From "Anti-racism mural unveiled on Madison's Monroe Street" (Capital Times).
I noticed this mural yesterday. Here are my photographs:
The white woman — this liberal lady who thinks she's good but needs to think again — has no face.
This criticism of typical Madison liberals was a city project. Here's how the city presents it on its website:
The Madison Arts Commission invites you to celebrate and engage in art activism with Madison’s newest outdoor public works at the Monroe Street Festival on September 25th. The Machine, a mural painted by Black, queer artist Simone Lawrence, aims to raise questions and inspire action to advance social justice and racial equity.
Emily Balsley and Pajarita Charles, residents of the Dudgeon-Monroe neighborhood, led the charge that sparked the formation of the Monroe Street Anti-Racism Project (MoSAP) leading to the creation of the mural. MoSAP, a grassroots community organizing effort emerged in response to discriminatory, anti-Black flyers found scattered across their neighborhood in 2020-2021.
In response, an alliance of residents joined forces to send a counter message of justice and inclusion to the neighborhood....
Alder Tag Evers stated, "At the core of this effort is the desire to make Dungeon [sic] Monroe a more welcoming neighborhood. This mural is an exciting step in that direction."....
Balsley and Charles raised all the funds for the mural, commissioned the artist, secured the space located at Neuhauser Pharmacy, and engaged Alder Tag Evers, local businesses, neighborhood schools, and significant numbers of residents in the planning and implementation of the project. The Madison Arts Commission supported the Monroe Street Anti-Racism Project through the Annual Grant Program which initiates innovative partnerships and sponsors diverse artistic activities to make arts and culture accessible and inclusive to all who live in Madison.
ADDED: A "dungeon" is an underground prison cell. "Dudgeon" is a feeling of deep resentment (usually seen in the phrase "high dudgeon"). Both words are pretty negative, but only one is the correct spelling of the neighborhood. Both are used on the city's website. The correct one is "Dudgeon." You never hear about "low dudgeon," but maybe this is an occasion for it.
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72 comments:
That is one ugly painting.
in response to discriminatory, anti-Black flyers ...
they put up an insipid discriminatory, anti-White mural.
If minorities resent the “help” of progressive white liberals, then maybe the whites should just quit and leave them alone. Everyone will be happy then.
“The white woman — this liberal lady who thinks she's good but needs to think again — has no face.“
Taupe lives don’t matter.
This comes under the heading "Liberals can't meme."
"If minorities resent the “help” of progressive white liberals, then maybe the whites should just quit and leave them alone...."
Leave them alone!
Systematic Racism is progressives blaming everything on race, when we didn't really have a race problem until Saint Obama ginned it up so he could divide us all. It's worse now than the 60's...and it will only get worse with Progressives fraudulently blaming everything on OTHERS
Serious Question?
WHAT is College Attainment? HOW does it help? WHY would you WANT it?
does it mean 'attain the ability to be accepted to a school where you WON'T be able to graduate?'
does it mean 'attain Tens of Thousands of Dollars of debt WITHOUT getting a degree?'
does it mean 'getting a degree in "grievance studies" ?
IF we WEREN'T Racists; wouldn't we be encouraging blacks to get a trade (like Welding), that would support them and their loved ones?
IF we WEREN'T Racists; wouldn't we be providing Primary schools for blacks?
Look at what we, as a nation are doing to blacks; and Tell me that we aren't racists?
Welcome to Madison, whose inhabitants hate themselves so much that they pay for angry, sterile “art” like this!
There is nothing so white as being a progressive in Madison. The mural has two objectives: to provide visual self-flagellation for the locals and to signal to peers farther out in Shorewood that our neighborhood is seriously woke. The white lion of justice spraying a territorial message.
Sad that so many minorities don't want to act for themselves, just want to get into the inner ring and be liked by the progressives at parties.
BTW some people think wall murals are a sign of urban decay.
"a mural painted by Black, queer artist Simone Lawrence"
It will never be replaced or painted over, ever, regardless of anything. The building can never be torn down regardless of condition.
"At the core of this effort is the desire to make Dungeon Monroe a more welcoming neighborhood."
Except for white people.
All paid for by white liberals. It's amazing how racist northern liberal cities appear to be.
A mural of a Black Veruca Salt would have been more accurate.
maybe the whites should just quit and leave them alone.
