Racism in America (with data)

[Holman]

Can someone explain to me why they care whether or not there are editions of Huckleberry Finn with the N-word in them?

I feel like I must be missing something here.

You and I and most people on this board might feel no need to care about whether the n* word is in the book, but lots and lots of students and parents and teachers definitely do.

One thing to know is that Huck Finn has not be erased. It hasn't even been censored: while an edition has been published with n* replaced in the text, the original version is widely available in as many other editions as you want.

What has changed is that the book has been dropped from most school curricula. One huge reason for this is that it's difficult to justify it when so many students will feel the sting not only of the word itself but of the depiction of Jim as a racial stereotype in so many dimensions. HF is brilliant, but it comes from a place of white humor about the supposed inferiority of blacks, and even the aura of Magical Negro around Jim is embarrassing rather than redeeming. There are plenty of other brilliant works of American literature that can fill that space in the classroom.

Where the book *is* being taught is in college courses on race and representation in American literature. That seems to me to be where it belongs right now.

[LawBeefaroni]

I understand the concerns of censorship.


Honest question: is what Netflix doing considered 'censorship' ?

No, it's a business decision. If someone doesn't like it, they can vote with their dollars. Or not.

Netflix isn't willing something from existence, they are just opting not to carry certain episodes.


Does that have a chilling effect on blackface in future TV shows? Maybe. But it's still a business decision, in that case on the behalf of the content producers.

[Holman]

No, it's a business decision. If someone doesn't like it, they can vote with their dollars. Or not.

Netflix isn't willing something from existence, they are just opting not to carry certain episodes.


Does that have a chilling effect on blackface in future TV shows? Maybe. But it's still a business decision, in that case on the behalf of the content producers.

All industries are self-policing in these ways, and it's not *just* about business.

You can bet that some piece of shit out there has written a Boogaloo Manifesto, but no decent publisher will touch it even if they know it would sell in certain quarters.

[LawBeefaroni]

No, it's a business decision. If someone doesn't like it, they can vote with their dollars. Or not.

Netflix isn't willing something from existence, they are just opting not to carry certain episodes.


Does that have a chilling effect on blackface in future TV shows? Maybe. But it's still a business decision, in that case on the behalf of the content producers.

All industries are self-policing in these ways, and it's not *just* about business.

You can bet that some piece of shit out there has written a Boogaloo Manifesto, but no decent publisher will touch it even if they know it would sell in certain quarters.

Sales of such a book wouldn't be enough to cover the loss of goodwill, flight of other authors, and possible boycotts.

It's always about business. But business isn't always about *just* the bottom line.

[Blackhawk]

Do we erase these? Try to wipe the slate clean and put our past mistakes behind us? Or do we leave them on display, as a reminder that we were once bad, but we need to do better?

If you want to learn from your mistakes, you have to know what the mistakes were. If we want to do better than when we were 'bad', we have to be able to see what 'bad' looked like.

[RunningMn9]

Because it's a historical work.

I'll start with ND, and try to sprinkle in responses to other as well.

So yes, it's a "historical work". But that is an arbitrary distinction that we've just applied to it. We could stop applying it just as easily. I don't really care so much that we've labeled it a culturally significant book, I'm just saying that we've done so, but it was basically arbitrary. We could have not done so, and pretty much nothing changes. We could not do so now, and civilization (or our culture) won't come crashing down around our ears. It's still just novel.

They whole point of reading classical literature is to put us in the context of the time and culture the book was written and teach empathy towards the

If you whitewash it, you remove context.

My problem with this kind of argument is that it elevates the use of a word far above it's actual role in the novel. HF isn't what it is because it uses the N word. Beyond that - it's WHO is deciding that it's important that we keep subjecting people to the use of this word in popular culture. And it's not just a word. Words have power. And this one in particular has power. I'm not going to sit here and say that I need to read HF with the N word in it. Because I don't.

It also will get to the point where there aren't unedited versions of Huck FInn and definitely won't be taught in middle school or college. I mean, when's the last time you got a book somewhere other than Amazon?

I have no idea whether or not your slippery-slope will come to pass.

I'm not passionate about it, but I don't like it. I couldn't care less about sitcom episodes.

I understand it. I feel the same way that you feel about sitcom episodes, and also about novels.

I am more passionate about it as I don't want a Fahrenheit 451 world, no matter how well meaning the folks with the flamethrowers think they are.

