A large, 1-year-old mural at Pitzer College that aims to highlight the notions of white privilege and racial inequality in America was recently vandalized.
The mural depicts a white and black man embedded in red, white and blue stripes and stars, with the white man’s eyes covered and the black man’s mouth covered. White spray paint was used to vandalize the mural on the weekend of April 2 with the words “make America” – widely assumed to be the unfinished Donald Trump slogan “Make America Great Again.”
Most students on the private, Southern California-based campus perceive the mural as representing oppressed or silenced black Americans with an “institutionally enforced lack of political voice next to their white counterparts, blinded entirely to the process by their racial privilege,” Pitzer College student Elliot Dordick said in a statement to The College Fix.
In a widely shared Facebook post, one student government representative described the incident as a “hate crime” and “a clear attempt to intimidate students of color” and called for the person who painted it to be prosecuted, the Claremont Independent reports.
While the Pitzer vandalism occurred around the same time as the height of #TheChalkening — a nationwide effort by some students to antagonize their left-leaning peers by writing Trump slogans with chalk on campus sidewalks — this incident differs in that the materials used permanently damaged private property. It was one of at least two spots hit with vandalism over the weekend. The word “Trump” was also spray painted on Pitzer’s clock tower in red.
“Reports of chalk being used are inaccurate. The murals are permanently damaged, the artists of the original works will need to be consulted on proper repairs,” campus spokeswoman Anna Chang told The College Fix in an email. “An investigation by campus administration is on-going.”
Chang declined to state what message campus officials believe they send through the mural’s permanent presence on campus.
“The messages conveyed through the artworks are those of the artists/individuals and not of the College,” she told The College Fix. “Artistic expression is a long-standing student tradition at Pitzer College. … Student-created permanent murals and other art installations around campus are an important aspect of this form of freedom.”
The mural appears on an external wall of a dorm at Pitzer. It faces away from the center of campus, but toward a popular walkway on which many students traverse to get to class, the dining hall, or the other Claremont college campuses nearby.
It was painted last spring by then-student and now alum Adrian Brandon. In response to the vandalism, he wrote on his Facebook page that part of the inspiration for the mural was the notion that “art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
“Vandalism happens. But no amount of vandalism will take this wall away from me and from the people whose story it tells,” he added. “People of color have always been muted. People have always been able to turn the TV off to avoid hearing about the latest innocent child whose life was stolen from them. People can avoid social media to pretend like there aren’t any protests in the streets. But no amount of vandalism will mute this mural, you cant change the channel, there ain’t no damn remote.”
Dordick told The College Fix the mural is popular among many students.
“In fact, across campus since the mural was painted, I have heard only widespread approval and appreciation of it,” he said. “I believe that the message of the mural ought potentially bother us all, but the thing itself has never been a point of contention the way its vandalism is now.”
The campus community has been surprised by the vandalism, he said.
“Pitzer rarely experiences issues with this sort of behavior, especially as immediately next to the vandalized mural there is a ‘free wall’ upon which students may write, paint, draw, etc. whatever they wish,” Dordick said.
Steven Glick contributed to this report.
RELATED: UT-Chattanooga student senator pressured to resign over pro-Trump chalking
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