Take down all statues of people who lived up to 1965 (Churchill and MacArthur.) Ideal people now are the colorless (figurative) variety who may meet all of one’s moral standards, but lacking in brilliance to be rendered in stone or bronze.
Well put.
I read the whole. That was some weird stuff.
You’re referring to an Orwellian caricature of cultish revolutionary parties. A caricature based to some degree on real revolutionary parties in revolutionary republics.
The Third Reich had traits of that.
The USSR resembled that caricature in two ways: The attempt to replace old symbols associated with oppressive classes with socialist symbols; and the unpersoning of various figures in the paranoid era of Stalin’s rule.
But the Ur-example?* The revolutionary party of the USA* after the war for independence. We had Washington Irving to make up fake histories for us, and Noah Webster changing the spellings of our words to make us different from Britain. And of course it continues to this day. We make myths to uphold the party of revolution.
Well, I’m not really sure what a cultural Marxist even is in Reddy’s mind. Probably not much to do with actual Marxists.
Are you under the impression that states outside the old Northwest Territory were bound to the Union in perpetuity? Because no, they were not. Show me this “very clear law.”
This thread could more accurately be titled “Suddenly we care what non-whites think?” At its core resistance to this cultural change is coming from a group that has never really had to question any of their assumptions about our history.
A cultural Marxist is what white supremacists call people who aren’t white supremacists. They’re worried that if someone from Vietnam opens a restaurant in Boulder, their culture of Big Macs and sitcoms will be no more.
The original states entered into a mutual contract with their ratification of the Constitution; subsequent states petitioned for admission and were approved by Congress. For at least the latter, they might be able to secede, but it could not possibly be a unilateral act: Congress would have to approve the secession just as it approved the admission. For the former, I believe the same would hold true, since the Constitution was a mutual agreement. In other words, a state may not say “I’m leaving now” without getting an affirmative response to “May I be excused?” This is not codified because the concept is self-evident. Dixie left without permission and then started throwing shit at the Union. What more do you need?
The reaction from white conservative America to taking down the statues can only be described as hysterical. They were put up as part of a campaign to rewrite the history of the civil war and to reinforce white supremacy. They were put up during a time when women couldn’t vote and when men of color were prevented from voting in large parts of the country.
But still, white conservative America clings to this idea that our culture must be frozen in amber from some hazy period in the 1950s when the opinions of white men were all that mattered and they are so fragile that any challenge to this false narrative, any hint that other Americans might have a say in how our culture is shaped and how our history is understood is mind-shattering to them. They throw around terms like comrade and Marxist and stick their fingers in their hears.
I was born in 1990. I don’t want to go back to the 1950s, but I also am tired of being told I hold responsibility for slavery and Jim Crow. Stop telling me I have some original sin because of my race, and I will be more receptive toward hearing you out. Stop telling me that the only way to move forward is to tear down every statue of every (Non-Confederate) white figure in history who wasn’t born before 1965, and I will listen. Stop telling me I should shut up, sit down, and act submissive because white men decades or centuries ago did shitty and inhuman things.
It isn’t about the stupid, racist, loser Confederacy or the Nazis for me. It’s about being made to feel that I am responsible for society’s ills because I happen to have been born with less melanin and with male genitalia. It’s about being made to feel that at some point, there WILL be revenge done against me and others of my race of the past. It is a gut feeling that others “moving up” will mean that I will have to accept being a second-class citizen.
I do not believe BLM or Socialists want true equality where no one sits at the back of the bus. No. I believe today’s Socialists believe that in order to bring the non-white up, the white man needs to be lowered. Today’s counterculture is more inspired by Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan than it is Martin Luther King.
And I know your response will be to call me a racist. No. I do not feel a non-white is inferior. I do recognize that being a white male generally comes with certain advantages. I also realize that every racial group in America has its own unique share of advantages and disadvantages. I do not support police brutality. I do not believe it is right or just non-whites were mistreated, and continue to be to differing extents. I do not justify those things. I do not feel that only whites can sit at the head of the table. No. I would ideally like if we could all sit at the head of the table together. But I do not think that will be the case. Maybe I will be wrong, but I doubt it. I think that as a white man, I am beginning to be seen as, and will continue to be seen as society’s bad guy, for things I never did, and would never do.
And I am expected to accept responsibility for the evils of other men, when I in my own life have done nothing wrong to anyone who is non-white. I am expected to bend the knee and humbly apologize for other people’s brutality. Why should I? It was not me, nor was it even literally my family. Why should I apologize or feel ashamed for the actions of dead WASPS who I had nothing to do with, genetically or otherwise?
