use the room: Wasted space.
Use the room as a mini-trip for lessons on Art History/American Historyl:Might be difficult to schedule.
Can they turn the furniture arrangement around 180 degrees so only the professor faces it, or is this one of those lecture halls with theater seating and an angled floor?
You ever try to read with someone hanging over your shoulder reading your book?
Maybe it was meant as a joke, and Khyrin is right, people will complain about scheduling and access, but turning the room into an art display is not a bad idea. Not perfect, but it preserves the piece, and if the room is dedicated to challenging and defeating racism, it won’t be glorifying that which Benson decried.
It also won’t be forcing people to pretend to ignore symbols of hatred against them while learning calculus, or whichever.
“censoring” and “putting a slight obstacle in the way” really shouldn’t be considered the same thing.
That would be my opinion. Cover during classes where it would be a distraction. Then you can still use it for a lesson when appropriate or open it for public display when classes aren’t being held there.
Yeah, you really can’t avoid using one of your biggest lecture halls forever, and it does have historical value (and isn’t remotely sympathetic towards the Klan,) but I can’t imagine that helping anyone’s focus. (Again, I can’t really imagine any other mural in a huge lecture hall being anything but a distraction.) Lecture classes that size are not particularly engaging to start with.
So they’d rather not censor it by covering it with a cloth, but they are totally fine with censoring it by not allowing the room to be used for lectures. Makes perfect sense.
Thomas Hart Benton was a significant regional painter in the first half of the 20th Century. I have a thick coffee table book about his career and work. Painting over the IU mural raises the issue of defacing a public work of art for ideological reasons even if it presented the KKK in a positive light – which it doesn’t. If I remember the mural correctly, the Klan rally looks sinister.
What I find interesting is that a political science course does not use the mural to discuss all of the issues raised in this discussion. Seems like a perfect opportunity to discuss the political history of the state of Indiana. https://www.wrtv.com/longform/the-ku-klux-klan-ran-indiana-once-could-it-happen-again
A political science class could – but that’s unlikely to be focus of an entire semester of an entry level polisci class. And certainly not of every class routinely using that room.
The rest of the time, the mural just sitting there going “remember the KKK”
In some alternate Universe, Mike is the Dean and makes sure that all the Hebrew lessons are all taught in the Holocaust museum.
Yeah, that sounds as helpful and effective as Mike has ever been.
This strip confuses me
I’m a bit confused too, but what I’m thinking is obviously the mural exists but I’m not sure if Becky knew about it. I’m guessing she’s surprised by the information and the joke “more like dark reality” is that it’s Indiana and thus has a history of racism and Becky shouldn’t be surprised since she’s assumedly lived there all her life.
I think that’s the thing, yeah, that Becky is not aware of this aspect of Indiana’s history.
Like, she’s not as naive as Joyce was, but she’s also still from the same community.
yes agree. also maybe even if she knew some of the history, not shocked that it was painted but shocked that it is still there
Extra irony being that the mural exists in fact because the artist didn’t want anybody to forget that yes, the clan had a disturbing amount of prominence in 1920 Indiana.
Or in Virginia, in 2020.
I too request the cliff notes on this comic.
**is also confused**
**reads comments below**
**rereads comic**
OH! I get it now.
This comic would have worked better animated. I didn’t realize that the no-dialogue panel was supposed to be a reaction beat and that Becky’s initial “…what?” was supposed to be a flat-affect “WAT?” rather than a questioning “why are you guys staring at me” what.
Read in that context, with Becky dropping a flat-affect “what” rather than a confused what, the rest of the dialogue makes sense.
Oh, THANK you. That clears a lot up.
Ok. I read the first “what” as disbelieving and questioning (not flat) and when no explanation was forthcoming, the second as stronger and more demanding,
Thank you! I get it now!!!
Well, it’s a large step from „shows a burning cross“ to „shows a KKK ralley“.
That Dorothy say „a burning cross“ is interesting (if Willis actually refers the picture that is the reason a room is no longer used in real life), by she might expect her two (formerly) (fundy) christian friends to react strongly to that imagery.
I wonder if she is trying to get Joyce to be more open about her changing beliefs? Or she decided to start poking back at Becky?
And if the mural someone above linked is the ne that is now hidden in real life: if I hadn’t started searching for a burning cross in it, I might have overlooked the KKK stuff in the background. The foreground very much draws the eye. Though if you sat through a boring lecture, you might start to examine the picture more closely and once seen, it‘d probably hard to forget.
Are you American? In my opinion, it’s not a big step from a crossburning to the KKK. It’s, like, half a step at most, if that. But I will say that it’d make sense for people of Becky and Joyce’s upbringing to not understand that. I just also think it’s something that Dorothy could easily think would be understood.
Im not even American and I associate cross burning with the KKK: that’s just basic osmosis from years of media both social and otherwise at work.
I wasn’t aware anyone except the KKK burned crosses.
Things I learned today reading up about this mural:
Apparently it was an old Scottish thing. A way of mustering the clans for battle. Like a beacon fire, but with a cross.
The First KKK (during Reconstruction) didn’t burn crosses. The first KKK cross burnings were fictional – in Birth of a Nation and novel it was based on.
Explicitly based on the Scots version – rallying the white people together. The second Klan in the 1910s and 20s took cross burnings from the movie and turned it into a real thing.
Never underestimate propaganda.
Nope, I live across the pond. And school never covered the KKK, so no, actually no association between burning crosses and the KKK. We’re they actually anti-Christian or why did they burn crosses?
(One could argue that hate-mongerers are always anti-Christian, but….)
