5 ms·

there's no causal link between Fisher supporting eugenics and continued institutional racism though? The idea of "cancelling" all of history's greatest people i

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.
  - akerl_ 5y ago
    The people who consider Confederate statues “symbols of pride” are not moderates, just in case there was confusion there.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      there wasn't - to be absolutely clear, I don't think the generals of a breakaway slave-state should be celebrated. Hot take, I know. There's a significant difference between a statue to Robert E Lee and a statue to Churchill (or, say, a stained-glass celebration of this Fisher guy).
      - akerl_ 5y ago
        Fisher has published works confirming his belief that different races have different “innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development”. Is that not racist enough to be considered racist?
        beaconstudios 5y ago
        yes, that's obviously racist. But you do realise that publishing about how much he hates racial minorities isn't the thing he's being celebrated for? Robert E Lee's primary contribution to the world was trying to defend the right to own slaves. If Fisher was being celebrated as a race scientist or whatever then I'd be against that too. It's not like celebrating Fisher's accomplishment is an endorsement of his racial beliefs - a statue celebrates a person's achievement, not the entirety of their being.
        evultrole 5y ago
        This entire idea is backwards as hell. There aren't singular people behind progress. If Newton had never been born we would still have Calculus, and in fact we don't teach Newton's calculus in schools. Einstein was part of a team, and his team was only slightly ahead of another team. Statues and shit paint a picture of a lie: That great people drive the world. Human progress happens because other areas progress, the new ideas are inevitable, the person who does them has no real bearing on whether they happen or not. History is not driven by "great men" but by society working together. The entire "great man of history" thing is actually a giant pile of racist garbage, used to promote unjust systems and reinforce tribalisms, which is the very thing you're talking about it being good for. Also, Churchill (who I believe you brought up earlier) was a piece of dog shit who starved millions of people in India out of spite. Very few people have done as much actual evil as Churchill did, and his statues and images should be shit on. The fact that you aren't aware of those things is entirely down to "great man of history" nonsense being the place where you get your ideas. It's bad, it's backwards, and it's really not defensible.
akerl_ 5y ago
> 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. This is a strawman. I’m specifically saying we shouldn’t celebrate bigots. We should continue to educate people about the “shades of grey” as it were. We can do that without statues. Monuments are never going to have context. If you think me unreasonable, I guess I’ll just have to be okay with that.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  I don't care about your personal levels of reasonableness; I care about the normalisation of progressive policies, and puritans keep people from learning about and exploring progressivism; I know because it kept me away for a long time, thinking progressives are all unreasonable. "we shouldn't celebrate bigots" is reductionist because it narrows important people down to a single dimension. That's puritanism - if somebody invents a cure for cancer and saves billions of lives, they should be celebrated for that achievement even if they have bad racial views, because from a consequential perspective people want to be celebrated and are inspired by the idea of being considered a hero for breakthroughs in their field. You can simultaneously celebrate and condemn a single person, it's called nuance - and the conversation around an individual is not solely shaped by the placard on their statue.
  - akerl_ 5y ago
    We can praise an accomplishment without forgetting context. But monuments cannot. Unless there’s a proposal for building an “un-monument”, when we put up a statue for a bigot who did a good thing, we’re elevating the good thing without the context of the bad. We should celebrate that FDR’s policies got us out of the Great Depression, and also never forget that he signed off on internment camps.
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      I think this is the point we're actually in disagreement on: you believe that a statue is a celebration of a person in their entirety, where I believe a statue is a celebration of a person's accomplishment - their personhood becomes a symbol for that accomplishment. In my mind a statue of Churchill is a symbol of war victory over the Nazis and British stiff upper lip, a statue of Robert E Lee is a symbol of upholding slavery, etc etc. The statues we build are symbolic of the moments in history that we want to uphold culturally, not an endorsement of a famous person's total being.

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.
- akerl_ 5y ago
  The people who consider Confederate statues “symbols of pride” are not moderates, just in case there was confusion there.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    there wasn't - to be absolutely clear, I don't think the generals of a breakaway slave-state should be celebrated. Hot take, I know. There's a significant difference between a statue to Robert E Lee and a statue to Churchill (or, say, a stained-glass celebration of this Fisher guy).
    - akerl_ 5y ago
      Fisher has published works confirming his belief that different races have different “innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development”. Is that not racist enough to be considered racist?
      - beaconstudios 5y ago
        yes, that's obviously racist. But you do realise that publishing about how much he hates racial minorities isn't the thing he's being celebrated for? Robert E Lee's primary contribution to the world was trying to defend the right to own slaves. If Fisher was being celebrated as a race scientist or whatever then I'd be against that too. It's not like celebrating Fisher's accomplishment is an endorsement of his racial beliefs - a statue celebrates a person's achievement, not the entirety of their being.
        evultrole 5y ago
        This entire idea is backwards as hell. There aren't singular people behind progress. If Newton had never been born we would still have Calculus, and in fact we don't teach Newton's calculus in schools. Einstein was part of a team, and his team was only slightly ahead of another team. Statues and shit paint a picture of a lie: That great people drive the world. Human progress happens because other areas progress, the new ideas are inevitable, the person who does them has no real bearing on whether they happen or not. History is not driven by "great men" but by society working together. The entire "great man of history" thing is actually a giant pile of racist garbage, used to promote unjust systems and reinforce tribalisms, which is the very thing you're talking about it being good for. Also, Churchill (who I believe you brought up earlier) was a piece of dog shit who starved millions of people in India out of spite. Very few people have done as much actual evil as Churchill did, and his statues and images should be shit on. The fact that you aren't aware of those things is entirely down to "great man of history" nonsense being the place where you get your ideas. It's bad, it's backwards, and it's really not defensible.

akerl_ 5y ago

> 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. This is a strawman. I’m specifically saying we shouldn’t celebrate bigots. We should continue to educate people about the “shades of grey” as it were. We can do that without statues. Monuments are never going to have context. If you think me unreasonable, I guess I’ll just have to be okay with that.

beaconstudios 5y ago
I don't care about your personal levels of reasonableness; I care about the normalisation of progressive policies, and puritans keep people from learning about and exploring progressivism; I know because it kept me away for a long time, thinking progressives are all unreasonable. "we shouldn't celebrate bigots" is reductionist because it narrows important people down to a single dimension. That's puritanism - if somebody invents a cure for cancer and saves billions of lives, they should be celebrated for that achievement even if they have bad racial views, because from a consequential perspective people want to be celebrated and are inspired by the idea of being considered a hero for breakthroughs in their field. You can simultaneously celebrate and condemn a single person, it's called nuance - and the conversation around an individual is not solely shaped by the placard on their statue.
- akerl_ 5y ago
  We can praise an accomplishment without forgetting context. But monuments cannot. Unless there’s a proposal for building an “un-monument”, when we put up a statue for a bigot who did a good thing, we’re elevating the good thing without the context of the bad. We should celebrate that FDR’s policies got us out of the Great Depression, and also never forget that he signed off on internment camps.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    I think this is the point we're actually in disagreement on: you believe that a statue is a celebration of a person in their entirety, where I believe a statue is a celebration of a person's accomplishment - their personhood becomes a symbol for that accomplishment. In my mind a statue of Churchill is a symbol of war victory over the Nazis and British stiff upper lip, a statue of Robert E Lee is a symbol of upholding slavery, etc etc. The statues we build are symbolic of the moments in history that we want to uphold culturally, not an endorsement of a famous person's total being.