That would be an excellent idea, but it would make things worse for blacks, who really do benefit from affirmative action, especially for middle-class gov't jobs, and they'd still have the same things to complain about (poverty, crime) since those things haven't changed much in over 100 years of meddling or not meddling. For instance, the black murder rate, of mostly other blacks, has been 6 to 8 times higher than the white murder rate since around 1900.
When I type "performative allyship" into my Android tablet, it changes it to "performance allusions"
Spellchecker got it right for once.
In those tables of homicide rates, note that the scales are different for whites (e.g. 0 to 25) than for non-whites (e.g. 0 to 180), so the graphs look the same even though the non-white rate is about 7 times higher.
I'm so old that I remember when this kind of thing was called "biting the hand that feeds you."
The mural could have been done well. But it looks like a Ben Garrison cartoon with everything labeled. It's really ugly.
So the point it makes is that just handing out money doesn’t solve anyone’s problems? If we all agree to that now why are we debating 3.5 trillion again?
Notice two minorities are the bag carrier for the rich white chick.
From Althouse linked speech by Frederick Douglass made near the end of the Civil War, after outlining the importance of the franchise to black men and correctly predicts that the South's treason won't die
I believe that when the tall heads of this Rebellion shall have been swept down, as they will be swept down, when the Davises and Toombses and Stephenses, and others who are leading this Rebellion shall have been blotted out, there will be this rank undergrowth of treason, to which reference has been made, growing up there, and interfering with, and thwarting the quiet operation of the Federal Government in those states. You will see those traitors, handing down, from sire to son, the same malignant spirit which they have manifested and which they are now exhibiting, with malicious hearts, broad blades, and bloody hands in the field, against our sons and brothers. That spirit will still remain; and whoever sees the Federal Government extended over those Southern States will see that Government in a strange land, and not only in a strange land, but in an enemy’s land. A post-master of the United States in the South will find himself surrounded by a hostile spirit; a collector in a Southern port will find himself surrounded by a hostile spirit; a United States marshal or United States judge will be surrounded there by a hostile element. That enmity will not die out in a year, will not die out in an age.
I like the idea of a police guard with a gun guarding precious lives in our schools.
That the white female proggy is against it, makes sense. She's racist.
“All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot- box, let him alone, don’t disturb him! [Applause.]”
Happy to learn that my thinking is simpatico with the great Fredrick Douglass.
The corrupt left benefit when bad things happen . Just look how they politicize news items - begging for social unrest, looting, burning and over the top rage.
The racist white left do not give 2 shits when Ferguson burns, and blacks are out of business.
The Machine, a mural painted by Black, queer artist Simone Lawrence, aims to raise questions and inspire action to advance social justice and racial equity.
So she chooses to ignore the queer aspect of her life and focus solely on the race aspect. So much for intersectionality!
Madison seems to be trying to become an Oakland, CA.
That didn't turn out so well for Oakland, CA.
Balsley and Charles raised all the funds for the mural, commissioned the artist, secured the space located at Neuhauser Pharmacy, and engaged Alder Tag Evers, local businesses, neighborhood schools, and significant numbers of residents in the planning and implementation of the project.
Presumably all funds were raised by and from POC, the Neuhauser Pharmacy is black-owned, and all local businesses, schools, and residents are black (or at least majority-black) - wouldn't want any help from Whitey!
The white woman — this liberal lady who thinks she's good but needs to think again — has no face.
She’s every (white) woman!
"The white woman — this liberal lady who thinks she's good but needs to think again — has no face."
Well, her legs are shapely.
I find it humorous that pretty much every evil cited is the result of failed progressive policies. Why are there police in the schools? Because the kids are so violently out of control. Why are they so violently out of control? Mostly because they were raised without their fathers. Why is that? Subsidization of single parenting by LBJ’s War on Poverty. Why do they have food deserts? Because the police and prosecutors weren’t allowed to do their job, which was to arrest and lock up BLM(etc) protestors, burning and looting inner city black communities. Big chains cannot afford to run stores where theft loss is out of control, and occasionally their stores are looted and burned out. So they don’t. Why would progressives do something that stupid? Some of the community, esp the more lawless sector, don’t like the police interfering, progressives tend to be emotion, and not logic, driven, and, somewhere, Orange Man Bad. You can go through each and every grievance cited, and pretty much everyone is a result of the failure of ill thought out progressive policies.
The painting is actually pretty accurate: you have all the kids lining up for free money on the right, and others lining up for the bad stuff on the left, but nobody interested in the supposedly good stuff coming off the truck.