We can recognize wrongs in society, and move past them. But don’t ask me to bend the knee and act like a humble dog. You want equality, let’s have equality. But don’t pervert equality to mean that another has superiority over me because I am tarred by original sin.
Who’s telling you that? It’s not the people who want these statues down and it’s not any of us either. Perhaps you should find them and raise this issue?
Why do you assume that one race has to be “on top” and another subjugated?
You believe wrongly.
You know wrongly.
No, you’re not.
We aren’t and we don’t plan to.
I have edited your post to highlight what I meant by the term “hysterical.” No one is asking you to “bend the knee.” The fact that you think that American society re-evaluating whether we should be using public space to honor people who led a rebellion to preserve slavery is akin to asking you to act like a “humble dog” is bizarre and not in line with what is actually happening.
That is what I mean by hysterical, white conservative America is projecting all kinds of fear of loss of status once these Confederate symbols come done. I think that this hysteria comes from a tacit understanding that the statues were used to reinforce white supremacy and that removing them undermines that message. If not, why would the removal of a statue of a war criminal like Lee, cause you to believe that “there WILL be revenge done against me and others of my race?”
Step back. Look at what your arguing and why. Take a breath.
Nobody is telling you or me that as white Americans we are personally responsible for slavery and Jim Crow. But the fact is that we are the beneficiaries of those oppressive policies that our white predecessors enacted. Just because you don’t want to hear that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Institutional racism is still to a large extent baked into our society because of its history, because of the persistent racist sentiments still voluntarily held by some white people, and because of the unconscious racial privilege taken for granted by many other white people. The net outcome of this inherited social setup is that white people as a group benefit, and black people as a group suffer. I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings, but it’s a historical and sociological fact.
[QUOTE=Reddy Mercury]
Stop telling me that the only way to move forward is to tear down every statue of every (Non-Confederate) white figure in history who wasn’t born before 1965
[/quote]
First: did you perhaps mean every white figure who was born before 1965? Second: who’s telling you that? Are you perhaps exaggerating just a smidge? Because I haven’t heard anything about any liberal/anti-racist policy of demanding the eradication of all statues of all white historical figures born before 1965, and I definitely get all the memos.
[QUOTE=Reddy Mercury]
Stop telling me I should shut up, sit down, and act submissive because white men decades or centuries ago did shitty and inhuman things.
[/quote]
Again, who’s telling you that? Not to accuse you of being a tad hyperbolic and exaggeration-prone here, but the bit about destroying the statues of all the white people has not exactly given me confidence in the scrupulous accuracy and precision of your reportage.
[QUOTE=Reddy Mercury]
It isn’t about the stupid, racist, loser Confederacy or the Nazis for me.
[/quote]
Lucky you. Lucky all us white Americans, who as a group have the advantage of not being the primary target of those angry, belligerent “loser” Confederacy/Nazis. Nice for us that we generally don’t have to worry about white supremacists seizing an opportunity to go after us because of the color of our skin, so we can pretty much comfortably ignore them as marginal losers.
[QUOTE=Reddy Mercury]
It’s about being made to feel that I am responsible for society’s ills because I happen to have been born with less melanin and with male genitalia.
[/quote]
In the first place, speaking as a white person I think that even “being made to feel that I am responsible for society’s ills” is actually nowhere near as bad as “being made to feel unsafe by white supremacist Nazis who want me exterminated or exiled because of my race”. So, y’know, counting those blessings?
In the second place, “being made to realize that whites need to be more aware of racism and work harder to remedy it” is not the same thing as “being made to feel that I am responsible for society’s ills”. Again, it seems possible that you might not have achieved optimal accuracy in your description of the situation in which you find yourself.
[QUOTE=Reddy Mercury]
It’s about being made to feel that at some point, there WILL be revenge done against me and others of my race of the past.
[/quote]
Sounds scary, I admit. Must really have sucked for the many nonwhite people who had to live every day with much more strongly justified fears of racially motivated antagonism. Some of whom still do.
However, since I as a white American like to feel that most of my fellow white Americans wouldn’t vent racially motivated antagonism on our nonwhite neighbors (shh, I’m an optimist, okay?), I likewise believe that most nonwhite Americans wouldn’t commit that injustice either, now that we’re all agreed that racism is bad and all. So I figure we’ll generally be okay.
[QUOTE=Reddy Mercury]
It is a gut feeling that others “moving up” will mean that I will have to accept being a second-class citizen.
I do not believe BLM or Socialists want true equality where no one sits at the back of the bus. No. I believe today’s Socialists believe that in order to bring the non-white up, the white man needs to be lowered.
