Removing and Renaming Confederate Statues, Schools, Streets, etc: Why?
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Anonymous
After centuries of race-based slavery, Jim Crow laws, legal segregation, and the “one drop rule”, you wonder when the US will “get beyond its fixation on racial identity groups? Good question. Perhaps when the US repairs the egregious harms that it has perpetrated and perpetuated on POC, most notably Black and Indigenous Americans. If you’re ranting about the “politics of identity and intersectionality” that strongly suggests that you’ve never been negatively affected by policies that politicized your identity to your detriment. Must be nice? |
Anonymous
You are equating slavery of millions to...sex? |
Anonymous
Or incited an insurrection? |
Anonymous
The allegation was that he witnessed a rape and did nothing, not just that he was a serial adulterer. It may have been a fabricated claim, but it is documented in files in the National Archives. So maybe no schools should be named after individuals, given their flaws. |
Anonymous
Seems extreme to equate one personal mistake to...killing 600k Americans because you want to enslave 4 million people. But I'm OK naming schools without reference to people or (in Virginia) plantations. Number system would be fine. |
Anonymous
Sounds like plenty more than “one personal mistake” there. |
Anonymous
I’m sorry. Are you still trying to equate anything shady MLK may have done with killing 600k Americans to keep 4 million people enslaved? |
Anonymous
Of course not. But Woodrow Wilson shouldnt be equated with that either. And yet his name has been stripped from what is supposed to be DC’s best high school. |
Anonymous
That community rejected WW for his role in Jim Crow laws. He actively oppressed black people via public policy. It was a big deal and had ongoing negative impacts for decades. What’s the issue with wanting a better inspiration for your community? |
Anonymous
Typical DC: they renamed Wilson after two DCPS bureaucrats. |
Anonymous
They appreciated their significant contributions to the community. They certainly did more for those kids than Wilson ever did. |
Anonymous
Wilson segregated the federal workforce. He was a bigot. The high school was built in an area that had been called Reno City. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_(Washington%2C_D.C.) . After the Civil War it was a Black community, but it was "cleared" by the federal government and the Black residents were ejected in 1929. The high school was built 13 years after Wilson left office, the memory of what he had done was still very fresh, he was as recent as George W. Bush is today. Naming the school for Wilson was a deliberate provocation to the Black community that had been removed. Imagine if a Muslim neighborhood were cleared and then a school was built there and named for George W. Bush. |
Anonymous
History is more complicated than you write. Wilson grew up in the segregated South and he was prejudiced, as were most white Americans if his time. But his actions to strengthen segregation in the federal civil service were the result of a deal with Southern conservatives to pass progressive legislation. I never voted for George W. Bush but I recall that one of his - and America’s finest moments - was when right after 9/11 Bush visited a mosque to emphasize that bigotry and retaliation against Muslims is iin-American. |
Anonymous
Most white Americans weren’t creating public policy that hurt black people. |
Anonymous
| President Lyndon Johnson expended considerable political capital to pass the most significant civil rights legislation in almost a century, which even today is considered a towering achievement. Yet White House tapes of LBJ’s phone conversations show that he sometimes used the n-word in conversations with some of his former Southern colleagues in the Senate. Should LBJ be cancelled? History is messy. |