We’re not talking about ancient Assyria here. We’re talking about the United States of America, over 80 years after the American people collectively proclaimed that “all men are created equal” and are endowed with certain inalienable rights, including liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There were people who realized that chattel slavery was totally incompatible with the ideals of this country–that was kind of why the South felt the need to secede, because slavery was increasingly under moral and political pressure, abolished in half the country, and more and more loudly denounced.
It would be fatuous of me to say “If I had been alive then, I would surely have done the right thing”–how can I know? But I certainly can say that the ones who opposed slavery, Northerners or Southerners, in spite of all that history and all those economic interests, were in the right, and they were more admirable (on that point at least) than those who were unable to get clear of the weight of tradition and self-interest, and supported slavery, to the extent even of waging war for it. I can also admire those who stood up for the equal rights of all men, when for countless centuries the human race had lived with aristocracy and kingship; and I can admire those who stood up to say “equal rights for women, too!”, in the face of millennia of unquestioned assumptions about the superiority of the male gender. I have no doubt that–probably no more than decades from now–supporters of gay marriage will be seen as more enlightened than opponents of it.
If we refuse to make even the slightest moral judgements, there will never be any progress. And there is bloody well a difference between naming a bridge or a school after Jefferson Davis, and naming it after Frederick Douglass.
What progress have you made exactly? And who is there who thinks slavery was a good thing? And how many troops would the north have fielded do you suppose if they’d only recruited from those whose main goal was to free slaves?
And the main difference in the naming of hypothetical bridges is at the office of those printing the sign. Do you think for a second that most people’s lives will be affected a whit whether it’s named for Davis, Douglass, Grandpa Jones or Chiang Kai-Shek? Will ‘progress’ be impeded a millisecond?
Should we remove their names from textbooks as well or is just taking it off of public works good enough for you? Katrina did a number on Beauvoir but alas, they rebuilt it- do you think it should be burned again lest by opening it to the public it become a shrine?
Where should we stop in this alleged ‘honoring’ that we do of historical figures that ME BUCKNER, MODERATOR OF MORALITY finds unappealing? Should we have Tyler Perry make historical documentaries so that people know when to boo and hiss and when to wave and cheer?
I’d like to think that we name our Big Expensive Things after historical figures whose actions were, on the whole, net positives for our society and culture. To name a bridge after somebody implies that we revere them.
What did Jefferson Davis do to earn our reverence?
And some of which involved being conscripted into the Confederate Army without any choice in the matter (the CSA instituted conscription in 1862, months before the Union, which shoots a few holes in the legend of the noble Rebel soldier fighting to defend his home from Yankee aggressors).
Sam Watkins, First Tennessee Regiment:
"Soldiers had enlisted for twelve months only, and had faithfully complied with their volunteer obligations; the terms for which they had enlisted had expired, and they naturally looked upon it that they had a right to go home. They had done their duty faithfully and well. They wanted to see their families; in fact, wanted to go home anyhow. War had become a reality; they were tired of it. A law had been passed by the Confederate States Congress called the conscript act. … From this time on till the end of the war, a soldier was simply a machine, a conscript. It was mighty rough on rebels. We cursed the war, we cursed Bragg, we cursed the Southern Confederacy. All our pride and valor had gone, and we were sick of war and the Southern Confederacy.
“A law was made by the Confederate States Congress about this time allowing every person who owned twenty negroes to go home. It gave us the blues; we wanted twenty negroes. Negro property suddenly became very valuable, and there was raised the howl of ‘rich man’s war, poor man’s fight.’ The glory of the war, the glory of the South, the glory and pride of our volunteers had no charms for the conscript.”
And speaking of naming things for the unspeakable - there is a Manson Bridge.
Well, gee, Sampiro what have you done with your life? You post funny anecdotes and erudite observations on an internet message board. I don’t think anyone’s gonna give you the Nobel Peace Prize for that, but you never know.
Well, no one’s life will be affected by not naming things after Jefferson Davis, either.