Found an article on it. Hope this helps: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.indystar.com/amp/717308001
Pawnee was only barely a parody sometimes.
Pawnee was a satire, not a parody.
I can’t read the tone of this comic. Someone please tell me Becky is shocked that it exists (surprised what?) and not confused why it would be controversial (indifferent what?).
I’m reading it as “why is there a mural of crosses being burned?” kind of incredulous anger because while Becky has been hurt by HER church, she’s not turned away from Christianity like Joyce has. Course it could just be “WHH IS THIS A THING?!” I don’t know the US well enough.
I read it as a stunned, confused “…What?” followed by another “WHAT?” where she’s getting less stunned but still thrown and confused.
(Second “what” may also have some annoyance in the “wait, are we not explaining this” variety.)
cross burning as in KKK. surprised that it’s there (googled ‘indiana u cross burning mural’)
I misread Lee’s comment
Dorothy’s neutral face in panel 2 is for some reason hilarious to me.
Fuuuuuck, I forgot about that.
*pulls the fuse out of the Muzak today*
You know I just wanna say that I’m grateful I was born and continue to live in California. That is all.
*snap cut to a statue of Junipero Serra*
Pffft! Okay you gotta laugh out of me!
My kid studied junipero serra last year. Fourth graders have to do a big mission project. We burnt his partway down, and his report was about the kumeyaay revolt. Incidentally he wanted to burn the cross he put on on the model until we explained the implications of cross burning in america and that it can’t just mean “eff colonizers”
They have to do a mission *model* project
They still do mission model projects! I had to do one in elementary too and that was over two decades ago! Wow!
The only mission model I ever saw in school was of the Alamo.
To bring things full circle, kinda, Oregon does not officially recognize Columbus Day. This is not because the legislature was particularly woke regarding indigenous people, but because, in the 1920’s, it was controlled by the KKK. And Columbus was a Catholic.
Yeah. The elevation of Colombus into an historical figure in the USA was part of a program to address discrimination against Catholics. The invention and promotion of Columbus Day was a project of the Knights of Columbus.
It hard to understand now how controversial John F Kennedy’s religion was in 1960.
Plus Columbus Day marked that Italians were officially White. Like the Irish, they weren’t Nordic enough to be classed as white originally. The Irish were commonly portrayed as apes. The Italians and Jews were considered dirty and criminal. All the Slavs (like Poles) were obviously not white but an inferior breed. Eugenics was a huge thing in the US and the Nazis studied it. But they thought Jim Crow went too far.
The first Confederate flag I ever saw in person was in rural California.
I mean in fairness it is America in general. Pretty sure it’s everywhere. I’ve seen more than one confederate flag on the back of a truck in my lifetime. I don’t even know if it’s to support the south or just some idea of counter culture trigger the libs thing now.
Somehow the same people that are all about patriotism, but flying a traitorous flag. I’ll never understand how it’s accepted given what has historically happened to people even loosely associated with enemies of the state. You sure couldn’t have flown a soviet flag from the 50s to 90s without drawing some serious heat…maybe it’s the time gap?
Britain took all the stupid genes and sent them overseas. Two and a half centuries of interbreeding while avoiding smarter, better people because of the color of their skin or the shape of their nose was never gonna do anything to fix that gene pool.
Nah, they kept plenty of those stupid genes for themselves. They just had so many to spare, you see.
The Northern Elitists stopped the Southern “States’ Rights” Confederacy from running their states as they pleased, and began the culture of tyrannical Federalism and governmental overreach that continues today. True Americans love Freedom and reject Tyranny.
It’s wrong, but it hides all its racism by omission. Who doesn’t love Freedom?
To clarify: That first sentence is an explainer, not a statement of fact. I, FGarber do not endorse a rose colored Confederacy.
It’s ironic because those folks seem weirdly fond of tyranny/fascism while claiming how much they love freedom.
They love freedom so much they’ll vote to end democracy! /sarcasm
Maybe partially the time gap but also the unique circumstances. The civil war was a failed rebellion within the country, whereas the Cold War was a conflict with a separate country.
Imagine if the Cold War ended with the US annexing Soviet Russia and Soviet Russians making up half the government and running a large number of US states and holding a senate majority. Since that’s basically what happened with the confederate states and their status today. They lost the war but managed to weasel into power via slower & less openly warlike means such as voter suppression.
Plus it was useful to keep demonizing the Soviet Union and Communism as a way of attacking any movement towards the left, while earlier it was useful to minimize the rebellion in order to prop up white elites.
I saw one in Canada. It was in a building very close to my university and it pissed me off every day I saw it.
How in the fuck was that thing in Canada? That’s just weird.
Some people see it as a “Rebel” flag, while ignoring, or not knowing, that the rebellion in question was to keep a racist political and economic system intact. I seem to remember seeing someplace where a Confederate flag was in a window next to a pro First Nations flag of some sort.
And as I said below, I think The Dukes of Hazzard helped popularise it for people around in the late ’70s.
It happens the same way we have uneducated radicals having freedom rallies and assaulting barristas. They’re protesting mask orders as un-constitutional (which don’t actually violate our constitution)*. We also have murderous anti-abortion folks and redneck pro-confederacy nuts. Many Canadians forget what makes us Canadian when watching all the news and culture that flows south to north. Sometimes I wonder if thats why we send so many Canadians to Hollywood. Like changing the course of a river by diverting the headwaters.
