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That would leave approximately no one from more than a century ago and almost no one from the last century, especially if you're going to exclude anyone who mig

by Veen 5y ago

That would leave approximately no one from more than a century ago and almost no one from the last century, especially if you're going to exclude anyone who might be considered a bigot by modern progressive standards.

akerl_ 5y ago
Yes, I’m cool with that. We can remember these people existed and the things they did without celebrating them. Removing statues is an example of that.
- Veen 5y ago
  Are you really cool with that though? It implies no mathematician, scientist, artist, writer, athlete, politician, soldier, or activist should be celebrated or admired unless they exactly conform to the ideological purity standards of modern progressives? If you are cool with that, you and those who think like you are precisely why people get so agitated when statues are pulled down and windows hidden in basements.
  - akerl_ 5y ago
    You’ve jumped from “bigoted” to “ideological purity”, which I didn’t say. But just in the interest of going whole hog: let’s assume I become King Of Earth and my new rule is “nobody is allowed to be celebrated”. Does the world stop spinning? It’s a crazy rule, but celebration of dead people isn’t exactly the glue holding society together. Meanwhile, racism is a pretty ongoing issue that is tearing it apart.
    - tyre 5y ago
      Celebrating people and history is a core pillar of identity. The “founding fathers” are central to the story of America’s founding. Jesus is certainly a glue of Christianity, Mohammad of Islam, etc. Does that mean we have to accept all of who those people are? Of course not. We can choose to celebrate the Federalist papers and denounce the slaveholding. People have a natural desire to follow leaders, to idolize people. In doing so they are tied more closely to others who value/worship/memorialize the same. That’s (one!) tribal glue.
      - akerl_ 5y ago
        > People have a natural desire to follow leaders, to idolize people. In doing so they are tied more closely to others who value/worship/memorialize the same. Yea, this is pretty much the same reason that people want racists’ statues taken down. People celebrating bigots are people who value bigots, and that’s a tribe I’m pretty happy letting go extinct.
        kbelder 5y ago
        > that’s a tribe I’m pretty happy letting go extinct. Funny, saying that sort of thing is what got Fisher condemned.
        Veen 5y ago
        > People celebrating bigots are people who value bigots But, with some exceptions, these people aren’t celebrated for their bigotry. They’re celebrated for their positive achievements. People are complex mixtures of good, bad, and indifferent values. No one is pure of character or thought.
      - derbOac 5y ago
        FWIW I happen to think ideas should be celebrated, maybe accomplishments per se, not people. I've grown skeptical about celebrating people. There's too many problems in the background, all the time, too many unknown stories, too much about the idolizers rather than the idolized, too much weight of privilege, too much.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      You think racism today is tearing society apart? Racism has never been lower. I haven't ever seen race riots breakout. In a few American cities anti-police protests have happened. Liberal guilt is tearing itself apart. As things get better day after day because of the work so many put in, a group of people exists who ignores this and thinks the world is frozen in some media generated history.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      there's no causal link between Fisher supporting eugenics and continued institutional racism though? The idea of "cancelling" all of history's greatest people is one of the worst suggestions I can imagine, optically, for progressive movements. I would think that educating people about the shades of grey in our cultural icons' history, beliefs and personality is a much better cause. For example I didn't know that Churchill had some pretty horrendous things to say about Indian people until the last couple of years because British cultural attitudes towards him are pretty unflinchingly patriotic. It doesn't diminish that he played a key role in saving us and the rest of the world from the Nazis, but it does balance his image as a man with positive and negative qualities, which is a more realistic image. To tear his statues down says to other people "fuck your heroes, racism is the only dimension I judge people on" - which is much more likely to garner a reactionary response than to initiate dialogue and understanding on the racism of our history, which IMO is the valuable thing you can get out of these conflicts. Tearing down statues (of people famous for things unrelated to racism) just makes progressives seem incredibly unreasonable, which is already a popular perception, because of exactly things like this.