If you want the neighborhood to be more welcoming, to people of all races, consider changing the name from “dungeon”. You’re welcome.
Does this mean we can finally end affirmative action programs? As lousy as the mural is (government art indeed), it seems to be arguing for an end to white guilt and its accompanying handouts.
The blacks are screwing themselves. It's not that whites have to do better.
Good character doesn't get clicks though.
Along with everything else wrong with this mural, note the consumer metaphor: the black children get their lives from a vending machine instead of from an (Amazon?) delivery. That they should *do* something requiring ingenuity and effort -- that they might make something or accomplish something -- is not even imagined here.
Gray Hat
One reason the kids are lined up for money is laws preventing them from working, except as drug dealers of course.
Propaganda art is often quite awful, and this piece lives down to that expectation. The composition is confusing, with so many sub-scenes to take in: the waiting line of kids, the delivery truck to the rescue, the faceless white woman controlling everything, the 'kids of color' checking out the only life-path options whitey makes available to them, like prison, poverty, even food deserts! Any propaganda art that requires an explanation on the City website is just not working.
Where is the self-empowerment? Go to school, behave properly, study hard, get a job, don't do drugs, don't join a gang, don't impregnate your girlfriend, form a family, obey the law, go to work, make your world better than you found it. Don't be George Floyd. Take control of your life. Nah . . . blame whitey.
The Soviets did much better propaganda art, even if it was in service to a terrible ideology. Heroes of the revolution, standing tall, confident, fearless, victorious! Someone you'd like to be.
"Dungeon-Monroe?"
Actually sounds better than Dudgeon.
The execution may be amateurish, but the concept is solid. Affluent white liberals are the worst thing that’s happened to poor communities in the US since cholera.
Fernandinande said...
That is one ugly painting.
in response to discriminatory, anti-Black flyers ...
they put up an insipid discriminatory, anti-White mural.
That mural describes how black people are treated in our country eloquently and brilliantly.
There is systemic racism.
Rich white liberals "help" black people with shitty public schools. They get "free" money that can only afford shitty food. They create crime ridden neighborhoods policed by police officers they poorly train, under fund, and undermine.
Then they help them with programs like Affirmative Action that make sure black people are put in situations where they are always inferior to their peers whether it is in school or on a new job.
This system is explicitly racist and very well designed to crush individual dignity and produce bad outcomes for black people.
You people can say you aren't racist all day but you are playing your part in this charade. Next one of you will bring up the IQ testing and insist that explains everything too.
Alder Tag Evers stated, "At the core of this effort is the desire to make Dungeon Monroe a more welcoming neighborhood..."
Serious question: Is that a typo or intentional?
"Restorative Justice" sounds like something dreamed up by Communist intellectuals.
That mural seems to be a very good depiction of this quote from 1903
"First, what is the best the socialists, in their writings, can offer us? What do the most optimistic of them say? That our subsistence will be guaranteed, while we work; that some of us, the best of us, may earn a surplus above what is actually necessary for our subsistence; and that surplus, like a good child, we may "keep to spend." We may not use it to better our condition, we may not, if a fisherman, buy another boat with it, if a farmer, another field ; we may not invest it, or use it productively ; but we can spend it like the good child, on candy — on something we consume, or waste it, or throw it away.
"Could not the African slave do as much? In fact, is not this whole position exactly that of the slave? He, too, was guaranteed his sustenance; he, too, was allowed to keep and spend the extra money he made by working overtime; but he was not allowed to better his condition, to engage in trade, to invest it, to change his lot in life. Precisely what makes a slave is that he is allowed no use of productive capital to make wealth on his own account. The only difference is that under socialism, I may not be compelled to labor (I don't even know as to that — socialists differ on the point), actually compelled, by the lash, or any other force than hunger. And the only other difference is that the slave was under the orders of one man, while the subject of socialism will be under the orders of a committee of ward heelers. You will say, the slave could not choose his master, but we shall elect the ward politician. So we do now. Will that help much? Suppose the man with a grievance didn't vote for him?"
--Socialism; a speech delivered in Faneuil hall, February 7th, 1903, by Frederic J. Stimson
Even the "good" things being blocked do not contribute to bettering their condition. College attainment is a "cargo cult", especially if you throw in the social justice on campus. As Thomas Sowell observed, "Social Justice is an actual impediment to acquiring human capital". (Source: https://youtu.be/LdHEbOAQFmY&t=2064)
The white lady handing out money is hilarious. Where have we see that face before? Oh yeah, it's Julia. https://www.cnn.com/2012/05/09/opinion/bennett-obama-campaign/index.html
She is at her work in Madison.