I get that too, but we aren't face with only two choices here. I don't really want a F451 world either, and I'm not suggesting that we bust out flamethrowers and burn books.

But especially if we are talking about books that are being taught as part of a compulsory curriculum, we have traditionally lacked any empathy at all for the impact that may have on the students. For some reason, teaching empathy towards whatever ND meant to include there is somehow more important than having empathy for those currently being harmed by the usage of it.

I guess all I'm saying is that I'm open to rethinking it, especially in certain contexts. If you want to read a book, and need the N word to be in it, I'm ok with that because you are actively seeking it out, and you're an adult. That's not really my concern.

I'm fine with moving statues and monuments honoring civil war heroes and other racist figures from history to museums where they can add context to their existence, and I'm fine with removing the confederate flag from...well...anywhere, as that should have been done ages ago, imho.

Yeah, I'd also be fine smelting statues of traitors down. I don't really feel like I need to have the context added that even in 2020 some people still wanted to celebrate traitors. I'm not really advocating for that, but I don't care if others do. My life loses nothing of a statue of some Confederate traitor is suddenly unavailable. I'm not going to forget that the Confederacy was a fought for morally horrific reasons, or that there are still garbage humans today that believe the same things. It's not the statue that I've never seen that has conveyed this information to me.

But don't erase our history entirely, for crying out loud.

Right. I think that people are saying to stop making kids read books with the N word in it, when they can read the same book without the N word, and survive (especially given that they don't want to be reading the book anyway). We are talking about editing a word, not erasing our history entirely.

Now, if people want to ALSO have a white washed version of some stuff available, that's okay I guess. Just don't make that the ONLY version available.

Literally no one has asked for that.

As to who can use what word, I may agree in principle, but it isn't my battle to fight, and it isn't my decision to make. The victim has to have that power, and we're not the victim (well, most of us aren't.)

Yes, this.

One huge reason for this is that it's difficult to justify it when so many students will feel the sting not only of the word itself but of the depiction of Jim as a racial stereotype in so many dimensions. HF is brilliant, but it comes from a place of white humor about the supposed inferiority of blacks, and even the aura of Magical Negro around Jim is embarrassing rather than redeeming.

That's what I'm trying to get at. Being considered a "historical novel" has to be weighed against the pain it causes today. You can't just tell the victims to piss off and suck it up.

[RunningMn9]

If you want to learn from your mistakes, you have to know what the mistakes were. If we want to do better than when we were 'bad', we have to be able to see what 'bad' looked like.

In all honesty, do I need to see the N word used in a book to know that it's wrong and that I shouldn't do it?

[hepcat]

Now, if people want to ALSO have a white washed version of some stuff available, that's okay I guess. Just don't make that the ONLY version available.

Literally no one has asked for that.

Yet. But it's a slippery slope I would rather not find myself sliding down.

I'm fine with moving statues and monuments honoring civil war heroes and other racist figures from history to museums where they can add context to their existence, and I'm fine with removing the confederate flag from...well...anywhere, as that should have been done ages ago, imho.

Yeah, I'd also be fine smelting statues of traitors down. I don't really feel like I need to have the context added that even in 2020 some people still wanted to celebrate traitors. I'm not really advocating for that, but I don't care if others do. My life loses nothing of a statue of some Confederate traitor is suddenly unavailable. I'm not going to forget that the Confederacy was a fought for morally horrific reasons, or that there are still garbage humans today that believe the same things. It's not the statue that I've never seen that has conveyed this information to me.

If RM9 comprised the whole of humanity, I'd agree with you.

If you want to learn from your mistakes, you have to know what the mistakes were. If we want to do better than when we were 'bad', we have to be able to see what 'bad' looked like.

In all honesty, do I need to see the N word used in a book to know that it's wrong and that I shouldn't do it?

Answer: sometimes. Schindler's List would lose much of its impact if they cut out the scenes of people sent to the ovens and just relied on a belief that the audience knew what was happening, or they removed the images in which Jews are dehumanized and treated as less than human. Removing the N word isn't quite as dramatic, but it does serve a purpose in that it reinforces how accepted it was to dehumanize an entire race at that point in our history. Sometimes we need to be reminded...viscerally...how bad things were for African Americans at that point in our history.

[Max Peck]

And then they came for The Duke.

Democrats want John Wayne’s name, statue taken off airport

In a 1971 Playboy magazine interview, Wayne makes bigoted statements against Black people, Native Americans and the LGBTQ community.

“I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people,” he said.

