Colusa exhibit riles State Fair visitors

A cheerful tribute to Colusa County’s farming bounty? Or a thoughtless insult to African Americans visiting the California State Fair?

In Sacramento, fair staff have withdrawn a cartoonish watermelon-seed mascot from a display meant to celebrate Colusa County’s melon and pumpkin crops. Complaints from fairgoers about “Wally Watermelon Seed’s” alleged racial insensitivity - a character sporting black skin, bulging teeth and huge eyes - has led the fair to remove that part of the display, two weeks after its debut.

Creators of the exhibit - one of several at the 18-day fair showing off regional products throughout California - said the only intent was to promote Colusa County’s seed-crop industries. But a fair visitor’s complaint led to Wally’s removal late Wednesday, according  to Norb Bartosik, the fair’s general manager.

“Our staff notified Colusa County (representatives) of   the complaint,” he said today. “They said, ‘We don’t want to offend anyone, so we’ll come down and modify it.’”

Although media reports attributed Wally to high school students from the county, the actual creators are wards of Fouts Springs Boys Ranch, a youth correctional center in the county’s western foothills, according to Margaret Kemp-Williams, senior deputy of the county counsel’s office. The Fouts Springs center has sponsored state fair exhibits for the last eight years.

Kemp-Williams declared herself baffled by the uproar over the seed symbol, which she said were meant to be lighthearted tributes to the seed industry’s “star quality” - and which she added were created largely by African American and Latino students at Fouts Springs.

“I don’t want to minimize their feelings” about racial insensitivity, she said of the display’s critics. “I grew up in a world with those negative images. But the reality is that those kids have no sense of that time.”