DENVER (AP) – It’s a provocative image, for sure, and Denver’s police unions complained when they saw the student’s artwork honored in the school system’s annual best-of-city show: It depicts an officer wearing a KKK hood and pointing a gun at a black child, who has his hands up while wearing a white hoodie. In the background, a version of the American flag is ripped open to reveal a Confederate banner.
The Denver school district’s communications chief, Nancy Mitchell, said the girl immediately asked to take her painting out of the award show when she shared the criticism with her.
“She’s passionate about her art, but didn’t want to make trouble,” Mitchell said.
Trouble followed nonetheless – even though authorities insisted that the girl was not pressured to remove her work – as her act of apparent self-censorship brought much more attention to the controversy.
To hear her out, Denver’s mayor, police chief and school superintendent arranged a private meeting Friday with the 10th grader and her mother, who was provided with a Spanish-language translator for the encounter in the principal’s office of her arts-magnet school. They emerged insisting that the teenager has not been pressured to withdraw her work, but neither have they named her, saying she did not want to speak publicly.