      - Kye 5y ago
        Few people paid attention to racism until people started tearing down statues and burning Targets. What's the incentive to be nice and polite when being nice and polite gets you ignored? This is just another call for respectability politics. You're asking people to do something that doesn't work.
        beaconstudios 5y ago
        I don't care if you're canvassing in a suit and tie or spray painting Marxist slogans on banks - respectability doesn't matter. Results do - and consequentially speaking, destroying things that people consider symbols of pride is not going to win you many friends among moderates. If you want to argue that trying to clandestinely pull down a statue prompts a national conversation about the motives of the vandals, then sure, I can agree with that reasoning. But actually making the argument "no accomplished people should be celebrated at all if they weren't morally squeaky-clean"? That's purity politics, and a continued association between progressivism and puritanism is not going to win any friends or allies.
geofft 5y ago
This is certainly not true! Many, many people from more than a century ago opposed racism and bigotry. It's just that many powerful people in recent years supported it and want you to believe that racism and bigotry was (and still is) a normal and defensible thing. Most obviously - there were a lot of people from non-dominant races (in various times and places) in history! We have writings from Olaudah Equiano, for instance, that confirm that he did not believe in the common racism and bigotry of his time, and there were many thousands like him that didn't write anything down either. But even among the races benefiting from racism, we have writings of people opposing it, too. Here, for instance, are excerpts from journal entries of Bp. Thomas Coke, one of the founders of Methodism in the US, written in 1785: > At night I lodged at the house of Captain Dillard, a most hospitable man, and as kind to his negroes as if they were white servants. It was quite pleasing to see them so decently and comfortably clothed. And yet I could not beat into the head of that poor man the evil of keeping them in slavery, although he has read Mr. Wesley's thoughts on slavery, (I think he said) three times over, : but his good wife is strongly on our side.) > I preached the late Colonel Bedford's funeral sermon. But I said nothing good of him, for he was a violent friend of slavery, and his interest being great among the Methodists in these parts, he would have been a dreadful thorn in our sides, if the Lord had not in mercy taken him away. And here is Gouverneur Morris, one of the Founding Father, debating in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention the merits of the Three-Fifths Compromise, as recorded in James Madison's notes: > Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them Citizens and let them vote. Are they property? Why then is no other property included? [...] The admission of slaves into the Representation when fairly explained comes to this: that the inhabitant of Georgia and S. C. who goes to the Coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections & damns them to the most cruel bondages, shall have more votes in a Govt. instituted for protection of the rights of mankind, than the Citizen of Pa. or N. Jersey who views with a laudable horror, so nefarious a practice. What you see in these writings is a belief that there is no moral distinction to be made between white and black, that slavery is in fact an outrage, and no defense of it can be made based on race. What you see, simply, is opposition to racism. This is what some successful and powerful and praiseworthy people - bishops and founding fathers - believed in the 1700s. You don't know this, of course, because the people who make statues and stained glass windows aren't excited about sharing that history.

