In a small alley off of the Church Street Marketplace in Burlington, Vermont, you will find a mural painted on a wall entitled "Everyone Loves a Parade." The mural depicts several actual people in the group, and has been there for a number of years.
Recently, a local individual complained that the mural was "racist" because it did not depict any "people of color". While that individual is entitled to an opinion, it's not one I support. To me, the mural would be racist if it included a person or people of color and depicted them in a negative or demeaning way. To me, people who take direct action, such as uttering racial slurs, distribute flyers demeaning or insulting people of color, deny service to these people, or other similar actions, are racist.
Is this artist, who is expressing his vision, and not doing anything one way or another related to people of color, being racist? By the same extension of this logic, Da Vinci's painting of The Last Supper is racist. So is Michelangelo's painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Paintings of groups of people by Rembrandt and Renoir would also be racist. All of Norman Rockwell's paintings (except one: The Porter from 1947) would be racist. Even Disney's Seven Dwarves would be racist because neither Grumpy nor any of the other dwarves is a person of color. The fact that an artist does not include a person or people of color in his or her work does not, in my mind, make it racist.
Does the fact that I happen to like the mural make me a racist? While I can, at times, be very opinionated and judgmental, I prefer to judge people by their character and by their behavior, rather than by the color of their skin and to view art by what it contains, rather then by what it does not.
For those out there who, because of my views, would believe me to be racist, my response is to quote His Dudeness:
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