* Instead of Life/Liberty/Pursuit, our foundation is peace, order and good government. This is why it isn’t wrong for our gov’t to issue lawful mask requirements. And yes, frankly it sounds more like the Empire than the Rebel Alliance, but it works, probably because our monarch and her representative (the “symbols” of our country) have no real political authority and thus can’t abuse their position beyond the script that is given to them. (n.b. I am a monarchist, at least for now. But that is a matter of luck that Liz is a respectable symbol. I could salute William and Kate, but if Chucky is king, things will have a grim cast for a while, despite not changing anything more than our currency pictures).
Mind you it’s not unConstitutional for our government to issue mask requirements either, whatever some reactionaries think. It absolutely isn’t on the state level and the only reason it might not be on the federal level is if it counts as a power reserved to the states. Federalism reasons, not some alleged right not to wear a mask.
I don’t even know but I hated it and kept wishing someone would steal the fucking thing.
Or at least that the fucker would move.
The popularity of The Dukes of Hazzard in the late ’70s probably helped spread the Confederate flag to places you wouldn’t expect.
My part of Australia, for instance.
It was helped by the fact that our own rebel flag, the Eureka Stockade flag, had been co-opted at the time by the Builders Labourers’ Federation, a controversial union.
Traitor flags were common in Wisconsin fifty years ago. This crap doesn’t fade or disappear with time. It’s a cancer, not a cold.
Three words.
Japanese internment camps.
I believe those were federal camps.
Yes. But they were federal in Canada as well is the point. We also had a family killed near the y2k by a Japanse balloon firebomb. (they found it in a tree, didnt know what it was…)
Also, Canadian native reservations were an inspiration for apartheid. We do some stuff well here, but treating our first nations, métis and inuit as we do is reprehensible.
Also Residential Schools. The Big Scoop. Rwanda. The ongoing mining, marketing and export of asbestos.
you asked for some medical/ scientific references about gender identity a few days ago. I think I found two papers that could be interesting for you :
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453018305353
and
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453018305353
I hope that helps.
Yes, California, land of the free. Where they imported Chinese to do their dirty work and then brutalized the hell out of them on their days off.
And then whitewashed them out of history. Funny how the only western movie to acknowledge the true role Chinese laborers played in the west is “Blazing Saddles” and that was in an off-hand way. Nobody watching any of movies about the gunfight at the OK Coral would know that Tombstone had a large and vibrant Chinatown.
I’m a California resident and there’s a restaurant down the street from me that is having regular Trump rallies/covid-denier protests on a nightly basis in defiance’s of state health orders, and my local nextdoor group contains such “lovely” posts from neighbors as “a black person is ringing my doorbell, should I call the police?”
So…yeah…California has some things going for it but the poison of racism and the confederate legacy of harm unto one’s fellow citizens in the name of ignorance and bigotry is a poison that pretty much infects everywhere in this country.
Same, but in Massachusetts. They were still teaching a heavily whitewashed version of colonial American history when I was in school, but from what I understand that’s been shifting toward a more balanced account since then.
Yeah most of my in-depth understanding of the history of racism in this country has come from independent reading and well-written threads by experts on Twitter. My California school education glossed over a LOT.
I am hoping it’s gotten better. It seems like it might be. My kid is in kindergarten and she just did her thanksgiving unit and instead of the very whitewashed “everyone was happy and thankful!” version I learned in elementary school, she got her first brief discussion of the horrors of colonialism (put in careful, digestible for a 5 year old terms obviously).
California is the only state whose history of outright genocide is so strong, obvious, widely supported and well-funded at local, state/territory, and federal levels, as well as nearly uncontroversial in press, that even most historians who deny that a national genocide happened will admit genocide happened there. From 1849 on, it was not only legal, but openly encouraged, to enslave, kidnap, rape, and murder Native people en masse. This followed up the Spanish colonial history of open enslavement via missions.
As far as I can tell, judging by my Californian students’ memories, they mostly teach the 1849 history in the lens of “Pioneers and ’49ers! Yaay!” and the mission history by making kids build models and talking about how cool they were.
Oregon isn’t any better, but at least they finally – FINALLY – tore down those goddamned pioneer statues.
Yup, your description of overly sanitized California history education sounds pretty spot-on from my own experiences. I had to learn most of the details through independent reading as I got older (and am probably still uninformed on some of it).
My kid is only in kindergarten so it’s too early for me to tell how much it’s improved since the 90s but I am hopeful it’s gotten at least a little better. Her teacher briefly discussed some of the horrors of colonialism in their kindergarten thanksgiving unit, which my teachers definitely did not do in my 1991 kindergarten class.
Can someone explain why Becky is saying “What?” and why Dorothy and Joyce are looking at her awkwardly?
It’s a weird, awkward facet of their school that Dorothy and Joyce knew about and Becky didn’t, basically.
Not sure about that. In the second panel, before Becky says anything, Joyce is already looking back. I suspect she’s as confused as Becky.
What I’m curious about is if either of them have made the cross-burning=Klan connection or if they’re thinking of it in more religious persecution terms.
My read was that Joyce was looking back at Becky in the panel to see her reaction, especially since her eyes don’t move in the next panel and she seems to have moved on by the last panel. If the comic only went to the second panel, I would agree, but as a whole, I see it differently. It is hard to know for sure where Joyce is looking exactly, though.
I could see that first paragraph interpretation if it were not for the fact that the final word balloon sounds far more like a Joyce explanation than a Dorothy one.
Sorry, that was to thejeff. Got called away in the middle of typing.
I think Becky and Joyce are both looking at Dorothy.
Becky is saying “what?” in disbelief. Essentially “what the hell?”
