Civil War Mural Removed From Wappingers Elementary School
Is the Wappingers Central School District doing the right thing by removing a Civil War Mural from one of their elementary schools?
According to an article in the Poughkeepsie Journal, the school in question is the Fishkill Plain Elementary School where a Civil War mural was hanging which featured a Confederate battle flag, a U.S flag, Union and Confederate soldiers, and more. From schools to organizations across the nation, controversy has erupted over the display of Civil War monuments and the Confederate flag.
So why did the Fishkill School district make the decision to remove the Civil War mural from the walls of the Fishkill Plain Elementary School? There has been no definitive word on that decision except that school board President, Peggy Kelland told the Poughkeepsie Journal that the mural "caught district officials attention." The decision to have the mural taken down was made in a closed-door session.
The controversy over displaying the Confederate flag is that some argue the flag is a symbol of slavery and oppression, while others feel it's simply a matter of Southern heritage and pride. In June of 2015, the Washington Post published a fascinating interview with Matthew Guterl, a professor of Africana and American studies at Brown University, who studies race in the aftermath of the Civil War. One of the questions he was asked during the interview was. "Do you think it's possible for someone to embrace the flag without explicitly or implicitly promoting racism?" Guterl responded:
Wearing the flag or celebrating it, putting it in your car window or coffee table in your house, it's a reminder to everyone, to every guest who sees it, black or white, that you are a stakeholder in the Confederate history of the South, and therefore the defense of slavery and racial prejudice. No one is immune to this.
What say you? Do you support or condemn what the Confederate flag stands for?
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