Split Thread Tearing Down Statues Associated With Racial Injustice

[dudalb]

And General Jackson is no longer standing like a Stonewall in Richomond..his statue there just went down.

 

[Darat]

Interestingly that pub refused to segregate black and white soldiers during WWII

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-32681824

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.

 

[Darat]

It's a thoroughly racist culture just like America. But it doesn't really look that way because the body count is so incredibly lower than America. That is because Europe mostly doesn't do guns. They've got almost everything else including bombs that they make themselves. But you can't actually see the truly terrifying situation that would ensue if everyone has a gun or has easy access to a gun. All you can see is what can be done when your weaponry is anything except a gun.

Europeans are lucky that they don't have the gun situation like we have here. But we at least have to have millions of guns on the streets so that black people can defend themselves against black people and occasionally or rarely against white people. You cannot take the guns out of the hood or there will be murders like you cannot even begin to contemplate. Entire black gangs are slaughtered like fish in a barrel only because their guns were all taken away before they were taken from their rival black gang. And the summary execution of these black lives would begin instantly after a black gang loses its guns.

In the most insane twist of irony, you have to actually leave all the guns in BLACKGANGLAND in order to actually save black lives. WTF? is the only thing left to say.

You need to do a lot more research into “Europe” in regards to gun ownership.

 

[Pixel42]

Edward Colston statue: Man held over criminal damage

 

[Emily's Cat]

I find it kind of odd that other countries are getting in on this. I would have expected this to really be a pretty uniquely American problem. Maybe South Africa.

 

[arthwollipot]

I find it kind of odd that other countries are getting in on this. I would have expected this to really be a pretty uniquely American problem. Maybe South Africa.

We have a lot of problematic historical figures here in Australia too, but to my knowledge fewer actual statues. But there is a not very effective so far campaign to rename some roads and parks.

 

[Arcade22]

I find it kind of odd that other countries are getting in on this. I would have expected this to really be a pretty uniquely American problem. Maybe South Africa.

Nobody cares about statues of murderous tyrants, who presided over bloody intolerant regimes that regularly put dissidents to death and persecuted undesirable minorities, if the victims have managed to transcend the historical injustices they endured. Their descendants no longer have any good reason to get outraged by public depictions of these victimizers or take out their frustration on them.

In that regard America is not the exceptional in being haunted by its history. Of course it is exceptional in how long African-Americans have been subject to institutionalized discrimination and other forms of disadvantage.

 

[Mike!]

When will the New American Taliban be satisfied?

This so reminds me of the Buddhas of Bamyan...

It is believed that the monumental Buddha sculptures were carved into the cliffs of Bamiyan between the 3rd to 6th centuries CE

Before and after...

(That's a person on a horse down there by Buddhas foot, to give a clue to the scale)

Initially, the statues were fired at for several days using anti-aircraft guns and artillery. This caused severe damage, but did not obliterate them. During the destruction, Taliban Information Minister Qudratullah Jamal lamented that, "This work of destruction is not as simple as people might think. You can't knock down the statues by shelling as both are carved into a cliff; they are firmly attached to the mountain".[42] Later, the Taliban placed anti-tank mines at the bottom of the niches, so that when fragments of rock broke off from artillery fire, the statues would receive additional destruction from particles that set off the mines. In the end, the Taliban lowered men down the cliff face and placed explosives into holes in the Buddhas.[43] After one of the explosions failed to obliterate the face of one of the Buddhas, a rocket was launched that left a hole in the remains of the stone head.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan

 

[Delphic Oracle]

Removing an ancient statue that, I presume, was in the location it was carved at and probably impractical to move, done as an exercise in religious rivalry as "blasphemy."

A false equivalence. So you could make a comparison to some Islamic extremist boogeymen.

Stop embarrassing yourself.

 

[Meadmaker]

And General Jackson is no longer standing like a Stonewall in Richomond..his statue there just went down.

Voluntarily by the city.