There is no “alleged”. Naming a bridge after someone is an honor. No alleged about it. Saying “Jefferson Davis was the guy the Confederate States of America chose to be their president” in a textbook is not an “honor”, just a statement of fact, so, no, I don’t want to remove anyone’s name from any textbooks.
I’m going to take a wild guess you’ve never read a biography of him or read anything about his years in D.C… Since I’ve already addressed both in this thread no point doing it again.
Which is one of the reasons that LouisB and I have both mentioned the exact same point earlier in the thread.
Near his old stomping grounds no less. There are cities named Manson in Indiana, Iowa, Washington, Manitoba and British Columbia.
Nowhere near enough to answer and it would be a hijack but thanks for the funny and erudite.
God knows Algernon Goldengate and Simeon Y. San Diego-Coronado were duly flattered.
So in what part of the Constitution/Declaration/Bible/I Ching or other binding document do you have the right not to be offended? I’d be very interested in learning it as there are many things I’d love taken down starting with crucifixes and working towards poodles.
Pretty much everything named for Confederates whether Edmund Pettus bridge or Fort Bragg was named in another time. It rarely happens anymore and largely because of the uproar that goes on in the name of PC. Why should the existing ones be changed? Isn’t it better that we have reminders of the pasts whatever the interpretation? Has anybody ever said “Slavery was right and I can prove it- they named a bridge after Edmund Pettus, Confederate general and slave owner and Jim Crow era politician- and Martin Luther King,Jr. himself walked across it and to this day it’s held up with pride!”
And who decides a person’s net worth? Barring archaeologists digging up a feather of Maat and exhuming Robert E. Lee to take out his heart it’s relative in the extreme. Mother Teresa is literally revered and hailed as a saint by some and a stupid little hell-bitch to others. MLK revered Gandhi as enlightened and messianic, while blacks in Johannesburg were furious a statue of a man who referred to them as savages and led his first protest to have them banned from the Indian quarter was erected in their midst.
Since he’s been used already let me stick to Jefferson Davis. There’s a high school here named for him, there are counties everywhere over the south named for him, his name and likeness are used liberally- or were many years ago- on all matter of public works and places and parks and what not.
In 1865 Davis- after what was in my opinion a suicide attempt upon his capture- was taken in chains and manacles to a train station in Macon, Georgia where people jeered him and accused him of murder. He had slept in tents for the past two weeks because southereners would not let him in their houses out of fear and or contempt.
In 1866 Pope Pius IX personally wove a crown of thorns to send to Jefferson Davis in his prison cell, while in Savannah and in Montreal the Catholic churches took special collections to support his family. The next year Cornelius Vanderbilt- a coldhearted bastard of a man to all save his youngest son (George Washington) whom he adored- a son who died in the war fighting for the Union- personally guaranteed Davis’s bail and appealed for his pardon. Upon his release he was cheered so loudly in Richmond that it drowned out the sounds of trains, and upon arrival in Europe he was invited into salons of intellectuals and titled aristocracy. That much change in two years.
Fifty years ago if you had named a bridge for Jefferson Davis I seriously doubt there would have been much notice, let alone outcry, and statues of him still appeared all over the south (and a few places elsewhere- in Kentucky there’s this one of Davis and Lincoln- there’s one of him at a Scottish estate where he was a guest as well [name eludes me, though a reminder to myself to check and see if he was in Scotland at the same time as Mary Lincoln]).
In 2005 Katrina badly did this to his house-museum. (Before.) It cost $4 million to repair and more than 90% of the funding came from FEMA and other state and federal agencies because individuals and companies were unwilling to contribute; some didn’t because they felt quite rightly and understandably that living people needed housing more, but others because they feared the bad PR of contributing to a Confederate leader’s postbellum home. If you tried to name a school Jefferson Davis today you’d be on Larry King within the week; his name has become abomination.
Which begs the question: what of the ‘heroes’ or ‘revered’ today? Will Malcolm X College keep its name in 2040 or will his unbridled racist comments sink him into a “why do we not have contempt for this man?” state? Ditto anything with the name of virulent anti-Semite Henry Ford or alleged war criminal Henry Kissinger or the organized crime associated Kennedy family.
