The University of Kentucky announced this week that it will remove mandatory classes from a campus building that features a controversial mural that critics claim remind them of Kentucky’s “unsavory history.”
In a move that was designed to appease leftist student activists, the University of Kentucky announced over the weekend that it will remove mandatory classes from a building on campus that is home to a controversial mural. The mural, which includes stereotypes of blacks and Native American, has been a point of contention at the University of Kentucky for some time.
A column in the Lexington Herald-Leader argues that white students should support their black classmates that want the mural taken down. The author, who argues that white Americans wrongly believe that racial oppression ended in the 19th century, says that the mural is a symbol of Kentucky’s “unsavory history.”
The mural has become a messy and enduring symbol of an unsavory history that more white students need to understand in support of their black classmates. If you think, as many white people do, that oppression against black people ended in 1865, then you probably don’t understand what these students are upset about. A new space where programming is dedicated to those issues is both necessary and welcome. Memorial Hall is UK’s totem, inscribed into its logo, and it shouldn’t be an ordinary classroom that students are required to troop through, but neither should it be sanitized from the harsh realities that colleges are there to teach.
University officials have not announced what they plan to do with the building in the future. However, no student will be forced to attend class in the building. The new policy, which will go into effect in the spring, ensures that all required courses will be taught in another building on campus.
Breitbart News reported in May that George Washington High School in San Francisco was considering removing a mural that featured George Washington because it had been deemed “offensive.”
Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more updates on this story.
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