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Split Thread Tearing Down Statues Associated With Racial Injustice

Darat said:
Probably because we never had segregation... The U.K. general population in WW2 upset the USA top brass because the black USA troops were treated the same as the white troops. The USA pretty much forced the U.K. government to try and stop it.

It was the same for many black artists from the USA who came over to perform whilst the USA still had segregation, they were often surprised when they were allowed in the same entrance as everyone else.
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France was famously far more welcoming than the US as well - most notably James Baldwin, but including many musicians and WW1 soldiers. As I recall, since Nina Simone eventually retired there as well.
 
Threads got long now so haven't read the whole thing.

Has anyone posted anything to say how pulling down inanimate objects will solve US deep seated social acceptance issues yet. Or is it still just people vandalising things to blow off steam?
 
I don't think anyone has argued that pulling down statues will "solve US deep seated social acceptance issues". It will, however, do more than "just vandalising things to blow off steam", in that people who are suffering the consequences of centuries of systematic discrimination and oppression will no longer have to walk every day past monuments which glorify those responsible for it. It's not much, but it's better than nothing.
 
Distracted1 said:
There is a little daylight between "being treated like a decent human being" and "destroying things that I find offensive", no?

As an example, there was a statue commissioned in my hometown back in the eighties that was to many clearly a thinly veiled "black power" statue.
It remains unmolested in spite of a substantial minority of the city residents finding it offensive, and in spite of attempts to use "the system" to have it replaced.

It would be okay to simply form a mob and destroy it because proper channels failed to get it removed??

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_Joe_Louis
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You cleverly erased the part about perpetuating ongoing injustice and so can make a statue reinforcing racial divisions and one about defeating them seem like the same thing.

Sure, it all looks the same when you close one eye, tilt your head just so and kinda squint a bit...
 
Delphic Oracle said:
You cleverly erased the part about perpetuating ongoing injustice and so can make a statue reinforcing racial divisions and one about defeating them seem like the same thing.

Sure, it all looks the same when you close one eye, tilt your head just so and kinda squint a bit...
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Yeah... because champion sportsmen, and treasonous Generals who joined enemy ranks and fought against and killed their own countrymen, are the same thing!
 
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bruto said:
I realize that the Taliban did a bunch of terrible things, and that there are, as always, stupid and destructive people who latch on to an idea and pervert it. Vandals will use the long overdue toppling of racist statues as an excuse for vandalism, racists will use the long overdue demonstration of frustration as an excuse to foment a race war, and so on.



But whose responsibility is that? If people want to demolish a statue of Stonewall Jackson, must they continually remember that doing so might invite a comparison with the Taliban? Must they always keep in mind "what if some idiot decides to do something similar that is idiotic?" Even if a person doing one thing could codify it and define its boundaries, would it keep stupid people from doing stupid things?



Nearly everything we do, good or bad - a restriction or a right, an expression or a suppression, a law or a loophole - will be distorted and misused by someone somewhere. Whatever good we try to do, someone somewhere will piss on it. Must we, foreseeing that, never undertake to do anything?
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It is really "the perfect being the enemy of the best" or "better a flawed diamond than a pebble" writ large.

it is also setting up a false equivalence, it's like comparing a surgeon who "chops off" a hand for medical reasons to an executioner who chops off a hand of a thief. That someone thinks the "statue protesters" are equivalent to the Taliban merely shows their ignorance.
 
Distracted1 said:
There is a little daylight between "being treated like a decent human being" and "destroying things that I find offensive", no?

As an example, there was a statue commissioned in my hometown back in the eighties that was to many clearly a thinly veiled "black power" statue.
It remains unmolested in spite of a substantial minority of the city residents finding it offensive, and in spite of attempts to use "the system" to have it replaced.

It would be okay to simply form a mob and destroy it because proper channels failed to get it removed??

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_Joe_Louis
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Which statues have been destroyed?
 
Mumbles said:
France was famously far more welcoming than the US as well - most notably James Baldwin, but including many musicians and WW1 soldiers. As I recall, since Nina Simone eventually retired there as well.
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Yes, excluding black units and troops from the Paris liberation parade was very welcoming by the French even when the Free french Army had black colonial units that fought their way to Paris and were involved in the liberation of the city.
 
Distracted1 said:
There is a little daylight between "being treated like a decent human being" and "destroying things that I find offensive", no?
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Oh stop. Just ******* stop.

I get it, you have to find someway to make "I don't want to look at a statues put up to glorify someone who fought a war to keep me in chains" as nothing more then "typical SJW cancel culture safe space additional buzzword additional buzzword."
 
Pixel42 said:
I don't think anyone has argued that pulling down statues will "solve US deep seated social acceptance issues". It will, however, do more than "just vandalising things to blow off steam", in that people who are suffering the consequences of centuries of systematic discrimination and oppression will no longer have to walk every day past monuments which glorify those responsible for it. It's not much, but it's better than nothing.
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Elk.
 
