MLK Memorial Was Made in China- No Qualified Black Sculptors

Check out Ol’ MLK in the imported granite sculpture below, with his “Keepin’ It Real” pose. He looks like he just won a rap battle and is getting to drop the microphone. According to the Chinese manufacturer, who specialized in sculpting Chairman Mao Tse Tung, there are no such things as black sculptors who had the mad skills to chip away some white rock to reveal the majesty of Dr. King.

From the National Post here:

The chunks of granite used to sculpt the new Martin Luther King Jr. memorial had to be imported from Changsha. And the whole thing was designed by a Chinese architect, Lei Yixin — previously noted for statues of that great champion of human rights, Mao Zedong.

Chinese workers, too, were brought in to put it all together as the U.S. lacked people capable of doing this.

Yup, made in China strikes again and at the heart of the U.S. capital. The new sculpture has been installed in between monuments to Jefferson and Lincoln in Washington.

Some observers have discerned an Asiatic cast to Dr. King’s features. Others find his stance — stern, with folded arms — reminiscent of another Communist icon, Joe Stalin.

Surely, having a black sculptor of a black civil rights icon — working on ground once toiled by black slaves, on the National Mall, designed and surveyed with the help of a black mathematician and astronomer Benjamin Banneker — would have added to the King memorial’s symbolic power.

So, yes, it stings when, centuries later, creators of the King memorial say they couldn’t find a qualified black sculptor.

The Chinese think that all blacks play football or rap. They don’t sculpt. And that white liberals in this country think its just peachy that the Chinese are designing our National monuments and not including American artists or architects, black or white, in the creation of these memorials, is laughably sad.