The New York City subway system is facing the need for a major overhaul. Articles such as Key to Improving Subway Service in New York? Modern Signals have discussed the problems and the finger pointing going into bringing the system up to snuff. The system in a sense is a victim of its own success. The city is gentrifying. Middle class, upper middle class and wealthy people go out at night and use the subway. The subways need upgrades to handle this new business.
So, in the latest identity politics hysteria anything looking remotely like a Confederate symbol is subject to attack. We’re removing statues of Robert E. Lee. Someone notices a tile scheme (picture below) looking a bit like the Confederate battle flag.
I don’t think that historical symbols such as tiling or Robert E. Lee statues are holding back minorities from producing and earning on their merits. The culture of grievance has gone way too far.
I think it’s way past time to stop relitigating a war that ended 162 years ago.
It does seem rather minor in the scheme of things.
They do not seem historic in their own right such that their removal is erasing some long loved classic art. Further, how much will replacement cost? Is some other much needed project being stopped to deal with this?
Seems to me much ado about nothing. No worse than changing the color scheme unless there is some historic element to the whole thing. It is no more than a design choice.
Just removing symbols of past political injustices does nothing in the long term. It’s impossible to completely expunge records of a country’s history and all this is doing is pandering to the liberal left political correctness brigade. It’s false because it does not change people’s attitudes. It just all goes underground, which can be far worse. The liberal elite have a lot to answer for in a quest to find redemption in superficial actions that just wind other people up and cause even more problems than before. Let sleeping dogs lie while trying to improve things through education, not symbolic virtue signalling.
It does do something for a very large swath of the population though.
Good thing nobody’s asking for this. Flagarant strawman.
I get it, and there is a clear cognitive bias here. Now normally I assume people want to be aware of their cognitive biases to eliminate them, but that’s a bias of my own - I project my desire to eliminate biases onto others.
Simply put, just because you fail to understand how this can be significant does not mean it’s “pandering” to <insert chosen hated enemy here>.
Actually, this has brought all the underground crap to the surface. The Nazi’s are now coming out of the woodworks, declaring themselves on social media and marching in public without masks.
That’s underground to you?
Its not a sleeping dog. YOU just don’t personally live or experience it.
You are stuck in a mindset that says if your house isn’t on fire, then fires can’t possibly exist. Other people have had to live with their house being on fire every day and are quite reasonably upset about it. No one is asking for virtue signaling. They are asking for the damn fires to be put out.
If seeing proudly, unmasked Nazis and white supremists rallying around these statues isn’t enough for you to see the ill they encourage, attract and represent then I don’t see that any argument anyone can make, ever will.
Please go and read the actual speeches made when these statues were erected, by the very officials who did so. I think you’ll find their actual words leave little room for any revisionist claptrap about heritage not hatefulness. What you’ll find is a whole lot of Christian posturing of how God ordained that the white man should have dominion over the black man.
“So, in the latest identity politics hysteria anything looking remotely like a Confederate symbol is subject to attack.”
False premise. In this particular case, those tiles look A LOT like the Confederate Battle Flag. I was ready to dismiss this as hysteria, too, but day-um!! That’s not just something the “looks remotely like a Confederate symbol”. We can argue about whether they should come down or not, but let’s keep the facts straight-- unless you have a better example than this.
This seems like as good a “confederate stuff” thread to drop this in as any: prepare for visits to Five Flags amusement parks.
(This is just pure historical revisionism–Six Flags isn’t endorsing Confederate Texas any more than they are endorsing Spanish Texas, French Texas, or Mexican Texas.)
I spent three summers working for Six Flags Over Georgia. Not only does a Confederate flag fly over the park, but there’s a whole section that’s dedicated to the Confederacy.
I worked in the Plantation House, the only restaurant in the park that served fried chicken and biscuits. Now, being that Six Flags Over Georgia is just outside of Atlanta, perhaps it was unavoidable that all the front-facing employees were black. I’m inclined to say that it wasn’t unavoidable due to my cynical nature and the fact that there were plenty of white folks working in other sections of the park. But I’ll be generous and concede that it probably was.
Still. I wasn’t the most politically conscious teenager, but I knew the whole thing was fucked up. I don’t think a single day went by where I didn’t reflect on how I was betraying my ancestor’s memory by “pretending” to be a house slave.
I believe the reason we collectively tend to view these depictions as being not a big deal is because the Confederacy has always been the subject of revisionist history. If plantations had been given the same treatment as Nazi concentration camps, Six Flags Over Georgia would have never thought it appropriate to have a restaurant modeled after one.
Ah, the reasoning of white people: having the KKK match down your street is better than having them in the run and hiding, because you can see the racism.
If you find yourself on the same side of an issue as people who feel it is appropriate to bus in armed Nazis, then you may want to reevaluate your position.
Do you really think the presence of a few tiles and statues here and there are what’s holding minorities back from full participation in society? George Washington Carver managed to achieve a lot even when forced to use “Jim Crow” entrances and exits to buildings and segregated bathrooms.
Then what are the statue removers asking for? Is there anything different about Robert E.Lee that woudln’t apply to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay (who sat in VA legislature and/or secession convention and voted for secession) and Zachary Taylor?
How does removing statues or tiles help reform people’s attitudes? Should we ban the playing of songs like Al Jolson’s classic “Waiting on the Robert E. Lee”? I read a 700 page bio of Robert E. Lee that was largely praiseworthy though not a hagiography. I did not emerge a bigot.
Actually, this has brought all the underground crap to the surface. The Nazi’s are now coming out of the woodworks, declaring themselves on social media and marching in public without masks.
That’s underground to you? Its not a sleeping dog. YOU just don’t personally live or experience it.
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I think that we should worry about present day problems rather than re-fight the Civil War. We should be seeking to create “a more perfect union” or “e pluibus unum” or “out of many, one.” Our country is about the only one that has made a serious effort at integration of minorities. It’s not perfect. It’s damned good.
It was meanto to be an emblem of two things: 1) that the tiles were at the geographical center of Manhattan; and 2) That it is in some senses the center of the world. The tiles had nothing to do with the Confederacy.