When googling it, I saw a story of another Confederate soldier statue toppled by vandals in a cemetery. I don't have a problem with removing statues from the public square, but I do have a problem with removing monuments from the places where the people depicted are buried, and even more so if they are removed by vandals.

 

[bruto]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/confederate-monuments-racism.html

This is likely behind a paywall for some, being the NY Times, but it's the beginning of the month, so maybe you have a few free reads. For those not able to open it, it's an opinion piece by Caroline Randall Williams, a southern poet, and it begins:

I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.

If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.

In what I thought a pretty well written piece, she goes on to point out that though she can count no white ancestors for several generations back, she is genetically more than half white, descended from a notorious racist general, and asserts that she is not an outsider in the issue - that her very existence entitles her to speak against Confederate monuments with authority.

 

[Thermal]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/confederate-monuments-racism.html

This is likely behind a paywall for some, being the NY Times, but it's the beginning of the month, so maybe you have a few free reads. For those not able to open it, it's an opinion piece by Caroline Randall Williams, a southern poet, and it begins:



In what I thought a pretty well written piece, she goes on to point out that though she can count no white ancestors for several generations back, she is genetically more than half white, descended from a notorious racist general, and asserts that she is not an outsider in the issue - that her very existence entitles her to speak against Confederate monuments with authority.

I read this a few days back. Genetically, I have some reservations about the probability of her being more than half white from a claimed ancestor going back well over a century and a half ago.

My cynicism leads me to inquire whether she is simply unaware of more recent infidelities in her background. She also does not clarify how she concludes an ancestor was raped, as opposed to consensual pairings on the DL.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I don't care what anyone's ancestor did to anyone else's ancestor. I am not culpable for what some dead white man who shared my DNA and my last name did a hundred or two hundred or a thousand years ago. That's why the whole "Oh why my ancestors didn't own slaves, my family didn't come here until the 1920s!" thing is just so goddamn droll to me. Did you personally own slaves? No? That's the only distinction that matters.

I get that this puts me at some weird crossroads but there's a huge difference between trying to fix the actual lingering effects of slavery and colonialism that are actually happening to people now in the real which (which the discussion we are having has to do in order to be anywhere near intellectually honest) and playing the "You owe me because 200 years ago your great great great grandaddy did something to my great great great grandaddy" card.

America needs to address the current problems of racism that slavery and colonialism are still causing. But slavery and colonialism aren't sins we should just be expected to pay for forever with our ledger never moving from red to black especially since all the slaves, all the slave-owners, all the colonialist, are all dead.

Trying to pretend racism and colonialism doesn't inform racism today is bigoted nonsense. But that's context to actual problems being faced today being done by people who are still alive to other people who are still alive. Constant little call backs to stuff people who are dead generations over did to other people who are dead generations over is nonsense

 

[Andy_Ross]

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.

A good example is the Stax records tour of the UK in 67.

 

[Brainster]

Mount Rushmore is next.

 

[bruto]

I read this a few days back. Genetically, I have some reservations about the probability of her being more than half white from a claimed ancestor going back well over a century and a half ago.

My cynicism leads me to inquire whether she is simply unaware of more recent infidelities in her background. She also does not clarify how she concludes an ancestor was raped, as opposed to consensual pairings on the DL.

I wonder about that too, but one must remember that it's quite likely that none of her supposedly black ancestors was actually purely black either. After all, if she were being characterized by race she'd be counted as "black" too. I think part of the point here is that there is no "us versus them" dividing line, because the prevalence of rape in the culture of enslavement was so widespread.

I am not sure what "the DL" means here, but would contend that enslavement taints consent to the extent that it cannot really be considered a useful word, especially if the offspring of a union are enslaved.

As to the possibility of infidelities in a background, there is, of course, that possibility for everyone, but remember too that her background as a southerner likely puts those ancestors in a segregated world where consent is also at least a little bit tainted, and carries with it the unpleasant odor of presumption in which it is hinted, if not presumed, that infidelity among her sort, and ignorance of one's family circumstances, is more likely than unlikely.