I detest George Bush with a passion. Millions detest Bill Clinton with an equal passion. I think both of them should have Presidential Libraries. If they want to build a metropolis on the site of Crawford, Texas and call it Bushylvania it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my arm. Though I’d certainly not want to live there- maybe just vacation 100 days per year or so. If others wanted to rename Little Rock ‘Clintonia’ same story.
I went to Monticello when I was a teenager and being a teenager asked about Sally Hemings. I was told in no uncertain terms that relationship was a myth and after the house I went on a self guided tour of the “servant’s quarters”- that’s what they called them- servants. I went back in 2005 and now they answer any question you wish to pose about Sally Hemings and state that the combination of oral history, circumstantial evidence and DNA testing all leave little doubt as to the relationship, they refer not to servants but to “the enslaved work force” and they’re rebuilding the slave quarters on Mulberry Row. This is how to do history- honor the deeds, preserve the heritage, teach both sides. And reserve contempt for the present. You’ll never be without a motive.
I have plans for the evening so peace out- if I don’t respond it doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten you- nothing personal, it’s just where I need to be right now so please don’t cry.
Hi-larious. I didn’t say “naming a bridge is an honor”, I said naming a bridge AFTER SOMEONE is intended to honor that person. I’ll take the ridiculous weakness of your arguments to mean that you’re simply conceding the point: Of course a bridge named after Jefferson Davis is intended to honor Jefferson Davis.
Who said I have a “right not to be offended”? All I’m saying is, “Gee, y’all, you shouldn’t ought to name stuff after those guys, seeing as how they started a bloody and destructive war in an attempt to perpetuate slavery”.
No, what Confederate apologists say is that “the Civil War didn’t have anything to do with slavery! It was all about states’ rights! We’re honoring Jefferson Davis and the rest of them because they stood up for what’s right against the evil tyrannical corrupt liberal secular humanist centralizing God-hating federal government!”
And when politicians name stuff after Jefferson Davis, they’re endorsing that sort of nonsense. No names a god-damned elementary school and says “Well, Jefferson Davis was one of the leaders of a group of people who plunged the nation into its bloodiest war in a desperate attempt to defend slavery. We’re obviously not endorsing any of that; we just wanted to reflect the historical fact that there was this guy named Jefferson Davis who existed. We’re gonna name the next one after Jack the Ripper, to remind all the kids of the existence of the as-yet unidentified person who carved up several women in Victorian London.”
Absolutely. We have no way of making any value judgements whatsoever. We should just name all our elementary schools after Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden, and the Ebola virus.
I’d amend this to “Gee, yall, you shouldn’t ought to name stuff after those guys and then act surprised and upset when other people consider you backwards-thinking racists.”
We need to remember here, as also was obvious to Southern leaders of the time, that there were no evil plans emanating from Washington to outlaw slavery throughout the nation. The plantation class and their allies were reacting to limitations on slavery in the new territories and abolitionist activism as signs that slavery’s days were numbered, and decided that a pre-emptive strike was just the thing to keep slavery going indefinitely. They did not launch the war in reaction to any credible threat to destroy slavery.
As for changing names of monuments, bridges and schools - I have no problem with doing so as our values and understanding of history changes. If there’s enough sentiment eventually that Teddy Roosevelt’s imperialist activities warrant his being less honored than he is now, so be it…but others will remind us of his work as a trust-buster and environmentalist, so his place in history is probably secure. Confederate leaders have a lot less to fall back on.
I wanna talk with Southern gentlemen
Put my white sheet on again
I ain’t seen one good lynchin’ in years
I saw a license plate holder last night, on a maried couple’s SUV: “A House Divided - DAWGS/VOLS” which illustrates the current situation. The phrase “a house divided,” of course, was coined back before the Civil War, but what really matters in contemporary Southern culture is football rivalry.
