That’s not a new Rolling Stones release. It’s what a Florida city did to a mural depicting black firefighters.
Latosha Clemons, a black woman, joined Boynton Beach’s fire department in 1996 and became its deputy chief in 2016. The city’s population is 62% white and 30% black.
Last year, the city unveiled a mural depicting Clemons — and also the city’s black fire chief — as white people. It eventually was corrected, but the usual finger-pointing and blame-shifting ensued, and now that Clemons is suing the city for defamation and emotional harm (see story here), the lawsuit may uncover who was responsible and what their motive was.
A good guess is some city apparatchik who isn’t necessarily racist, but was nervous about white citizens’ reaction to a mural depicting integration, and feared blowback. And that would come about because the town’s white citizenry, or a good chunk of it, is racist.
So, is Boynton Beach a racist city?
Well, in 2016 “[a] member of a volunteer board in Boynton Beach, Florida resigned” after telling a black resident to “speak better English,” and “told a group of black residents ‘You’re lucky we brought you over as slaves, or else you’d be deported, too.'” (Story here.)
An online review of a Boynton Beach diner posted on Trip Adviser in 2019 called its service “pure racism.” (Review here.) That eatery isn’t the only one. (See another review here.)
A mosque in Boynton Beach was defaced with racist and Islamaphobic graffiti (story here).
Of course, insinuations and accusations aren’t proof, and maybe Boynton Beach isn’t racist at all, and is getting a bum rap. But if it quacks like a duck and waddles like a duck …
Below: Before (right) and after (left) photos of Boynton Beach’s retouched mural