 

[Thermal]

I wonder about that too, but one must remember that it's quite likely that none of her supposedly black ancestors was actually purely black either. After all, if she were being characterized by race she'd be counted as "black" too. I think part of the point here is that there is no "us versus them" dividing line, because the prevalence of rape in the culture of enslavement was so widespread.

I am not sure what "the DL" means here, but would contend that enslavement taints consent to the extent that it cannot really be considered a useful word, especially if the offspring of a union are enslaved.

As to the possibility of infidelities in a background, there is, of course, that possibility for everyone, but remember too that her background as a southerner likely puts those ancestors in a segregated world where consent is also at least a little bit tainted, and carries with it the unpleasant odor of presumption in which it is hinted, if not presumed, that infidelity among her sort, and ignorance of one's family circumstances, is more likely than unlikely.

Turn her argument around and try it out: a person claims to have blond blue eyes ancestors for several generations, then has a half black baby. Do you think it's credible on the surface to blame this on someone in the family line that was assumed to be raped two centuries ago? I would come to a different conclusion.

Being more than half white, given her explanations, seems far less probable of having been cruelly arrived at than opportunistically hopping on the powerful phrase 'rape colored skin' as a literary device. It does not pack a lot of trumping speech credibility, unless she has some more robust evidence than her assumptions about fidelities and raping. I have a feeling many same-color people might have raping in their genetic makeup, too. That does not give anyone special credentials to speak on a subject.

Eta: blond haired blue eyed may have been a recessive gene stretch, but you get the point

 

[JoeMorgue]

There's maybe, maybe about 10%, tops of the population that can claim anything resembling "racial purity" at this point, and even that is dependant on us just not remembering that "race" is a completely arbitrary thing anyway.

Let's not all turn into every hippie who's X% Native American for no reason and nobody asked.

 

[Darat]

I wonder about that too, but one must remember that it's quite likely that none of her supposedly black ancestors was actually purely black either. After all, if she were being characterized by race she'd be counted as "black" too. I think part of the point here is that there is no "us versus them" dividing line, because the prevalence of rape in the culture of enslavement was so widespread.

I am not sure what "the DL" means here, but would contend that enslavement taints consent to the extent that it cannot really be considered a useful word, especially if the offspring of a union are enslaved.

As to the possibility of infidelities in a background, there is, of course, that possibility for everyone, but remember too that her background as a southerner likely puts those ancestors in a segregated world where consent is also at least a little bit tainted, and carries with it the unpleasant odor of presumption in which it is hinted, if not presumed, that infidelity among her sort, and ignorance of one's family circumstances, is more likely than unlikely.

Not disagreeing with your post but let's face it we are not in regards to the USA talking about pushing this back to "ancestors", segregation was only ruled illegal in the early 60s, and the attitudes many people had didn't switch to being benign with the legal ruling.

 

[bruto]

Not disagreeing with your post but let's face it we are not in regards to the USA talking about pushing this back to "ancestors", segregation was only ruled illegal in the early 60s, and the attitudes many people had didn't switch to being benign with the legal ruling.

I was using "ancestors" in its looser term, as equaling progenitors, otherwise you're quite right. And just to belabor the point a little further, I would contend that no matter how inaccurate the genetic testing might be, if we take her word that she was descended from a slave raped by a notorious Confederate general, then that is the case even if she is genetically far blacker than she and the test claim. She's as much the however-many-greats granddaughter of that man as anyone else now living.

Southern apologists like to bandy about the word "heritage." Well, there it is, in black and white.

In any case, the anomalous black baby in the blonde family is, I think, not a very good analogy, since we know without speculation that the rape of slaves was widely practiced enough that after a short number of generations few people classified as black would be purely African in descent - such that the occurrence of a white baby in a black family would be considerably less unlikely than the opposite.