Also, Howard shows above that he lives one of his memes. For him, it is always 1963 in Alabama, and Bull Connor is on the Democratic National Committee. Keep it up, Howard! "We shall overcome..." The world has moved on, but you are stuck in a time and a place. You are living an episode of the Twilight Zone.
The obvious moral of the mural is that these children will be judged by the color of their skin, and not the content of their character, of course, not judged by the woke, but by other people, people who are basically powerless today, as defeated as any Indian tribe whose last real leaders fell to the Gatling gun.
I guess I do not even see any coherence in this absurd mural. I do not get what Ryan sees in it. Why is the stuff on the truck "good stuff" and the stuff in the vending machine "bad stuff"? Also, the "free money" he sees the kids on the right getting is just for them to use for the vending machine. What the kids are doing with the vending machine makes no sense. Are they buying the problems or the solutions? Yet no solutions are actually presented. And why kids only? The figures are all miserable looking and lost. The mural is self-flagellating and self-satisfied both at the same time. But incoherent. I think the incoherence of it is itself revealing. The main message seems to be the white woman is in charge. Is that it? Well, yes that is Madison all right. But in charge of what, and to what purpose? Madison has a racial achievement gap in its schools. As its obsession with racism has grown over the years, as its schools have become ever more woke, the gap has widened. I guess this mural could be testimony to the futility of that.
Alder Tag Evers stated, "At the core of this effort is the desire to make Dungeon [sic] Monroe a more welcoming neighborhood. This mural is an exciting step in that direction."....
"More welcoming" to whom?
Isn't the message of most street art, "This may be a nice place to visit, but you don't really want to live here"?
And often, it isn't a very nice place to visit either.
Back when Antifa kept spray painting "Defund the Police" on a wall at 12th & Chestnut here in Austin, I kept overspraying the "D" into an "R" to make it read, "Refund the Police." I drove past that corner daily and kept a can of spray paint in my truck, for easy fixes. They finally stopped trying to repair their vile motto, and eventually it was painted over in full by the city.
I see a similar opportunity here, with this word-heavy mural. Simple overspraying of the vending machine items could leave it showing items from "Education" to "Income" and have the black men carrying "Justice" and "Cops in Schools." Complete opposite of what the mural was designed to show. And the white woman? Even without a face, she can become a lovely POC with just a bit of masking tape and a minute of mocha spray.
Since complete destruction of monuments is acceptable political speech now, I say subversion of propaganda murals to present the opposite of their intended methods via spray paint is even more acceptable.
Howard is having a very difficult time in dealing with the reality of todays white lefty racism.
I recommend he and his pals go pull down another statue of Lincoln, since democrats believe Lincoln supported the Confederacy, so he will feel better about it all.
If the bright chartreuse things the kids are clutching is supposed to be money, then what is the triangular bright green thing the dreaded white woman is handing out supposed to be?
I'd love to see a bit of subversive graffiti:
Replace the items in the vending machine with things that are actually holding back people of color.
Replace the boxes being delivered with things that would actually help people of color.
And, for good measure, replace the black guy carrying boxes with Jordan Peterson.
Let me guess.......the mural is called "Intersectionalities".
The line is neat and orderly, and the kids are compliant and patient.. They invest in prison and poverty because that's where the white lady directs them to spend their money. If you stop to think about, the subtext of this mural is that children of color are really stupid......My heart goes out to that little girl in the hijab. If only she could grow up in a society where women the Islamic faith could develop their full potential.
"...spark some conversation..."
as usual, really means "listen up and shut up".
JK Brown,
Impressive speech. It reminds me of something Chesterton said (writing about Hilaire Belloc): Imagine a system where the big employers promised their employees unemployment pay, on condition that they wouldn't strike. This is, Chesterton says, literally slavery; a slave is certain of his sustenance, his lodging, &c., but has no control over his time. His master might not want him to work at a given time, so then he can be idle, but he can't do anything else. And yet "We'll give everyone unemployment pay, so long as you can stop strikes" was quite a popular rallying cry round the turn of the last century.
Virtually every Soviet word was lie except the term Agitprop.
I confess that when I see mention of "discriminatory, anti-Black flyers found scattered across their neighborhood" without any photos or descriptions of the flyers, my first reaction is that they either weren't racist in any way that most people of any color would consider to be racist or that they were planted by someone who stood to benefit from racial hysteria.
