If you’re scoring at home, know that liberals in Rhode Island believe it’s acceptable for a sitting Democratic senator to belong to an exclusive, upscale all-white club, but a college mural painted right after World War II must go because all of the people depicted in it are … white.
The College Fix reported recently that the University of Rhode Island last fall considered removing two murals painted in the 1950s by an alumnus, Arthur Sherman, a World War II veteran.
The murals captured attention during last summer’s protests.
That’s because “their depiction of what life at the school was like in the post-war era featured almost exclusively white people.”
The college said in a statement that the paintings were short on “diversity and a sensitivity to today’s complex and painful problems.”
According to the College Fix, the murals showed a commencement ceremony, a class reunion, a trip to the beach, students piled in a jalopy wearing letter sweaters, and a marching band.
A senior administrator reported that students who were in the hall with the paintings “didn’t feel comfortable sitting in that space.”
She cited “the horrible incidents and the tragic murders” of people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, as a reason for the university “to look at the systems in place across this institution that maybe are not representing who we are today and representing the true diversity of URI today.”
The school covered the murals and subsequently announced they would come down during a planned renovation of the building housing them.
But recently the university reversed itself. The murals will stay.
The college instead will commission new artwork to illustrate its “diversity” today. The current murals were labeled as whimsical cartoons,” and will now be explained with “necessary context” about their “original intent,” the school said in a statement.
Perhaps one reason that they will stay is that no one really cared about them.
The College Fix reported that the oversight committee weighing their fate issued 86,000 questionnaires asking about removing them – and got 200 replies.
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