BWAHAHAHAHA IMAGINE BEING AMERICAN OMEGALUL
Hahahaha, imagine being someone who thinks this kind of shit is unique to America and types in all caps to boot.
Imagine finding human suffering at the hands of one’s country/citizens and the lack of ability to escape it funny.
Also I gotta ask what magical land you are from where bigotry and historical atrocities never happened and everyone lives in peace and harmony?
It’s kinda like “anywhere but here,” but instead is (as far as we know) “everywhere but earth.”
This is a very bad strip for those of us who are unaware of the delicacies of American History
Do you mean delicacies, as in the subtlety and nuance? Or delicacies in the sense of delectable morsels to be nibbled upon and savored? Because to anyone who enjoys studying the horrible things people do and have done to each other it sounds more like the latter.
Funny fact about IU: The Intramural Sports Building has Honest to God swastikas as part of the decor.
No, it has nothing to do with the Nazis. Yes, I am sure of that statement. The frescoes were added to the building long before the Nazis were a thing. Believe it or not, swastikas used to be a legitimate religious symbol (the frescoes depicted a repeated sequence of religious symbols from around the world) before the original shitstain edge lords ruined the symbol for everyone.
Okay, but now that the symbol is ruined, why don’t they paint or sculpt over it? It’s a sports building, they can find the money to pay some one.
No, there’s only money to pay sports team coaches significantly more than anyone else at the university and build stadiums. Certainly not money to paint over swastikas, and definitely not enough money to pay the athletes.
Why should they? The motifs aren’t obtrusive, they weren’t meant as a sign of oppression, and the Nazis shouldn’t get to ruin it for everyone.
Even today, the biggest use of swastikas is by Eastern religions.
Yes, but I don’t think it’s even remotely unreasonable for a Jewish person or anyone else oppressed by the Nazis to not want to see them outside those religious spaces.
This particular Jew could tell the difference between a Nazi symbol and random decoration.
As I recall it was one entrance of one gym building, small tiles. You would have to pay attention to even notice them, it’s not like a mural dominating your visual field in a classroom.
But apparently they got sanded over last year. I am disappoint.
Couple of photos with them:
https://www.davelandweb.com/bloomington/images/iu/hper/DSC_3898.jpg
And https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/Iuswas2.jpg/300px-Iuswas2.jpg
Interesting. Thanks for sharing. They’re even parallel to the ground as in the normal religious depiction, instead of rotated 45° as in the nazi depiction. If they are going to (did) sand down those, they should have done all the tiles as a process of removing religious symbols from a funded public institution, but I really don’t know enough about American colleges or IU’s funding in particular. However, tiles aren’t that hard to remove. Why not uninstall them and move them to the same exhibit with Benton’s mural?
It’s fine to have whatever feelings you have about them. Other Jewish folk (as I’m pretty sure Leorale is) feel differently and like I said, I don’t think they’re unreasonable for not wanting to see them outside a religious space (or hell, even IN a religious space, but with some religions you’d kinda expect them if you know anything about the religion).
Yep, I’m Jewish.
Interestingly, I’ve never seen the “Jewish symbol” in the graphic that defends things that visually resemble swastikas. (Might be Yemenite, Ethiopian, or made up for the meme — I’ve not seen everything on earth, but I’m a Jewish educator who has never once seen that one that’s labeled as Jewish.)
I also would of course have zero problem with Hindu signs in places that have lots of Hindu people or Hopi signs in places with Hopi and so on. I’m only trying to consider a sport center in Indiana, with an unobtrusive decoration that might give momentary but unpleasant pause in somebody’s day. It’s chill.
Also, my tone probably isn’t coming across here — for me, this is just a lighthearted, interesting discussion. Checking in: if this discussion is hurting anybody’s feelings at all, it won’t be remotely worth it, and I’m cool to stop immediately as needed.
I hope this has been only mutual curiosity and happy internet times to all.
Because it remains a prominent religious symbol in most of the world, especially for… more than one? eastern religions.
It’s seen quite a bit of use. It’s a very easy to make attention getting geometric pattern, so it makes sense it showed up in a quite a few places.
(link is to various depictions of the shape and their associations)
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_DS6fFoUFQIQ/SvQds7lJsWI/AAAAAAAAEic/pFUoD9cZ22E/s320/different+Swastika.gif
Haha, I was going to mention those! From 1917, I think. Tiles rather than fresco IIRC. There’s a placard explaining the context, it amused me to perceive a subtext of “please don’t sue us”.
Swastikas continue to be “a legitimate religious symbol”.
They used to be on Arizona highway number signs.
And lots of SW Native stuff like moccasins.
The USA 45th Division had a swastika shoulder patch, but around the time they were nationalized (they were a National Guard formation) the insignia was replaced by a thunderbird.
The swastika as a symbol has been around for thousands of years before Hitler and the Nazis used it for their racist views.
Ugh, messed up the link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#Prehistory
Oh!
Yeah. I’m perfectly aware that Hindus, some Native Americans, etc used it for centuries, but now the symbol is wrecked, and it still makes modern people think “nazis” when we’d rather be thinking “sports go sports”.
It’s not a particularly Hindu or Hopi space, having it there doesn’t benefit anyone at all in any way. So it’s neutral at best, but highly creepy at worst, there’s no particular reason to keep it. I’m glad they took the moment to sand it off.
(Oops, replied in the wrong spot. But that’s OK.)
