I will take personal responsibility. The New World is henceforth North and South Bob. Antarctica is Little Bob.
I get your point in the last sentence of your post not quoted, but look, this part is fine too. If a hundred years from now a significant portion of Americans want to change the name of Tyson Square or Johnsonville Stadium that is fine. Commemorating things is how you live in the past. You are not scrubbing history by choosing to no longer honor aspects of it.
To scrub slave owners from the list of people things are named after would require essentially renaming every country, state, county, shire, region, street, monument and corner store in any country older than about 200 years. And many younger countries, too. Hell, we have a lot of living people who are named directly or indirectly after slave owners.
You’re basically suggesting we rename everything. And to do it again in a few decades when eating meat is universally scorned or hunters are demonized or whatever.
I get it, slavery is bad. But that doesn’t mean we have to pretend they didn’t exist. And maybe naming something after a slave owner “celebrates” them, but keeping the name out of inertia 150 years after the fact does no such thing. Yes, let’s stop naming things after slave owners. But the things that are already named after them (which is almost everything), have their own histories now, and can stand on their own. Just like renaming England because the Angles of 1500 years ago were a bunch of vicious bastards would be absurd.
I guess that would be interesting if any of it were true. No one is saying that you can’t question anything. But we live in a democracy, and ultimately the decision is up to the majority. If you can persuade a majority of Americans to rename Wash DC, more power to you!
So you support the renaming of the school in the OP? The school board has voted to change the name. What’s there to debate?
I’m cool with whatever they decide. It’s their school, not mine.
From the thread title:
“Should the names of Confederate figures be removed from public places of honor?”
But you might note that the debate has expanded from there to include other figures from the past who did things that, today, would be considered morally repugnant.
No, I didn’t think that about you at all!
Not until I read this part:
And now I’m confused, because you seem, here, to be taking exactly the position you just dismissed as “fairly stupid.”
Can we all at least agree that Confederate pride should be erased from any and all public sanction or expression, and should have been so erased a very long time ago?
See, this is the problem I see people getting into. Washington and Jefferson owned slaves. They were not saints, but they were products of their time. Even Lincoln was hardly a civil rights activist in the modern sense. He freed the slaves, but he would never have considered a black person his peer.
No one could be honored if we expect absolute modern purity from them. I like how a person earlier said, “they didn’t know any better”. In many cases, that is literally true. Judging historical figures by modern standards is a fool’s errand. Today, we are also products of our times.
Where we can draw a distinction, however, is in what the honoree is being remembered for. George Washington is honored with his name and likeness on so many things in spite of his owning slaves. His deeds as a founder of the nation, first President, and military exploits are among the things that lead us to hold him in high esteem. His owning slaves is acknowledged, but it is not what we celebrate.
Robert E. Lee, on the other hand, is honored for precisely the reasons he should be reviled. He betrayed his country (the fact that he was “honorable” about it is immaterial). He fought for the institution of slavery, regardless of his personal feelings on the matter. If anything, his personal feelings, in my view, make his deeds worse. He knew slavery was wrong, but he defended it none-the-less.
So, if we put Washington’s name on an elementary school, we are saying “Here is the Father of our County, a statesman, a leader (who also happened to own slaves).” If we put Lee’s name on an elementary school, we are saying “Here is a traitor to his country who defended the institution of slavery (even though he personally despised it).”
Well, if you want to draw a line, how about at people who committed treason, regardless of their ownership of slaves? That should distinguish him, and for that matter a whole lot of other revered Southern figures, from run of the mill assholes.
Sure. As long as you can tell us the difference between Confederate Pride and Souther Pride.
Treason
New Yorkers already think the world revolves around them. Lets not do anything more to encourage it.
The American Revolution was treason.
OK, I’ll agree that we should never name anything after someone convicted of treason (unless they were on the side that won).
Nope, we won.
It was treason and only stopped being treason when the British capitulated.
If Southern Pride is based on a treasonous war to protect slavery, maybe they shouldn’t be proud of it? How about William Faulkner, Harper Lee and Robert Johnson as better sources for southern pride?
Easy. Non-Cornfed Southern pride does not involve the Civil War, and certainly does not regret its outcome.
I’m not sure what’s not clear. You shouldn’t celebrate people for bad stuff they did - a position that’s fairly obvious and would be foolish to disagree with (or, hey, evil). But my addition was that you also shouldn’t celebrate a person, in their totality, and thereby celebrate if only in part the bad things that they did. Celebrating “Washington” in the general does that, where celebrating a fine deed of his doesn’t.