Paint Over It or Cover It? School Mulls Options for George Washington Mural

A couple of months ago, a working group was hired by the San Francisco Unified School District to determine whether or not a mural of George Washington was offensive enough to demand action from the district. The working group, undoubtedly comprised of UC Berkeley graduates who see offense in everything from a cop car to the American flag, unsurprisingly concluded that it was. With its depictions of Native Americans and blacks, the group said, the mural was far too demeaning to leave on display in the halls of…George Washington High School.

Next week, the San Francisco school board will take a vote to determine how to move forward. The choices: Paint over the nearly 100-year-old mural, or find some way to cover it so that it isn’t offending sensitive students on a daily basis. No option is on the table that would leave the painting of our country’s founding father open for viewing.

The mural consists of 13 panels, several of which the working group said “traumatizes students and community members.” Those panels depict Washington near a group of explorers walking by a fallen Indian. In another panel, Washington observes as slaves perform manual labor. None of those things actually happened in American history, apparently. Or, if they did, they are far too painful to commemorate through the medium of art. We have to change history, lest our young snowflakes have a breakdown on social media.

At a meeting last week to consider the proposal, school board members were themselves “traumatized” by just hearing about the mural.

“Commissioners Gabriela Lopez, Alison Collins, Stevon Cook, and Mark Sanchez commented on how emotionally draining it was to hear — and have other rehash for them — the pain they know firsthand comes from violent, demeaning imagery like this,” reported San Francisco Weekly.

Aw. Someone get these poor school board members some smelling salts and a cup of tea. They’ve clearly been through a lot.

We don’t believe for an instant that a majority – or even substantial minority – of students at George Washington High School were clamoring for this mural’s removal. This is campus hysteria, writ small. Now that far-left, identity-politics-soaked mobs have ruined higher education, they are beginning to trickle down into our high schools. If this mural got more than one or two official complaints, we would be surprised.

Emotionally draining. Please. For more than 200 years, Americans have had the guts to look our own history in the eyes without fainting. Now all of a sudden, we’ve been overtaken by a small subset of professional complainers who don’t come fully alive until they are “offended.” If we don’t start taking a stand against these Social Justice Warriors soon, we’re going to lose more than murals and statues.