by Veen 5y ago

akerl_ 5y ago

Yes, I’m cool with that. We can remember these people existed and the things they did without celebrating them. Removing statues is an example of that.

Veen 5y ago
Are you really cool with that though? It implies no mathematician, scientist, artist, writer, athlete, politician, soldier, or activist should be celebrated or admired unless they exactly conform to the ideological purity standards of modern progressives? If you are cool with that, you and those who think like you are precisely why people get so agitated when statues are pulled down and windows hidden in basements.
- akerl_ 5y ago
  You’ve jumped from “bigoted” to “ideological purity”, which I didn’t say. But just in the interest of going whole hog: let’s assume I become King Of Earth and my new rule is “nobody is allowed to be celebrated”. Does the world stop spinning? It’s a crazy rule, but celebration of dead people isn’t exactly the glue holding society together. Meanwhile, racism is a pretty ongoing issue that is tearing it apart.
  - tyre 5y ago
    Celebrating people and history is a core pillar of identity. The “founding fathers” are central to the story of America’s founding. Jesus is certainly a glue of Christianity, Mohammad of Islam, etc. Does that mean we have to accept all of who those people are? Of course not. We can choose to celebrate the Federalist papers and denounce the slaveholding. People have a natural desire to follow leaders, to idolize people. In doing so they are tied more closely to others who value/worship/memorialize the same. That’s (one!) tribal glue.
    - akerl_ 5y ago
      > People have a natural desire to follow leaders, to idolize people. In doing so they are tied more closely to others who value/worship/memorialize the same. Yea, this is pretty much the same reason that people want racists’ statues taken down. People celebrating bigots are people who value bigots, and that’s a tribe I’m pretty happy letting go extinct.
      - kbelder 5y ago
        > that’s a tribe I’m pretty happy letting go extinct. Funny, saying that sort of thing is what got Fisher condemned.
      - Veen 5y ago
        > People celebrating bigots are people who value bigots But, with some exceptions, these people aren’t celebrated for their bigotry. They’re celebrated for their positive achievements. People are complex mixtures of good, bad, and indifferent values. No one is pure of character or thought.
    - derbOac 5y ago
      FWIW I happen to think ideas should be celebrated, maybe accomplishments per se, not people. I've grown skeptical about celebrating people. There's too many problems in the background, all the time, too many unknown stories, too much about the idolizers rather than the idolized, too much weight of privilege, too much.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    You think racism today is tearing society apart? Racism has never been lower. I haven't ever seen race riots breakout. In a few American cities anti-police protests have happened. Liberal guilt is tearing itself apart. As things get better day after day because of the work so many put in, a group of people exists who ignores this and thinks the world is frozen in some media generated history.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    there's no causal link between Fisher supporting eugenics and continued institutional racism though? The idea of "cancelling" all of history's greatest people is one of the worst suggestions I can imagine, optically, for progressive movements. I would think that educating people about the shades of grey in our cultural icons' history, beliefs and personality is a much better cause. For example I didn't know that Churchill had some pretty horrendous things to say about Indian people until the last couple of years because British cultural attitudes towards him are pretty unflinchingly patriotic. It doesn't diminish that he played a key role in saving us and the rest of the world from the Nazis, but it does balance his image as a man with positive and negative qualities, which is a more realistic image. To tear his statues down says to other people "fuck your heroes, racism is the only dimension I judge people on" - which is much more likely to garner a reactionary response than to initiate dialogue and understanding on the racism of our history, which IMO is the valuable thing you can get out of these conflicts. Tearing down statues (of people famous for things unrelated to racism) just makes progressives seem incredibly unreasonable, which is already a popular perception, because of exactly things like this.
    - Kye 5y ago
      Few people paid attention to racism until people started tearing down statues and burning Targets. What's the incentive to be nice and polite when being nice and polite gets you ignored? This is just another call for respectability politics. You're asking people to do something that doesn't work.
      - beaconstudios 5y ago
        I don't care if you're canvassing in a suit and tie or spray painting Marxist slogans on banks - respectability doesn't matter. Results do - and consequentially speaking, destroying things that people consider symbols of pride is not going to win you many friends among moderates. If you want to argue that trying to clandestinely pull down a statue prompts a national conversation about the motives of the vandals, then sure, I can agree with that reasoning. But actually making the argument "no accomplished people should be celebrated at all if they weren't morally squeaky-clean"? That's purity politics, and a continued association between progressivism and puritanism is not going to win any friends or allies.

geofft 5y ago

This is certainly not true! Many, many people from more than a century ago opposed racism and bigotry. It's just that many powerful people in recent years supported it and want you to believe that racism and bigotry was (and still is) a normal and defensible thing. Most obviously - there were a lot of people from non-dominant races (in various times and places) in history! We have writings from Olaudah Equiano, for instance, that confirm that he did not believe in the common racism and bigotry of his time, and there were many thousands like him that didn't write anything down either. But even among the races benefiting from racism, we have writings of people opposing it, too. Here, for instance, are excerpts from journal entries of Bp. Thomas Coke, one of the founders of Methodism in the US, written in 1785: > At night I lodged at the house of Captain Dillard, a most hospitable man, and as kind to his negroes as if they were white servants. It was quite pleasing to see them so decently and comfortably clothed. And yet I could not beat into the head of that poor man the evil of keeping them in slavery, although he has read Mr. Wesley's thoughts on slavery, (I think he said) three times over, : but his good wife is strongly on our side.) > I preached the late Colonel Bedford's funeral sermon. But I said nothing good of him, for he was a violent friend of slavery, and his interest being great among the Methodists in these parts, he would have been a dreadful thorn in our sides, if the Lord had not in mercy taken him away. And here is Gouverneur Morris, one of the Founding Father, debating in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention the merits of the Three-Fifths Compromise, as recorded in James Madison's notes: > Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them Citizens and let them vote. Are they property? Why then is no other property included? [...] The admission of slaves into the Representation when fairly explained comes to this: that the inhabitant of Georgia and S. C. who goes to the Coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections & damns them to the most cruel bondages, shall have more votes in a Govt. instituted for protection of the rights of mankind, than the Citizen of Pa. or N. Jersey who views with a laudable horror, so nefarious a practice. What you see in these writings is a belief that there is no moral distinction to be made between white and black, that slavery is in fact an outrage, and no defense of it can be made based on race. What you see, simply, is opposition to racism. This is what some successful and powerful and praiseworthy people - bishops and founding fathers - believed in the 1700s. You don't know this, of course, because the people who make statues and stained glass windows aren't excited about sharing that history.