Hindus STILL use it. For much of the world’s population it is not wrecked at all; saying so is pretty Eurocentric. Swastikas mark Buddhist temples on maps in Japan and Taiwan. Young Indian women are named ‘Swastika’. A swastika is part of Jain temple design, and I think Germany has an official exception to its “no swastika” rules for them.
Alright then, happy to update it to “the symbol is wrecked within the Western world. It’s double-wrecked in places with a history of nazis and/or neo-nazis.” Hindu temples are exempt.
So says me, the arbiter of symbols! 🙂
The article Yumi linked to explains that the mural panel (one of 22 spread around buildings all over campus) was created not to glorify the Klan, but to expose it so that Indianans don’t forget their dark history. It was put there to educate, but many students objected to having to sit in that room for classes, so the decision was made not to use the room as a classroom anymore. It’s apparently too fragile to move.
I’m also unsure what their reactions mean. Is Becky reacting to the existence of cross-burning, of a mural depicting it, or to the fact that the classroom can’t be used anymore because of it? “This is Indiana” doesn’t make much sense as a response to the first, because the cross-burnings occurred all over the nation, to my knowledge. “This is Indiana” might be an appropriately cynical response to the fact of the existence of the mural, if the mural were actually in support of cross-burning, but it isn’t.
The news articles are interesting. I don’t really know what’s the proper response to the petition to remove it. It doesn’t seem like a cut-and-dry situation to me.
This kind of art exists to make people uncomfortable.
What is so hard about telling the students to suck it up?
Art that exists to make people uncomfortable has a place, but I don’t think that place is as a mural in a classroom, always there, whether or not it’s relevant to the lessons at hand. If I’m trying to learn something while images of violence that hit home for me, it might make it so I’m not in the best place to learn.
The students being made uncomfortable are not the intended targets.
Shockingly enough, not everyone in these classrooms is a white Christian and many of them do not want to see fucking Klan paintings when they’re trying to learn something entirely unrelated.
Agreed. I’m just about the last person to ever advocate destroying a work of art, and Thomas Hart Benton *is* a major U.S. painter. This mural would be perfect for a course on U.S. History, African-American history, Race and Racism, etc. held in that room because it would engage directly with the subject matter. To me, the problem is that presumably classes on subjects completely unrelated to the themes of the mural take place in that room (since it’s a large lecture hall) and students don’t have the ability to “opt out” of seeing those murals when they come to class.
For example, imagine you’re a Black student whose ancestors were terrorized and killed by the Klan. You sign up for a biology lecture and your schedule says it’s in that room. Now you get to sit in the same room with a picture that reminds you of your family’s trauma and the racism and trauma Black people have suffered in the U.S., during a class that doesn’t deal with and discuss those issues at all.
(And no, as a current college professor and former college student, it’s not always possible for students to switch to a different section in a different classroom, depending on their personal schedule and the schedule of classes.)
For example, I have taught American Literature and often teach part of all of “Huckleberry Finn” in that class. The difference is that if you’re taking a higher-level American lit. course, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’re going to read stuff about racism and probably something by Mark Twain, who is a major U.S. author. That book is listed on my class syllabus so students know to expect it. Moreover, I’ve got a policy that if any student is seriously upset by any of the required readings, if they come to me and let me know they are excused from those classes and instead will work with me directly on an alternate reading and assignment.
Overall, I think it’s possible as a student – if not always easy – to avoid content that is going to be too traumatic for you by choosing your classes carefully and doing some research into the course content. I don’t think any student should be forced to sit in a classroom with a mural of Klan activity and a burning cross. Imagine if, instead, this classroom contained a beautifully-rendered famous artist’s portrait of Adolf Hitler!
To be fair, an equivalent picture of hitler’s work would be (spitballing here) of the smoke stacks from the crematoriums in the background with him doing a fascist salute so we can never disassociate him from the horror he inflicted and… something hopeful about german people coexisting with judaism in the foregound? I don’t know. All the positive stuff is so polarizing I’m not sure if there is a modern stand-in for the nurse and child.
Benton’s picture is not about glorifying the klan, but not forgetting the mistake it is.
An equivalent certainly would not be about gloriying Hitler.
Also, make no mistake, a LOT of north americans favoured Hitler, fascism and eugenics before the war. (sadly some still do). So it also wouldn’t be *that* surprising if such a portait of Hitler was done. (Jaime’s description I mean, just a Glory shot). Presumably such would have been removed during the war.
I think turning the room into a permanent display/exhibit would be cool. But there’s good reason for Black people, as well as any other groups targeted by the KKK to not want to see it for hours while they’re in class.
We aren’t sure if Joyce or Dorothy says it, but it’s possible neither is aware of the context of the painting and the cynical response is coming from a place of expecting it to be in support.
I’d expect Dorothy to know about it, especially since she brought it up.
Sounds to me like keeping the mural there but no longer using the room as a classroom was probably the best way to deal with the situation.
At that second what? shouldn’t it be zoomed picture of the campus that shakes violently in unison with the What?…
As a European who doesn’t know the backstory of the lecture hall, I thought at first they were waiting for Becky to get offended over a mural that depicts a cross burning.
After following up on the articles linked in the comments it reads very differently.
Ikd, just the first three panels would serve as a silent judging by Dorothy that Becky doesn’t know this already. Leaving her hanging after she asks “what”, feels disingenuous.
in general I’m not really a fan when the punchline of a snide remark is that a character didn’t “get” a silent implication. We’ve got characters like Dina and Amber who don’t get social conventions and silent implication and we’re meant to be sympathetic with them, but if the secret knowledge is a local racist mural, it’s ok to silently judge them?
especially with racism, sexism, homophobia, where the taboo is actually contributing to not critically processing the current and past iterations of them in society?