Wayne also said that although he didn’t condone slavery: “I don’t feel guilty about the fact that five or 10 generations ago these people were slaves.”

The actor said he felt no remorse in the subjugation of Native Americans.

“I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. … (O)ur so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival,” he said. “There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”

Wayne also called movies such as “Easy Rider” and “Midnight Cowboy” perverted, and used a gay slur to refer to the two main characters of the latter film.

[hepcat]

Folks need to be VERY careful about this whole endeavor. It's surprisingly easy to find horrible truths about even the most loved of historical figures.

[RunningMn9]

Sometimes we need to be reminded...viscerally...how bad things were for African Americans at that point in our history.

Even if it contributes to how bad things still are for African Americans at this point in our history?

[Remus West]

Sometimes we need to be reminded...viscerally...how bad things were for African Americans at that point in our history.

Even if it contributes to how bad things still are for African Americans at this point in our history?

If it is part of the process of making it better than yes.

[El Guapo]

Folks need to be VERY careful about this whole endeavor. It's surprisingly easy to find horrible truths about even the most loved of historical figures.

FWIW I think it's important to judge figures in part in the context of their times. Like, we shouldn't knock John Adams for not supporting gay marriage.

But I'm not very sympathetic to The Duke, because his views were definitely racist even by the standards of the times. I don't necessarily think that we need to 'cancel' him or whatnot, but I'd be fine with renaming an airport for someone who wasn't a douche.

[LordMortis]

I don't necessarily think that we need to 'cancel' him or whatnot, but I'd be fine with renaming an airport for someone who wasn't a douche.

I can support this.

[hepcat]

Alright then, from now on, we'll be flying into the Bea Arthur Airport for all our Orange County air travel.

[Isgrimnur]

Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald - Our Difficult Past: Blackface on Scrubs

[hitbyambulance]

Folks need to be VERY careful about this whole endeavor. It's surprisingly easy to find horrible truths about even the most loved of historical figures.

i felt John Wayne was a total garbage human back in grade school, fwiw. so i'm not surprised here

[noxiousdog]

Because it's a historical work.

I'll start with ND, and try to sprinkle in responses to other as well.

So yes, it's a "historical work". But that is an arbitrary distinction that we've just applied to it. We could stop applying it just as easily. I don't really care so much that we've labeled it a culturally significant book, I'm just saying that we've done so, but it was basically arbitrary. We could have not done so, and pretty much nothing changes. We could not do so now, and civilization (or our culture) won't come crashing down around our ears. It's still just novel.

Well, it's arbitrary in the fact that the literature community has designated it so. I mean, sure, there's going to be disagreements, but it's widely regarded as an important piece of United States literature.

They whole point of reading classical literature is to put us in the context of the time and culture the book was written and teach empathy towards the

If you whitewash it, you remove context.

My problem with this kind of argument is that it elevates the use of a word far above it's actual role in the novel. HF isn't what it is because it uses the N word. Beyond that - it's WHO is deciding that it's important that we keep subjecting people to the use of this word in popular culture. And it's not just a word. Words have power. And this one in particular has power. I'm not going to sit here and say that I need to read HF with the N word in it. Because I don't.

There is scads of anti-jewish slurs and writing. Should those be removed? What about anti-latino or anti-Asian?

Are you arguing that n* is SO egregious that it deserves special attention?

It also will get to the point where there aren't unedited versions of Huck FInn and definitely won't be taught in middle school or college. I mean, when's the last time you got a book somewhere other than Amazon?

I have no idea whether or not your slippery-slope will come to pass.

I'd be less worried if it wasn't schools that teach 95% of literature which are the places most likely to white wash.

[Z-Corn]

Folks need to be VERY careful about this whole endeavor. It's surprisingly easy to find horrible truths about even the most loved of historical figures.

i felt John Wayne was a total garbage human back in grade school, fwiw. so i'm not surprised here

[hepcat]

Wayne was a big supporter of the House Un-American Activities Committee so I was never a fan of the man, but my love of westerns means I do watch his movies from time to time (I mean...True Grit and The Searchers are friggin' American classics!).

[El Guapo]

Alright then, from now on, we'll be flying into the Bea Arthur Airport for all our Orange County air travel.

This was your plan all along!

[El Guapo]

Wayne was a big supporter of the House Un-American Activities Committee so I was never a fan of the man, but my love of westerns means I do watch his movies from time to time (I mean...True Grit and The Searchers are friggin' American classics!).

