Two murals at University of Wisconsin-Stout to be removed: 'Psychologically devastating'
Two inoffensive murals hanging in the lobby of Harvey Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Stout (UW-Stout) are being removed because of a recommendation of the so-called Diversity Leadership Team.
One mural depicts a wooden fort, and the other depicts French trappers canoeing down a river with Indians. No violence, no depiction of white supremacy – about as inoffensive as you can find.
But the DLT claims that the murals may be psychologically devastating to American Indian students.
But now, after 80 years, the murals are abruptly being given the heave-ho after concerns were raised that the paintings are offensive.
School chancellor Bob Meyer says some American Indian students have objected to what the paintings show.
“When they look at the art, to them it symbolizes an era of their history where land and possessions were taken away from them, and they feel bad when they look at them,” Meyer told Wisconsin Public Radio.
In addition, UW-Stout’s Diversity Leadership Team complained about the murals to Meyer, arguing their presence helped to perpetuate racial stereotypes.
The diversity team’s arguments carried the day, and Meyer released a statement saying they were being taken down. Because of the risk the paintings could have a “harmful effect” on viewers, Meyer said they were only suitable for a “controlled gallery space” that could provide appropriate “context” for the viewer. But UW-Stout contains no such controlled galleries, so instead the paintings are being placed outside the public eye. One will go into a dean’s conference room, while another will be placed in Harvey Hall’s library.
Meyer claims his decision is strictly business and isn’t about trying to be politically correct.
Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
I would like to point out that if the ancestors of the Native Americans objecting to these murals were as sensitive and so easily offended as the snowflakes at UW-Stout, they would have died out within 50 years of arriving here.
But that doesn't matter. The murals are history because the small number if Indians on campus could make them history. They had the power, so they came up with this incredibly lame reason that stretches reality and one's sanity to the absolute limit to exercise it.
The murals are being taken down not because they are historically inaccurate. They are being taken down because they are historically accurate, and in a center of learning like UW-Stout, we can't have depictions of facts if they roll against the dominant narrative that teaches the evil of white people and the nobility of the oppressed.