I know Joyce has gotten herself into situations that appear similar and her friends put her down in quippy remarks, but the difference was that she insisted on her ideology in the past, and now keeps putting her foot in her mouth while still sprouting well-meaning but ignorant -ist remarks.
Dorothy here is pussyfooting around the fact that the mural depicts the KKK, the reason the mural is actually controversial. It feels more like an euphemism than anything else, which makes it seem more harmless at that. Or maybe they’ll talk about it in the next few strips, that would be good.
tldr: I don’t mind Dorothy’s behaviour as a character, but I don’t like it when the joke seems to be “you’re ignorant/unwoke for not already knowing about [racism]” while also hiding the implication that it was racist in the first place.
Best I understand the mural is sort of “The history of Indiana”, and it includes a KKK cross burning as one motif among many saying “this is also part of our history”. So not really something I would consider controversial unless I wanted to forget about that part of history.
Thanks for pointing out my misunderstanding :). Seems like I didn’t read far enough before the pop up.
In that case my problem with the joke is less of an issue, although Dorothy’s behaviour becomes more perplexing.
I don’t know that I’d say Dorothy is “pussyfooting around the fact that the mural depicts the KKK.” As an American, when I hear “crossburning,” I think “KKK.” I guess it could have been thrown in to make it clearer, but I don’t know that that’s a fair judgment on Dorothy.
That explains it, I thought it was a critique against the church at first.
Americans like Dorothy and Becky would understand the symbolism of course.
Dorothy would. Becky… who knows. I think we’re about to find out.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprising if Becky doesn’t know. Or at least if that’s not the first implication that came to her mind. Joyce as well, for that matter. She seems as confused in the second panel.
Remember that both of them grew up in a “we, the true Christians, are the persecuted minority” world.
And the homeschooling material many Americans are exposed to contains some very odd ideas about history.
Or just surprising omissions.
As a Brit, I also think “KKK” when I hear “crossburning.” I don’t think it’s something only Americans will get. Anyone who has a passing knowledge of American history should.
Pretty sure the look wasn’t judgement over not knowing about it, it was an awkward silence of something hey don’t want to think or talk about being said.
As a European this strip made no sense to me, either.
Reasons like this make me happy I’ve never lived east of Illinois.
Let’s not pretend that anywhere doesn’t have a history of racists that runs right up to the current day. It just makes it that much easier for them to run around unopposed.
The so-called Second Klan of the 1920s was all over the place. For example at one point they had 40 thousand members in Detroit, reportedly half their members in Michigan. Worcester, Mass. had a brief period where the Klan grew rapidly, until it was countered by local newspapers and the well established Catholic population of the city.
That was also the period where the Klan set up shop in Canada and had some success for a time. Saskatchewan, the province I live in, had the largest Klan presence, with as many as 25 thousand members in the late ’20s. There were only a handful of black people here at the time, but there were plenty of Roman Catholics, immigrants from Eastern Europe and elsewhere, and the “threat” of Saskatchewan being made French speaking to whip up the idiots.
First Klan chapter in Maine was set up in the 30s, because of French Canadians coming south, too.
When my dad was a kid in the 1920s, the Klan marched in my small Wisconsin home town. Burned a cross at the Catholic Church. Then paraded down Main Street. The locals were not best pleased and nearly shot them. But there were a lot of Klan members around on the 1920s. Plus anti-Chinese and Japanese laws on the west coast. Immigration “reform” and eugenics. Teddy Roosevelt was a eugenicist and Wilson was a straight up racist.
I also had (security) problems with the indystar link, but after checking the article in the internet archive, I can see that a large chunk of the article is the statement from the provost, which is here, and causes no problems securitywise:
https://provost.indiana.edu/statements/archive/benton-murals.html
That reminds me. My denomination is on the verge of splitting. Initially over LGBT inclusion, but it is expected that the Liberal branch will eventually remove parts of the Doctrine pertaining to the divinity of Jesus Christ.
In any case, our current symbol is a cross and flame. I wonder if both future branches will take the opportunity to retire it, or if one will claim it.
Methodist, right? I’ve never seen that emblem as similar to a KKK cross-burning. The flame is not coming from the cross. But then, I was raised Methodist so I don’t know how it looks to people who didn’t grow up seeing it every Sunday (and don’t know the “flame = Holy Spirit” symbolism). At any rate, it wouldn’t surprise me if they innocently (naively?) kept it.
My scout troop used to meet in a church with that symbol. Never saw the connection until I read a description of the symbol at some point years later.
But then if I’d had family who’d been hunted by people who used a similar symbolism maybe it would have stood out more.
There’s a “First United Methodist” church near the bell tower where I live, and they’ve got a cross-with-flame symbol, kinda like you’re saying. The flame is sorta whispy and coming off the left side of the cross. No idea what it’s meant to symbolise, but it looks kinda neat.
From Wikipedia:
Adopted shortly after the merger of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, the symbol relates the United Methodist church to God through Christ (the cross) and the Holy Spirit (the flame). The flame is a reminder of Pentecost when witnesses were unified by the power of the Holy Spirit and saw “tongues, as of fire” (Acts 2:3). The two tongues of a single flame may also be understood to represent the union of two denominations. x The two separate flames represent the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church coming together to form the United Methodist Church.
I think it might work better as “what?” – beat panel – “what?!”, since a lot of people seem to be confused by the comic as is. I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be being confused, then angry confused, about the existence of said mural. Although I was also confused by it on initial read.