Yeah I wouldn't have any issues with watching his movies. It just seems reasonable to not name things after him, and to avoid non-film related honorifics.

[LordMortis]

Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald - Our Difficult Past: Blackface on Scrubs

This was a great listen for me.

[hepcat]

Alright then, from now on, we'll be flying into the Bea Arthur Airport for all our Orange County air travel.

This was your plan all along!

I'm like the Moriarty of Maude, the Arthur Conan Doyle of Dorothy, the Claus Von Bulow of Bea...

Wayne was a big supporter of the House Un-American Activities Committee so I was never a fan of the man, but my love of westerns means I do watch his movies from time to time (I mean...True Grit and The Searchers are friggin' American classics!).

Yeah I wouldn't have any issues with watching his movies. It just seems reasonable to not name things after him, and to avoid non-film related honorifics.

The problem being that westerns of that era tended to portray the Indians in pretty awful ways. The Searchers is a prime example of that. John Ford is arguably one of our greatest American film directors, but he has made some pretty racist films in the context of modern sensibilities. It's just such a deep well when you go down the cancel culture path. However, I'm also of a mind that because of that, it will eventually eat itself in the process.

[El Guapo]

Alright then, from now on, we'll be flying into the Bea Arthur Airport for all our Orange County air travel.

This was your plan all along!

I'm like the Moriarty of Maude, the Arthur Conan Doyle of Dorothy, the Claus Von Bulow of Bea...

Wayne was a big supporter of the House Un-American Activities Committee so I was never a fan of the man, but my love of westerns means I do watch his movies from time to time (I mean...True Grit and The Searchers are friggin' American classics!).

Yeah I wouldn't have any issues with watching his movies. It just seems reasonable to not name things after him, and to avoid non-film related honorifics.

The problem being that westerns of that era tended to portray the Indians in pretty awful ways. The Searchers is a prime example of that. John Ford is arguably one of our greatest American film directors, but he has made some pretty racist films in the context of modern sensibilities. It's just such a deep well when you go down the cancel culture path. However, I'm also of a mind that because of that, it will eventually eat itself in the process.

I know. And I'm sure that there's a vocal contingent that would want those movies to be essentially 'canceled' / removed from streaming services / etc. I wouldn't support stuff like that - the movies are an important part of film / cultural history, and they shouldn't be wiped out from history.

Naming unrelated buildings (as an honorific) is a different thing, though. John Wayne isn't such a uniquely horrible person that it would bother me that much if they decided to keep the name on the airport. But I think it's a perfectly reasonable decision to change it.

[hepcat]

Oh, I know. I'm just playing devil's advocate on this whole thing. I don't want African American children to have to encounter a confederate flag on their way to school, nor do I want them to go to the park and see a statue of a man who fought to keep their ancestors in chains and think "why are they honoring him? was he right?".

But at the same time, I don't want us to go too far and start destroying historical and artistic pieces because the men and/or women behind them were crappy human beings in our modern view. And in some cases, those same people ended up realizing they made mistakes and tried to atone for them. Should they also be judged purely on the merits of their mistakes and not on their attempts to redeem themselves?

I honestly don't know the right answer for what "too far" means. But I fear one day I'll wake up and realize that I should have.

[stessier]

Shifting gears slightly, I was doing a bunch of gardening this weekend and catching up on podcasts. From The Ringer, I was listening to Flying Coach with Steve Kerr and Pete Carroll. The whole series is fantastic and they have some great guests from Bill Murray to Scott Boras to Michael Lewis. The one I linked to, though, is Doc Rivers. It was a really interesting conversation about race and one of the quotes was Doc being blown away later in life hearing a white person say that the white person always felt the cops were there to protect them. Doc, who grew up the son of a cop, said neither he nor any black person he's known has ever felt that way. It is really worth a listen.

[LordMortis]

But at the same time, I don't want us to go too far and start destroying historical and artistic pieces because the men and/or women behind them were crappy human beings in our modern view. And in some cases, those same people ended up realizing they made mistakes and tried to atone for them. Should they also be judged purely on the merits of their mistakes and not on their attempts to redeem themselves?

I honestly don't know the right answer for what "too far" means. But I fear one day I'll wake up and realize that I should have.

The link Izzy posted asks these questions by the creators of content to themselves. It's really a good listen. Including, realizing you make a mistake and when is enough enough.

[Skinypupy]

Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald - Our Difficult Past: Blackface on Scrubs

Thanks for this. An excellent discussion, although it's weird to hear Turk and JD dropping f-bombs all over the place.