Sure, there is Civil War tourism, fixed-up old houses with college girls dressed like belles giving tours and using that trite phrase “The Late Unpleasantries,” but that’s not honoring the past while ignoring it’s values. It’s a money-making business aimed at stupid people (many if not most who are Northerner tourists) who abuse history as a day-dreaming device instead of a search for facts.
Every Spring for hundreds of years, the Swiss would send their cattle to the upper pastures and march off to sell their skills as soliders to the highest bidder, back when war was killing, raping, theft and enslavement. The Mongols slaughtered entire cities and made pyramids of skulls. Today we think of the Swiss as pacifistic clockmakers who like stinky cheese, and Mongols as people who live way out beyond nowhere and who sing from their throats. History forgives all with the passing of time, guided by the principal “ugly and tragic, but they’d all be dead by now anyway.”
So stereotyping is okay. Is this just for southerners or for all groups? It’s perfectly reasonable to consider all gays promiscuous vapid AIDS spreaders, or all Irish a bunch of hyper Catholic superstitious drunks, all blacks are crack smoking welfare addicts, or all Italians mob affiliated with hideous notions on decorating, all Muslims are of course towelheaded fundamentalist suicide bombers, all… hmm… this is an interesting view of sociology. To borrow from Mark Twain, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but it sure as hell saves time doesn’t it?
Obviously I prefer Vatican Rag but one wonders why he was so selective in the groups he chose to lampoon.
Who exactly names stuff after Confederates these days? Here in town there’s Lee and Davis high schools, both named 2 generations ago. (Interesting story on how Robert E. Lee high school got its name: there was a huge and originally expensive bronze statue of Lee that had to be moved and they offered it free to the high school if they’d name it for him.) There’s also a Sidney Lanier High School here- I seriously doubt 1% of the students who have ever been there can quote one line from any poem Lanier ever wrote. There’s also a George Washington Carver high school- it’s named for a gay eunuch who invented a bunch of peanut products, not one of which is actually used. (Some would argue that he’s more complex than that and his unsuccessful peanut products were part of his brilliantly successful attempt to diversify agriculture by creating an artificial market to replenish the soil and wean the southern economy from cotton, but we’ve learned from this thread that complexity doesn’t matter- it’s gut instinct that helps.)
What’s been named after Davis, Lee, or [Confederate name here] in the last 40 years?
That’s just stupid. We have plenty of serial killers right here at home who would be in line way before him and how can you make a nice statue of somebody who’s never been identified. I do like “the Rippers” as a team name, though the cheerleader outfits might be odd (and the cheerleaders disease riddled women over 40 for the most part). And certainly Jack the Ripper is as adequate a comparison as Nazism which has also been used in this thread.
How is this different from the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas? It was no longer a Buddhist land after all and they legitimately and sincerely found the statues horribly offensive to their religion.
Suppose in 20 years the Christian Right is in power and values change accordingly. Should Harvey Milk High School be renamed Jerry Falwell Learning Emporium on that day? Similar things really were done by the Nazis and the French Republicans and Simon Bolivar and other new powers- who the nation should and should not honor became policy. The nice thing about spray painting over a name on a bridge or building though is it rarely exhausts the whole can; it can always be reused later.
But it is an intriguing idea. Perhaps we should start with Washington D.C…
Washington: at best most military historians would rate him a capable general, and unarguable is that he was a social climber who held hundreds of people in enslaved labor. (True he freed them but only after he and his wife were dead and no longer needed them [she freed them earlier because she didn’t like the idea of hundreds of people who were around her daily having a vested interest in her death].) Add to this that he’s been dead for 210 years and never even lived in Washington, D.C…
So henceforth the name is Lincoln D.C… Lincoln, District of Columbia…
Oooh, that Columbia is just right out isn’t it? Columbus was to put it mildly not a nice man- slaver, exploiter, used an eclipse to make himself godlike and terrify the people who were keeping him alive after a shipwreck even. So Columbia’s right out…
Now if Jamestown hadn’t existed (due indirectly to Columbus more than a century before) then the person most important in that area would have been Chief Powhatan who ruled it when the whites arrived, and his daughter was a major part of our history and his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter served as First Lady and essentially acted as president (Edith Bolling Galt Wilson), so it honors women in power as well.