What's at play here is a very common phenomenon. Some people want to stay exclusively focused on one thing, in this case statues of Confederate generals or other monuments to the Confederacy.

Others, including me, see pulling down statues without going through legal channels as something that can easily get out of hand, and as such is a bad idea. I looked at the mob that tore down Edward Colston, which I believe was actually the first statue to go down in this wave, and I didn't see a group of oppressed people finally pulling down a symbol of their oppression. I thought, "This will get ugly." and it did.

I can understand wanting to pull down a statue of Jefferson Davis, and I can even understand wanting to do so when the elected officials refuse to do it. It all makes sense. However, it was not hard to see the results that would follow. If you really want to support the mob action against Confederate statues, own all of it. And don't forget that an elk statue is not just a statue of an elk.
 
I’ll step forward and volunteer to “own all of it”.

In general, I don’t care all that much about statues and vandalism.

In the current state of the world, I laugh in the face of all the hand-wringers and concern trolls who pretend this is a problem of any significance.

So now that I’ve “owned all it”, what horrible and inevitable consequence have I failed to foresee?
 
johnny karate said:
I’ll step forward and volunteer to “own all of it”.

In general, I don’t care all that much about statues and vandalism.

In the current state of the world, I laugh in the face of all the hand-wringers and concern trolls who pretend this is a problem of any significance.

So now that I’ve “owned all it”, what horrible and inevitable consequence have I failed to foresee?
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Any mob, with any motivation, being empowered by precedent to do anything they like without regard for the procedural will of the actual people. For a start.
 
Thermal said:
Any mob, with any motivation, being empowered by precedent to do anything they like without regard for the procedural will of the actual people. For a start.
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A concern for some kind of vague threat of mob rule isn’t particularly compelling, and smacks of disingenuous right wing propaganda being pushed by the likes of Fox News.

I’ll give you an example of what a significant and specific threat actually looks like: All of our lives and wellbeing put at risk by right wingers refusing to comply with basic health and safety protocols during a pandemic. There’s a legitimate connection between the conduct of these people and an actual, tangible threat.

“Statue vandalism = A descent into anarchy” is a stupid and vacuous argument.

Do better.
 
johnny karate said:
A concern for some kind of vague threat of mob rule isn’t particularly compelling, and smacks of disingenuous right wing propaganda being pushed by the likes of Fox News.

I’ll give you an example of what a significant and specific threat actually looks like: All of our lives and wellbeing put at risk by right wingers refusing to comply with basic health and safety protocols during a pandemic. There’s a legitimate connection between the conduct of these people and an actual, tangible threat.

“Statue vandalism = A descent into anarchy” is a stupid and vacuous argument.

Do better.
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Yes, antimaskers are a very real threat, and a larger one. For any given topic, we can crow that there is a bigger problem, though. And 'descent into anarchy' is a somewhat childish strawman..

Many of us here can discuss different problems, some big and some small. Kind of a simultaneous walking and chewing gum thing, that. Why, I can even discuss trivial problems whilst the climate continues to deteriorate. It's a learned skill. You'll get it.
 
Cainkane1 said:
Tearing down something that doesn't belong to you is wrong on its face. If a statue or anything else needs removing people should go through proper legal channels.
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Few things make me laugh harder than a Trump supporter attempting to take the moral high ground.
 
Thermal said:
Yes, antimaskers are a very real threat, and a larger one. For any given topic, we can crow that there is a bigger problem, though. And 'descent into anarchy' is a somewhat childish strawman..

Many of us here can discuss different problems, some big and some small. Kind of a simultaneous walking and chewing gum thing, that. Why, I can even discuss trivial problems whilst the climate continues to deteriorate. It's a learned skill. You'll get it.
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Cool. :thumbsup:

So do you have a better argument for why statue vandalism should be concerning other than “Because anarchy”?
 
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Meadmaker said:
What's at play here is a very common phenomenon. Some people want to stay exclusively focused on one thing, in this case statues of Confederate generals or other monuments to the Confederacy.

Others, including me, see pulling down statues without going through legal channels as something that can easily get out of hand, and as such is a bad idea. I looked at the mob that tore down Edward Colston, which I believe was actually the first statue to go down in this wave, and I didn't see a group of oppressed people finally pulling down a symbol of their oppression. I thought, "This will get ugly." and it did.

I can understand wanting to pull down a statue of Jefferson Davis, and I can even understand wanting to do so when the elected officials refuse to do it. It all makes sense. However, it was not hard to see the results that would follow. If you really want to support the mob action against Confederate statues, own all of it. And don't forget that an elk statue is not just a statue of an elk.
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Why does it have to make sense to and be approved by you?
 
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