Photo via Webster Middle School - Facebook
Webster Middle School - Love is Universal mural
By now you’re probably familiar with the feel-good story that recently came out of Cedarburg. There, it seems, the removal of a “Love is Universal” themed mural installed at Cedarburg’s Webster Middle School became a cause célèbre.
Created by the school’s Student Acceptance Team, it was supposed to be an uplifting piece of school corridor artwork. The mural depicted a universe with the globe inscribed with the message “Love is Universal” as its centerpiece. A paper doll-like chain of figures hued in progressive shades of flesh tones from black to brown to white surrounded the globe. Each was emblazoned with a national flag to represent the message of universality (and a subliminal lesson in geography and a nod to the community of nations). I immediately noticed the Zimbabwean flag, one particularly dear to my heart (I worked for that country’s national airline for eight years back in the day). Olympic host Japan was represented as well as Turkey, Argentina and a host of others. The planets in the background, however, bore the flags of the LGBTQ community. Therein lay the rub.
School district administrators claimed a number of excuses to demand the mural’s removal. They ranged from the designers’ failure to comply with the school’s criteria for the display of such things, to a complaint that the mural did not represent all people who went to the school (they forgot the dull white paper doll with a swastika flag, I guess). Eventually, the truth came out, at first citing the mural’s content was not age appropriate for middle school students.
In a news spot on the story, someone suggested some parents didn’t want their kids exposed to such content—without stating the nature of that content, of course. I thought may have been the depiction of people of color; Cedarburg is, after all, 95% white.
Pushback to Censorship
Anyway, enough has been written about the tug of war that ended in the mural’s removal. Suffice it say, that with the censorship of the message “Love is Universal” and its blatantly homo- and transphobic motives, the story got legs.
At first, it was a low-key and local response. Art Mills, a gallery cum coffee shop in nearby Grafton, recreated the artwork and showcased it at an event. Meanwhile, t-shirts emblazoned with the censored image appeared. By then, the news had morphed from a school’s censorship of LGBTQ kids to their community’s rallying around a positive message. The t-shirt, it seems, was an international hit. Supporters in such faraway places as Vietnam and England had already cheered on the project via social media.
However, one fact of the matter seems to have been overshadowed by the Disney-like happy ending. While a “Love is Universal” t-shirt wearing customer slurping pho at an alleyway food stall in Ho Chi Minh City certainly is an uplifting image to conjure, the LGBTQ kids at Cedarburg, while validated perhaps by the firestorm created around them, are still denied having their presence recognized in their own school. For all the t-shirt’s worldwide proliferation, the mural does not hang where it was intended. The school district has not allowed the mural to be reinstalled. To LGBTQ kids, the official message contradicts theirs of universal love. Instead, they have been told in no uncertain terms, “You are unworthy of love. You are silenced.”
As for the remainder of the school body, they, too, have been deprived of a broadened horizon and a sense that inclusion and diversity are positive things to be celebrated. The lesson is one of erasure, oppression and denial of identity. Of course, that also opens LGBTQ kids to unfettered bullying and harassment with no hope of intervention on their behalf by school authorities.
Coincidently (or not), Wisconsin’s gerrymandered Republican legislature has introduced Assembly Bill 562. That bill would require schools to contact families before the topics of sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression are discussed in class. It would allow students to opt out of such classes if the parents request it. AB 562 is opposed by groups like the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault because it promotes a denial of the embrace of difference in sexual expression that, in turn, leads to bullying and sexual violence.
Meanwhile, here in Milwaukee, a real feel-good story may be found in the very public, outdoor display of inclusion and diversity created by Riverwest Elementary School. It features a globe surrounded by rainbows, candles, flowers and figures depicted in an array of colors.