Yeah I am confused by the tone Becky is supposed to be conveying. Is it a shocked what, or a “i don’t get it” what? Or one of each?
I assumed the latter?
She seems pretty angry in the last “what”
Yeah I read the last “what!” As “why isn’t anyone explaining this to me??”
But I could be wrong.
Having the beat panel come after the first “what” would imply that Dorothy is refusing to explain. How else would you explain Dorothy staying silent? Beat panel conveying shock, confused “what”, and angry “what” works better IMHO.
First Klan chapter in Maine was set up in the 30s, because of French Canadians coming south, too.
Sorry, duplicate.
So. they just don’t use that room anymore?
guess they can’t paint it over because of the artistic value? XD
That would be like burning 1984 by George Orwell bc the leader of the Party opposing Big Brother is called Emanuel Goldstein.
Nobody gets lynched bc of 1984 tho. Your point is bad and you should feel bad.
No one gets lynched because of Benton’s painting either. Blacks got lynched by the Klan. Jews get murdered because of antisemitism – in particular theories of powerful Jewish elites conspiring to control the world.
You’d have a better point if this particular mural glorified the Klan and the cross-burning, rather than depicting it as a negative part of the states history – and a relatively small part of the painting at that. This isn’t like the various Confederate monuments, which were built to support segregation.
That’s 100% fair.
I do want to point out that unfortunately/fortunately I don’t live in Indiana and don’t have experience with these murals, and unfortunately from the limited context provided in comic it sounded like the usual historical hate art that gets defended bc history.
I still think the mural being kept there instead of photographed and recorded is a mistake, but I am relieved its not a hate art. And reminded that DoA takes place in real Indiana so I can’t just rely on the context of the story.
Artistic and historical, I’d say.
But seriously, they just don’t use that room?
I just mean… the main use of a college or university lecture hall is to deliver lectures. Not to be an art gallery. They just salt the ground and declare it UnRoom, and never use it again?
For the last few years, yes.
It’s a hard call. This seems to be a compromise.
They don’t use it as a classroom. I could see them opening it up as, perhaps, a quiet study room, free to use by anyone who wishes.
I have no idea how I’m supposed to read this strip.
……..I think we’re all Becky here.
Yeah, this is a thing all over. There’s a lot of Oregon’s history besides the Trail, loggers, and where they eventually drew the border that was never taught in schools back when I was a kid.
Meanwhile, IRL, Indiana just indicated it wants to secede from the union because its preferred candidate lost.
I am so fucking depressed.
Ironic, given the general sentiment the same crowd told the losing side to have four years ago.
Ironic perhaps, but hardly surprising.
The sentiment is the same. “We’re the real Americans and you’re not.”
There were no actions toward secession 4 years ago. Go away with “but the other side” bullshit.
That’s pretty much how the first Civil War started, just with different states.
I get why they wont hold classes there.
Even if the mural isn’t a celebration of the KKK, but a celebration of its weakening, it would be a big elephant in the room, begging to be discussed every time, to put it into correct context.
As such, it would be a distraction and the depiction of a burning cross could most likely be an unwelcome reminder to a lot of students about racism.
Thats not an environment that invites focus needed for learning.
Perhaps they should move the mural to a museum. It seems like a much better place for it.
The mural is not an affresco, but a mural paint made with tempera a secco. You can’t remove it without ruin it.
Take the wall. 🙂
Yeah, take it. Its not the first time thats been done.
Some people is unable to understand that art is not just a nice decoration, but something that have to make you think, feel emotions and give you catharsis.
Which is great for a museum or something, but not necessarily what you want to be staring at during a lecture on something else entirely.
I still say they should turn the room into a mini museum.
Museum were invented at the end of xviii century. That was nice because it save a lot of artifacts from destruction. But now people think that art has to be only inside museums. This is really sad. And I can’t understand how you can study in a class without decorations. It’s like kill the life.
Most decorations don’t depict hate crimes.
Wow, so many commenters defending the burning cross art! I didn’t know it made such a bit impact on your lives that its worth keeping even though it represents a racially charged history of extreme violence and prejudice. Lets make sure these hate arts stay up forever for everyone to see, its very important we share that hate art!
(Love how this crowd never shows up to defend other kinds of public art installations that are due for removal)
I know none of y’all would show up for Blowjob Cat.
Fake art history fans.
Ye, a violent racist period of history many americans apparently aren’t taught about and tend to forget. I’d be with you if it actually was hate art and celebrating the kkk, but it’s not. It’s a critique. I’d also be with you if they were still using the room because that’s way too much for a casual lecture. But they’re not. I’m personally not in favor of white people covering up things that depict their dirty history and acting like it never happened.
Do you support Huckleberry Finn? It also represents a racially charged history of extreme violence and prejudice.
Maybe look into this particular painting a little closer. It does depict the Klan, but it does so in the context of Indiana history and is widely considered an anti-Klan work. It is not “hate art”, unless any depiction or mention of that part of history is “hate”.
I agree that the mural can be painful for many to view when they’re there to learn, and I can agree that maybe it should be removed. I’m not here to defend keeping it in that classroom. But considering the intent of the artist (to condemn the Klan) isn’t it a little unfair to refer to it as “hate art?”
You’re like Roz. Too busy being self-righteous to pay attention to what’s actually going on.
I can tell you that the general response by the “art community” to poor responses to public art is a combination of “now you have to pay to preserve this thing you hate or you’re a dictator” and “screw you, unqualified philistine” (see: the architecture of Boston City Hall). So you might get the sense that there should be public art, but not much love for any individual piece.
