Well, duh! It’s a subway. 
You are obviously a bigot. When our people take power, the first order of the Social Justice Congress shall be that those such as yourself, who disagree, will be subject to re-education. Your property will be re-distributed to good people, and your children will be given over to families who are true to the Justice revolution.
No you are not!
Yes I am!
No you are not!
Yes I am!
Duck Season!
Rabbit Season!
I have probably seen that tile and not associated it with the confederate flag.
Although it is beside the point, I don’t think it is middle class people going out in the evening have anything to do with the overcrowdedness of the subway. It is people of all classes going to and from work in the rush hour. There has always been evening, not mention, all night service in the NY subway. I can remember, when I lived in NY, people getting the west-side IRT (now called the 1 train) with skis going up to VanCortland park in the middle of winter at 5 AM.
I think that what confederate symbols mean to white supremacists (else why do they get so upset when they are removed?) and to blacks fully justifies their removal. Do we put up statues of Benedict Arnold just because of his historical significance?
…they’re asking to remove, uh, statues. Not, y’know, historical records.
If you ever hear me say that I think the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen, will you angrily reply that I’m asking to expunge historical records? If I give a speech in favor of making Election Day a federal holiday, will you denounce me for wanting to expunge historical records? If I tell you I’m actually kind of curious about trying that thing where a guy eats sushi off a naked lady’s body, will you shake your head sadly and say man, does this guy ever shut up about expunging historical records?
I genuinely don’t get the confusion, here.
You mistake the effect for the cause. These statues were all about relitigating the civil war, white-washing its causes (I.E. the “war of Northern Aggression”) and nursing the grievance of The Cause. Removing these statues and monuments, that are not general monuments or markers to all who lost their lives in the Civil War but particular to a confederate generals and confederate soldiers - treating them as fallen heroes like brave King Leonidas - is fighting history, not revising it or upending it.
I think context counts for a lot.
You can find swastikas on buildings all over the world. Pretty common really. It was Hitler who co-opted the design and made it into a bad thing.
But the symbol remains on those building because it was not put there as a swastika but as a symbol of well-being.
Sorry, Freudian auto-correct on the phone.
Removing these statues and monuments, that are not general monuments or markers to all who lost their lives in the Civil War but particular to confederate generals and confederate soldiers - treating them as fallen heroes like brave King Leonidas - is righting history, not revising it or upending it.
I remember in October 1970 in Utica, New York I went to Sunday school with one of my parents’ Jewish friends’ daughters. The synagogue floor had swastikas. I actually was a little upset until our hosts explained it. I certainly wouldn’t favor their removal. If the study room were being rebuilt now I doubt they’d use the same tile.
They are also good at building and going down steep slopes.
NYC was one of the most southern leaning of all cities in the north. The 1863 draft riotswere some of the bloodiest in American history.
It wouldn’t occur to me that those tiles symbolized a Confederate flag. The link says they will be modified rather than removed, a good compromise.
But the sentiment isn’t of itself bad. Making public symbols of the Confederacy as abhorrent as public symbols of the Nazi swastika is a wonderful development. A generation that grows up thinking that way is a generation far less prone to worship that particular variety of hate.
(my bold)
There have been three recent instances from you that could merit warnings. 2 of the 3 have received warnings, this one will just be a note. Do not personalize your arguments in this fashion. If you feel you must, the BBQ Pit is right around the corner.
[/moderating]
Yes, I know. We’ve had that discussion on this MB many times. If the tiles in the subway had been swastikas, for purely decorative reasons, I’d be in favor of taking them down, too.
Hard left-wingers don’t generally admire slave-owning aristocrats and colonialists. If you’re trying to “by your logic” liberals you’ll probably turn them reactionary instead of radical.
What’s holding minorities back, in your view?
Slippery slopes happen all the time, but people disagree whether they’re bad or not. Conservatives in the '60s who predicted increased race mixing, homosexuality, and the decline of faith and marriage were spot on.
Statues of those other men are not meant to celebrate slavery and white supremacy.
Since the reason people put up statues of Robert E. Lee is to celebrate his service to the Confederacy, then–however much the revisionists may try to obscure the fact–those statues of Lee (and other Confederate heroes) are celebrations of a fight to perpetuate slavery and white supremacy as a glorious and admirable Lost Cause.
Now, chattel slavery isn’t going to make a come back–no one is actually trying to repeal the Thirteenth Amendment–but celebrating the group that started the bloodiest war in American history in order to perpetuate and entrench slavery is never going to promote racial healing in this country.
(And a minor point, but I suspect you meant to refer to or include John Tyler in that list; he was the one who voted for secession and served in the Confederate Congress, many years after his “accidental” presidency. Henry Clay played no part in the secession crisis on either side, having died in 1852.)
Thank you . I seem to be typo and math-error prone the last couple of days. Maybe NY’s heat and humidity are getting to me.
This is all false reasoning, based around straw man arguments which completely mischaracterize the actual concerns.
** "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. "**
That is NOT what this is all about, and pretending it is, is propaganda.
** “I think it’s way past time to stop relitigating a war that ended 162 years ago.”**
Again. That is NOT what all this is about.
What this is all about is HERE AND NOW. Two basic things:
-
the existence of these items on public/government space, conveys very clearly that the government SUPPORTS what these things stand for HERE AND NOW.
-
people who want to hold legally equal fellow citizens back HERE AND NOW, are using these symbols to encourage their efforts HERE AND NOW.
Therefore they need to be dealt with HERE AND NOW.
The Kingdom of Serbia suffered a big strategic loss in 1389 at the Battle of Kosovo that ended up with them under the yoke of the Ottoman Empire. It became a big part of their cultural identity. Guess what was still coming up 600 years later on the ultra-nationalist Serb side as Bosnia tore itself apart? During the ethnic cleansing one of the slurs used against Bosnian Muslims by Serbian paramilitaries was “Turk.” Again that’s 600 years later. It’s a grievance from over 100 years before Columbus sweet talked Spain into giving him some ships.
Americans are rank amateurs when it comes to nursing historical grievances.
Also, a lot of folks seem to have somehow acquired the belief that to remove a statue is to expunge history. No, really. I don’t know how, but they have.
So imagine a generation that grows up witnessing the truth first-hand: er, no; we can of course remove a statue without expunging history; a staue’s presence or absence is irrelevant to whether matters of public record stay chronicled – wouldn’t such a generation be far less prone to said error? They’d have seen, with their own eyes, that history remained intact even when statue go boom!
Why, we almost have a duty to combat that error by demonstrating that truth!