Lincoln, District of Powhatan…
Except, Powhatan wasn’t his name was it? It was just imposed upon him by the whites… his real name was Wahunsunacock.
Lincoln, District of Wahunsunacock. That ought to make for some interesting bar names in Dupont Circle…
Except, you know what? Wahunsunacock wasn’t exactly a nice guy either was he? Exploited and captured and enslaved other tribes on a regular basis, a native American imperialist… hell, the only reason he allowed the English to live when he could have destroyed them with a blink of his eyebrow was he wanted their alliance so he could use their weapons and armor against his enemies and he thought glass and metal pots were cool. Add to this his habit of taking child brides, knocking them up, and giving them away to make alliances, a habits even the other natives of his time thought was weird and barbaric (and not a part of their culture but his own idea). And Wilson was a racist.
We’ve already established we don’t want to honor imperialist warlord misogynists so… I know, let’s go with his brother and sucessor Opechancanough. He wasn’t nearly as weird or as imperialist as his brother and in fact had the foresight to see that the English were going to be their destruction (may even have toured Europe as a kid but that’s another story), so
LINCOLN, DISTRICT OF OPECHANCANOUGH
Opechancanough… well, a lot of good in him, and he lived into his 90s (and then was executed) so he must have been doing something right… but he also married several of his underaged nieces didn’t he? And while he had the moral high ground- whites were destroying his people— it is problematic that he did order and oversee genocidal slaughters of whites and blacks, men women and children, twice. (1622 and 1644.) So who do we name it for…
And Lincoln… hmm. Freed the slaves, won the Civil War… but also a white supremacist who repeatedly said that blacks would never be equal to whites and freeing the slaves was only an act of war (or not really a war since that would imply he was fighting another country but- whatever it was). Set aside the Constitution whenever it was convenient for him- some would say it was necessity but the point is that he set aside the constitution frequently in everything from habeus corpus to harboring troops to seizing private property- and at best he was agnostic and by some accounts he was atheist, and he was suicidally depressed many times and had a bitch for a wife (a daughter of slaveowners to boot- though oddly Frederick Douglass said that while he never once felt Lincoln saw him as an equal and stunned hagiographic bystanders with his [brilliant and powerful] stepchildren speech, he never once felt Lincoln’s wife- who grew up attended by slaves- saw him as anything other than equal- but then we know this is not true since Southern slaveocrat class were uniform and therefore incapable of nuance- probably just had an eye condition)
So who shall we name this place after if we can’t do Lincoln or can’t do Opechancanough…
Got.
EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: TO AVOID OFFENDING THE SENSITIVITY OF ANYBODY ANYWHERE HENCEFORTH AND FOREVER ALL CITY NAMES AND THE NAMES OF THEIR BRIDGES, BUILDINGS, AND SCHOOLS AND PUBLIC WORKS ARE REVOKED AND REPLACED WITH THEIR GEOGRAPHIC COORDINATES. HENCEFORTH WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, WILL BE KNOWN AS
38°53N/77°02W
The Smithsonian will henceforth be 38°53′42.4″N/77°02′12.0″W Museum to avoid references to illegitimacy or the British Class system that may offend.
It may seem a bit radical, but it’s the only way you are ever going to avoid offending some people by naming anything after a human being after all.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If people want to erect buildings and keep holidays named after Confederate generals “because who is it hurting?”, fine. If they want to fall back on the “but my ancestors were slaveowners and therefore you can’t expect me to shed tears over slavery in 2009!!” excuse, fine. If they want to make false equivalencies between highways named after Jefferson Davis and highways named after MLK (“he wasn’t perfect, you know!”), fine.
But then why should I or anyone else listen when these people whine about “unfair” it is that the South has the racist repuation that it has? Sure, we should judge individuals on an individual basis. But why should anyone go out of their way to stick up for (white) southerners as a group when, as you’ve suggested in this very thread, they are sympathetic to their ancestor’s cause?