Whatever, you fake gamer.
@Zee, thejeff, ADD, drs, and Rainhat:
Okay. But lets think a minute here. The mural’s point is to make sure we never forget, right? That’s why its critical it stay on the wall in everyone’s face, right? That feels like in itself we’re making some shitty assumptions.
The BIPOC students haven’t forgotten. Making them sit in front of that and have the racism and violence they’ve experienced shoved in their face sucks. Rendering a classroom (you know, for teaching) unusable for educational purposes is… counterproductive.
It feels like that mural is staying up for the purposes of teaching white people. And I strongly feel that despite its intent and historical value that it should be documented, photographed, and displayed in a more appropriate area. Like not a classroom.
@Delicious Taffy
*gasp* I didn’t even mention my gaming status and you knew? Are we… soulmates?
I’m surprised more non americans don’t know about the burning cross. I figured it just made its way around through cultural osmosis and media n shit. Probably just bc my country is near america
A large number of Canadians, perhaps the majority,, know what a burning cross means. But we consume large quantities of American cultural products, so that shouldn’t be a surprise.
Also, we had the KKK HERE, so we should know.
Canada totally had Klan chapters, don’t pretend Canada’s not in this story too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan_in_Canada
I had no idea.
she really was in a hurry to remove that hat.
I don’t remember any cross burning murals at Earlham. On the other hand Earlham was and probably still is really liberal
I don’t remember any murals in any of my classrooms, which is really what throws me about all this. I agree that the art holds value, but I also think it wasn’t a great decision to have it painted in a classroom in the first place.
This mural is liberal.
So that’s why the Colts are in the AFC South
lesbohaircutfloozysayswhat
Huh, this is quite fascinating. I’m not American, and my first association to a burning cross was an anti-Christian one, similar to burning bibles, and the “this is Indiana” thing consequently was rather confusing. Even my second one was with Emperor Nero, who supposedly had Christian tied to crosses (or was it poles?) and lit on fire to serve as torches.
The KKK thing didn’t really enter my mind until I read the comments – I’d have gotten white masks, but burning crosses is more closely tied to religious persecution to me. How come it became a KKK symbol? I didn’t think the KKK was anti-Christian…?
Looking it up, the Klan apparently borrowed it from the Scottish, who would burn a cross as a sign of war and to gather together their clansmen. The idea was introduced by a white supremacist author in a novel about the KKK in 1905.
And used in the movie Birth of a Nation, loosely based on that book, which really helped inspire the revival of the Klan in 1915.
Referring to the Scottish custom, that’s a very, uh, interesting way to announce war for a Christian nation. Kind of like burning your own flag to call people to war. You’d thing burning a cross would be more appropriate for the calling of, say, a jihad. But I guess that explains why the KKK chose it.
My first association to a burning cross is that one Madonna video.
Just kidding. (But not really.)
Yeah, the Like A Prayer music video was controversial too.
I read the article explaining the context behind that mural, and there is one inherent flaw to the composition. So this is supposed to be some big 22 panel work, kind of like a sequential series, but some panels can only be seen inside classrooms? So, what? Are you supposed to just take a walking tour of the campus going into classes in a certain order to see them all? These panels should have all been placed in order in public spaces where you could casually see them in their proper context instead of having them put in a place where students have to stare at it when they should be taking a class.
For comparison, this would be like if a series of pictures were made to document world war 2, but panels depicting huge crowds cheering at Hitler’s election or jews being forced into gas chambers were just stuck in rooms by themselves where some people would see just them for extended periods of time.
My point is context is key, but if you have to go out of your way to explain the context then you have failed to get the message across.
You should find a picture of the particular panel under debate though, all the context they’re talking about is in that panel. Whether or not you think it’s ok to have a cross burning up on the wall regardless of context (I’d lean towards no), all the context it’s trying to say about leaving it in the past and moving to a different future is in the same panel
I don‘t get why there are no classes in that room anymore. It‘s not an endorsement of the KluKlux Clan, quite the contrary. Wouldn‘t it be good for students to be confronted with uncomfortable truths?
Like confronting black kids with the uncomfortable truth they know all too well: That this country is racist as hell.
So it is better to pretend that things like this didn‘t happen? Paint a happy, unrealistic image about the history of the country do that no one feels unconfortable? It is clear that the image does not intend to insult black people, quite the contrary. I think especially students should develop a sharp mind and learn how to deal with this kind of art and history. Not using this room any more means that they are treated like little sensitive children.
That’s not fair to the black students. This isn’t a matter a childhood fears or history. The Klan is active. I got a baggie with candy and a letter from them on my front lawn before I left the states. Lynching or other forms of violence encouraged by or perpetrated by the Klan are a legitimate current fear for black peeps in America
You’re asking black students to sit in a classroom with depictions of real people who want them dead on the wall. Do you expect Jewish students to study next to depictions of Nazis directing prisoners with rifles at Auschwitz?
speaking of Talking Heads …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqQGWhge5yo
Either my memory is messing with me, or there was a Roomies! strip with almost the exact same first panel (with someone expecting a larger hall because of some known professor).
Meanwhile, I’m like “Who the heck thought having a mural in a classroom was a good idea. Sounds terribly distracting.”
Local library has a cloth mural that depicts Hmong families being shot and bombed. It’s part of a story cloth that ends with the refugees arriving and settling in the town. There’s another like it in a nearby Lutheran church. You can show terrible things in art. But they don’t belong on a classroom.
https://www.mcmillanlibrary.org/files/images/art/hmong.jpg