Tampering with reality in a sculpture honoring New York City firefighters is offensive on many levels.
The juxtaposition of the Martin Luther King birthday celebration and a debate about a sculpture to honor New York City firefighters strikes an ironic chord.
How would King look at plans to alter the ethnicity of the firefighters depicted in this sculpture? Surely he would recognize this effort as political correctness run amuck.
The debate focuses on a sculpture commemorating three New York City firefighters who found a flag Sept. 11 amid the debris of the World Trade Center. They then found a miraculously unbroken flagpole protruding from the wreckage and decided to unite the two. A news photographer captured the image, which wasn't unlike the famous Iwo Jima pose, and it was beamed across the nation.
It was a great photo and a touching moment. It so conveyed the courage of a nation and the spirit of the firefighters who worked and died at the trade center, that city officials decided a statue of the event would be a fitting memorial. A model was presented and accepted except for one thing.
All three firefighters who raised the flag that day were white. To make the statue more "representative," however, the sculptor was instructed to leave one of the firefighters white, but to resculpt the other figures as a Hispanic and a black man.
This tampering with reality is offensive on many levels. First, it simply isn't the truth; three white men raised the flag. It also feeds certain stereotypes related to appearance. The statue isn't going to be in color, so presumably the ethnicity of the firefighters will be achieved by altering and perhaps exaggerating certain facial features.
As pointed out by columnist Leonard Pitts, the statue also belies the actual status of minority groups in the New York City fire department. The city whose population is 26.6 percent black and 27 percent Hispanic, has a fire department that employs only 2.7 percent black people and 3.2 percent Hispanics. That's men and women, by the way. Why not change the gender of one of the firefighters in the sculpture while we're at it?
Martin Luther King Jr. was a proud black man who fought for the equality for people of many different backgrounds. The civil rights movement he helped lead in the 1960s set the stage for many different groups to seek equality and fairness in our society. Groups that have sought fair treatment for various ethnic groups, for women, for people with disabilities, for the elderly or any number of other groups all owe King and the movement he led a debt of gratitude.
Thinking about King and what he stood for should make the people who are demanding changes in the firefighters' memorial feel very small. King believed in the worth of every person. He also believed in truth. Altering the New York statue certainly does no honor to King or his ideals.
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