[/quote]
Well, it’s certainly true that all of us white Americans need to be lowered down from our unfairly inherited elevations of racial privilege and onto a genuinely level playing field in order for us all to live in a non-racist society. But isn’t that the ideal we’ve supposedly been striving for?
If we really mean it when we say we’re not racists, then why would we cling to our unearned privilege of benefiting from our society’s racist past? If equality means that all individuals regardless of race occasionally take their turn sitting in the back of the bus, what’s wrong with that?
[QUOTE=Reddy Mercury]
And I am expected to accept responsibility for the evils of other men, when I in my own life have done nothing wrong to anyone who is non-white.
[/quote]
Heartfelt sympathy and all, but the fact is that you and I both, and all other white Americans, have benefited from countless wrongs done to people who are non-white. We don’t need to accept responsibility for other people’s evils, but we do need to accept the responsibility of our position as the ones who reaped the advantage of those evils and the only ones who ultimately can fix those evils.
[QUOTE=Reddy Mercury]
I am expected to bend the knee and humbly apologize for other people’s brutality.
[/quote]
I doubt it. But I don’t see anything wrong with our expressing some regret, as white people, that we have unfairly benefited at the cost of other people’s suffering.
Snowflaking about how intolerably unjust it is for other people to dare to remind us that we’ve unfairly benefited at the cost of other people’s suffering seems to me rather lacking in graciousness, somehow. Not to mention the whole adding-insult-to-injury bit.
And this isn’t about “white men decades or centuries ago [doing] shitty things.” This is about white men doing shitty things RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. Just one of those things (a relatively minor thing on the great scale, but shitty nonetheless) is fighting on behalf of statues that were deliberately placed to emphasize and idolize white supremacy.
^
Doesn’t REL’s statue count as shitty-in-the-past? I understand it was put up in the 1920’s under a somewhat pro-south regime but let’s simplify it and call it a white supremacy-idolizing era. So a statue is put up at a certain time, and taken down in another. So simple. Now, how does your steady-state ideal world deal with things that are time-dependent?
There is also a Benjamin Franklin museum just off Trafalgar Square, situated in the house he lived in between 1757 and 1775. Recommended for history buffs.
You have my sympathy and indeed my empathy. My own mother is in the middle of chemotherapy treatment right now.
However, please stop being these guys: “Leftists are rewriting history to suit their gender-fluid Aboriginal industry anti-Christian agenda!”. You are extrapolating wildly without basis and sounding exactly like them.
For. Columbus was a massive bastard, even by the standards of his time. Let us not expunge him from our history but rather correct the record, and that includes not honoring him for some extremely nasty behavior.
Stop telling us to stop doing things that no one is actually doing and we might consider your point worth considering.
I am an old white guy who has never been told any of that stuff, so it mostly sounds as though you simply hang out with foolish people or spend too much time watching Faux News.
Agree with Tom.
Are people actually telling you these things or are people telling you that you are being told these things?
Also, stop being so afraid that minorities will treat White people as badly as White people has historically treated minorities.
No one has said any of that in this thread, this thread is about taking down openly racist memorials. If someone is saying that to you, have an argument with the people saying that, not people who aren’t saying that.
Yes, it is, because it’s the statues glorifying the racist, loser Confederacy that you want to help the Nazis preserve. If you have a problem with something that isn’t the racist, loser Confederacy, you don’t need to keep up memorials to it.
You can’t actually side with Nazis about keeping up statues glorifying the racist, loser confederacy and expect people to believe that you aren’t supporting Nazis and the racist, loser confederacy because, well, that’s what the words mean.
If you support having up statues that glorify raping, murdering, and torturing non-whites, then you have done something wrong to people who are non-white.
Which posts asked you to ‘bend the knee’ or to apologize for other people’s actions? OTOH, you should feel ashamed for the actions of dead WASPS who you choose to glorify today by insisting that statues glorifying their system of raping, tortuing, and murdering black people remain as a reminder and rallying point for white supremacy. But that’s not something you had nothing to do with, that’s something you’re choosing to defend today, and could just stop.
I’d also like to join the chorus of people asking who told you this. I have heard of the idea of racial guilt, along with other forms of group and historical guilt, but have never heard anyone unironically tell me slavery and Jim Crow were my responsibility, fault, etc., much less heard it so many times that I tire of it.
Perhaps you are misunderstanding what people are telling you personally and telling white people as a group?
Openly racist memorials? How about the one to Margaret Sanger, in the Smithsonian?
Or the one to Robert Byrd in the U.S. Capitol?
Murderers?
How about a statue of Che Guevara in New York City?
And a statue to Vladimir Lenin in Seattle?