Whitewash supremacy

A high school in San Francisco has decided to destroy an 83-year-old Depression-era mural of George Washington because of its depictions of racial minorities.

This is odd, for the black laborers and Native Americans depicted in the artwork aren’t shown as blithe companions of their white oppressors. The mural’s 13 panels include images of slaves in cotton fields and a dead Native American man lying face down on the ground at the pioneers’ feet. These make it quite clear that Washington and his peers were far from perfect. Nevertheless, despite this unvarnished realism, the city’s board of education voted unanimously to paint over the mural anyway.