"Simone Lawrence, where were you on the night of..."
To portray someone without a face is to dehumanize them, if all the other characters have faces.
You could use a variation of this mural to illustrate the Ozy story. A Harvard/Stanford graduate of color hands out counterfeit money to a patient line of young journalists. He points them to stories about police brutality and environmental racism and the young journalists invest their time and money in such stories. All the while, Fox News unloads unwanted stories about inflation, Hunter's laptop, border problems, et alia which pile up unopened because the young journalists only want to do such stories that are pointed to by the Harvard graduate.
Jon, I do not believe the painting is desirable or coherent art, just that there is a sensible way to accidentally look at it that does not make the black and brown people look good.
And this is not at all what the artist, who was trying to make a different point, says she intended.
"art activism"
In today's world, that is mostly an oxymoron -- the 'activism' pretty much kills off the likelihood of its being experienced as 'art'. 'Socialist realism,' 'Aryan art' and 'heroic realism' were earlier forms of 'art activism' and suffered from the same problems. All forgotten, and none of it missed. I suppose Madison is getting the version of 'art activism' its civic culture deserves.
But it wasn't always so. Art created to glorify European royalty (Velazquez, Reubens, Holbein, David come to mind) or the magnificence of various popes or Florentine dukes (Raphael, Titian, El Greco, Caravaggio, Vasari, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Bronzino) were all, in their way, propagandistic. That form of 'art activism' is sadly a lost art, perhaps in part because the ideals that the 'activism' sought to capture weren't so deadening or hackneyed. It also helped that the artist brought exceptional talent to the project, something not apparent in the Madison mural.
The Madison mural offers a simplistic duality between the saved and the damned, all helpfully labeled for those too slow to pick up the politically correct line (and if you don't know who you are in CRT-land, you are really, really slow). That saved/damned theme was common in medieval art and brought to perfection by Bosch and later Goya. But the execution in Madison is cartoonish at best, pushing its own little version racialized supremacies, no doubt also capturing to a tee Madison's civic culture.
Lovely.
"Aldertag" was the first day of the Luftwaffe operation to crush the RAF in the Battle of Britain. It means Eagle Day.
Mikey NTH said...
"Aldertag" was the first day of the Luftwaffe operation to crush the RAF in the Battle of Britain. It means Eagle Day.
That was Adlertag, not Aldertag.
Madison has a racial achievement gap in its schools.
All schools do.
As its obsession with racism has grown over the years, as its schools have become ever more woke, the gap has widened.
There are two reasons. The first is the refusal. perhaps the inability, to acknowledge the true problems and address them. The second is even more worrying. It began with excusing Black misbehavior as understandable given social conditions, which was evil and corrosive enough. Now it has evolved into the idea that any characteristic associated with civilized or productive behavior is "White" and thus not only should Black people not be expected to behave that way, but if they do they are Uncle Tom's.
The area around Monroe and Regent was the old Italian neighborhood, nicknamed The Bush. This was at a time when Italians were not considered to be exactly White. But they moved on.l
Huh. No fat people. Isn't that about as nonintersectional as you can get? And no transgenders either (mind you, I have no idea how to render that, but hey, not my problem, they're the ones making the intersectional inclusionary rules, right?).
The white woman — this liberal lady who thinks she's good but needs to think again — has no face.
-----------
if all black folks look alike to white folks < flip > why not all white folks look alike to black folks
Examining the photo, it appears that the mural is painted onto some surface that has been attached to the brick wall; it is not painted onto the bricks themselves.
Which should make for some fun times this winter, as water drips down behind the mural surface during the day, and freezes at night. Won't guess how long it will last, but it probably won't be too long. Freeze-thaw cycles are hard on exterior surfaces, and the hardware that holds them in place.
Art + politics = propaganda. The message is bummer now, hope for tomorrow. Pretty tame stuff.
My read:
White people are all the same helper zombies... But sufficiently melanized people are individuals?
That crappy mural would never have seen the light of day but for guilty whites concluding it was good enough for an artist of color.
Sounds really f*'d up.
Madison is racist by dint of only 7% being black. In order to reach the national ratio of approx 13% you would have to add about 15000 more negroes into the city. There are just about that many Haitians milling around the southern border who would just love to settle down in your beautiful city. Come on Madison...show the rest of us how to do it!
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