If (white) southerners can’t or won’t understand why state flags bearing Confederate symbols etc. are offensive, then they should just proudly accept the consequences of that willful ignorance.
It has been removed from every state flag except for Mississippi. So all southerners should be judged by Mississippi? And all Mississippians- white, black, Asian, Hispanic, otherwise, liberals and conservatives, should be judged by a state flag they have nothing to do with?
Now please answer the question: how is making assumptions on southerners due to the vaguely defined actions of a minority ethically superior or even different from stereotyping any other nationality, race, ethnic group, religion, wampeter, karass or granfalloon?
I said “if they can’t or won’t understand…”. Just because a flag has been changed doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of disappointed people pining for the ole stars and bars, and those are the idiots I’m talking about. The flag was changed in Georgia only with much teeth gnashing and feet stomping. In fact, Sonny Perdue ran for governor under the guise of returing the flag to its 1956 state.
I feel comfortable judging any group of people who are sympathetic to offensive things. Not all southerners defend Confederate nostalgia, and therefore my contempt doesn’t extend to them.
The Confederacy is worthy of contempt. I just have a hard time having a lot of contempt for them because they were the instigators of failed rebellion and only existed for a few short years. I’m a good Union man but I do have some respect for Robert E. Lee and other Confederates even though I firmly believe they were on the wrong moral side.
I’ve had to deal with members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans at work and I am happy to say that they do not represent the majority of southerners who are really into the Civil War as a hobby. Those who still interpret the Civil War through the lens of the “Lost Cause” are really on the fringe.
The worst part is how liberals have separate water fountains for conservatives. I have to admit, though, that the use of Snugglies ™ by the LLL rather than sheets is kinda lame.
The discrimination won’t last forever. Some day a southerner will be elected as President and the last barrier to equality will have been eliminated.
So you’re saying that even once something is changed you still won’t get over it because it used to be there and there are people who wish it still were. Why change anything then?
Name a group of more than three people that does NOT apply to.
THIS is what you call “an intelligent reasonable response” children. Please take notes and thank Odesio for coming to show and tell.
You do know that those weren’t just in the South don’t you?
The red ones are great for sacrificing goats however. In addition to the Satanic priestly look they hide blood stains.
Congratulations on the most asinine statement yet seen in this thread (in the face of stiff competition from LouisB).
So renaming a monument is the same as destroying it? I supposed that when the U.S. renamed McKinley National Park as Denali National Park it meant taking a sledgehammer to everything in it? Or will the destruction be complete when Mt. McKinley is renamed Mt. Denali (over the prostrate bodies of a bunch of mulish Ohio Congressmen)? Never mind that the mountain was named for McKinley as a political maneuver during McKinley’s race for President - by god, once we name something for somebody that name stays, come hell or high water. Or else we’re the Taliban.
If as a consequence of this thread the Incredibly Stupid Analogy Award is called the “Sampiro”, I’ll resist any and all attempts in the future to name it for someone else.
At least, until a more deserving honoree comes along. :dubious:
Taliban destroying Bamiyan Buddhas: renaming and removing names and symbols from things to hide a past some consider offensive:
Both involve people taking the pumice of self absorption to the Palimpsest Americana and scraping off that which suits their limited and fundamentalist understanding of history and culture to make it something that exists only in history books. We’re just hammerin’ out a price.
Aw, we both know once I say something you agree with you’ll be standing there with the spray paint. Personally I can look at you and see somebody who I think displays great ignorance, fair to middling logic, and good grammar in this thread but is intelligent in others even when I disagree with her*; we all have our strengths and weaknesses. But then I suppose I’m not as enlightened as you are in seeing people as one thing or the other.
*I assume female, I’m honestly not sure. I know jackmanni is a flower species because, being southern of course, I grew up surrounded by bougainvillae which it greatly resembles and which I’ve mistaken for and usually those who take names from plants that aren’t smokable tend to be female, but if you’re male I intended no offense (not that I think there’s offense to be had either way).
