‘White Lives Matter’ display stirs criticism — ‘I think she knew exactly what she was doing’
A gallery owner’s “White Lives Matter” window displays are catching heat in Southern California’s Coachella Valley where merchants along the desert cities’ swank El Paseo shopping and arts district are blasting the displays as offensive.
The popular Palm Desert strip lined with luxury boutiques and art galleries is known as the desert’s Rodeo Drive and is home to Denise Roberge’s self-named space. Roberge’s display, erected last weekend, includes an armless Black male mannequin clad in a T-shirt with the words “White Lives Matter” printed in large, capital black letters on front along with rows of the shirts displayed three high in the window. Other items read “Back the Blue” and “All Lives Matter.”
Roberge defended her displays earlier this week in a story by the Desert Sun newspaper in Palm Springs.
“It’s not racist. It’s a statement,” Roberge said. “All lives matter. Blue lives matter and white lives matter.”
It’s not the first time Roberge has turned storefront into statement. Last year, she posted likenesses of Democratic lawmakers with strips of tape covering their mouths while mannequins donned “Make America Great” caps, the Desert Sun reported.
Roberge, who has owned the gallery for nearly 25 years, received threats of vandalism after the 2019 display, she told Palm Springs television station KESQ at the time.
“It’s a free street to do what you want to if you got a store window,” Roberge said in 2019. “I’m sure there’s a lot of liberal art gallery owners on the street.”
In 2011, Roberge used her gallery’s windows to protest foreign aid from U.S. and G-8 member nations to emerging democracies.
“I just believe we should not be running around the world giving money away that we don’t have,” Roberge told KESQ in a 2011 interview. “I think we need to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq and stop giving money to Muslims that hate us.”
Neighboring El Paseo business owners and others in the community this week say her most recent display is racially insensitive.
“I think it’s in really poor taste,” Chelsea Dorris told the Desert Sun. Dorris owns a makeup and hair salon on El Paseo in Palm Desert near Roberge’s storefront. Dorris said she doesn’t begrudge political views and opinions especially in these charged times. But she told the Palm Springs newspaper that she believed the display only served to incite anger.
The flap over the controversial storefront display comes amid a national reckoning on race in the months since the suffocation death of George Floyd in May under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer and the Black Lives Matter movement that has emerged in response to deaths of Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement.
“The Black Lives Matter movement doesn’t mean only Black lives matter. It means right now we need to put our focus on making our world a better place for the Black community,” Dorris said. “I think (Roberge) knew exactly what she was doing to be hateful.”
The Coachella Valley, about a two-hour drive east of Los Angeles, has also seen several demonstrations and rallies for social justice this summer under the Black Lives Matter banner, the Desert Sun reported.
Others like El Paseo business owner Mike Peterson told Palm Desert television station KMIR that the displays have upset visitors to the tony boulevard.
“I think that businesses should stick to their business and leave the politics to the side. We have heard a lot of negative feedback from customers that come in upset about it,” Peterson told the station this week.
John Southorn owns a garden center on El Paseo. He told KMIR that the gallery’s displays take away from the shopping district’s reputation as a getaway destination.
“We all have our own beliefs and thoughts and I think people come to El Paseo to get away from the stresses of everyday life and I don’t think we should get confronted necessarily with political statements or religious statements,” Southorn said.
Jack Palmtag, the garden center’s co-owner, said Roberge’s storefront isn’t the proper forum, calling the display “offensive and unfortunate in this setting.”
“We’re proud that we live in a country that allows freedom of speech,” Roberge told the Desert Sun. But he said the store’s display in one of Palm Desert’s major commercial areas “incites partisanship and divisiveness.”
Still, Palmtag said, “we understand there’s nothing that can be done and it’s her business and she can do it.”
The shopping district’s business association and Palm Desert officials agree with a reluctant shrug. The city has fielded complaints from residents, visitors and other business owners about the display but cannot regulate Constitutionally protected political expression, a city spokesman said.
While the business association recognizes Roberge’s right to free speech, David Fletcher, executive vice president of Chartwell Properties, Inc., owner of several El Paseo properties, told the Desert Sun, “it is in the best interest of the entire El Paseo business district for all of its members to represent themselves in a manner conducive to the first-class shopping, dining, services and experiences for which it is known.”
.JPG)