[RunningMn9]

If it is part of the process of making it better than yes.

Has it been part of the process of making it better? It’s much easier to hold the position that it’s worth it when you aren’t the one being harmed by it.

And yes, I know that there are plenty that are harmed by it that also support keeping it as is, and their opinion is more valid than mine.

Maybe I would amend my position to simply say that I don’t think it’s for me to decide. I’m not the one harmed by it, and I receive no value whatsoever in keeping it unedited.

I’m cool with whatever.

[Holman]

I'd be less worried if it wasn't schools that teach 95% of literature which are the places most likely to white wash.

The single biggest constraint in curriculum design is time. A middle-school or high-school literature course has room for about eight novel-length books in a school year if it wants to do them justice. Curricula are revised all the time.

Is it really a "white wash" when they decide not to include something because it has become more problematic than it's worth?

Once upon a time (say, into the 1960s/70s), the teaching of literature in America was still imagined as providing a "common storehouse" of stories "every American should know." Huck Finn was on that list not because contains anything unavailable elsewhere but because it was a handy, entertaining, and easy-to-absorb slice of Americana purporting to represent American experience in a certain time and place. It also provided useful elements of coming-of-age narrative, irony, satire, etc.

But the book has become problematic for obvious reasons, and its literary lessons can be taught by other means. Plus the "common storehouse" model is out of favor because there is just too much possible experience out there to allow us to pretend that any curriculum could be comprehensive. It's difficult to argue that HF has anything that *insists* it must be one of the 25 or so novels a kid reads in school before college.

But this is very clearly not a ban or a suppression, not unless every book that doesn't get taught in school is considered banned.

[Isgrimnur]

I'm glad I found something to share that added to the conversation.

[noxiousdog]

I'd be less worried if it wasn't schools that teach 95% of literature which are the places most likely to white wash.

The single biggest constraint in curriculum design is time. A middle-school or high-school literature course has room for about eight novel-length books in a school year if it wants to do them justice. Curricula are revised all the time.

Is it really a "white wash" when they decide not to include something because it has become more problematic than it's worth?

Once upon a time (say, into the 1960s/70s), the teaching of literature in America was still imagined as providing a "common storehouse" of stories "every American should know." Huck Finn was on that list not because contains anything unavailable elsewhere but because it was a handy, entertaining, and easy-to-absorb slice of Americana purporting to represent American experience in a certain time and place. It also provided useful elements of coming-of-age narrative, irony, satire, etc.

But the book has become problematic for obvious reasons, and its literary lessons can be taught by other means. Plus the "common storehouse" model is out of favor because there is just too much possible experience out there to allow us to pretend that any curriculum could be comprehensive. It's difficult to argue that HF has anything that *insists* it must be one of the 25 or so novels a kid reads in school before college.

But this is very clearly not a ban or a suppression, not unless every book that doesn't get taught in school is considered banned.

Not at all. I'm fine with choosing a different book, and heartily endorse that course of action. I'd be surprised if it were still offered in middle school, but, to my layman's opinion Mark Twain would have to be part of an American Literature class.

[hitbyambulance]

Not at all. I'm fine with choosing a different book, and heartily endorse that course of action. I'd be surprised if it were still offered in middle school, but, to my layman's opinion Mark Twain would have to be part of an American Literature class.

at the risk of tangentializing too much, it wasn't assigned reading at any time in my school career (tho i did read Tom Sawyer on my own in 2nd grade) and only just got around to it in 2017.

[El Guapo]

Not at all. I'm fine with choosing a different book, and heartily endorse that course of action. I'd be surprised if it were still offered in middle school, but, to my layman's opinion Mark Twain would have to be part of an American Literature class.

at the risk of tangentializing too much, it wasn't assigned reading at any time in my school career (tho i did read Tom Sawyer on my own in 2nd grade) and only just got around to it in 2017.

FWIW it was assigned reading in my junior year of high school. It included a pre-book class discussion about the fact that we were reading the book, and why.

[Blackhawk]

If you want to learn from your mistakes, you have to know what the mistakes were. If we want to do better than when we were 'bad', we have to be able to see what 'bad' looked like.

In all honesty, do I need to see the N word used in a book to know that it's wrong and that I shouldn't do it?

Answer: sometimes. Schindler's List would lose much of its impact if they cut out the scenes of people sent to the ovens and just relied on a belief that the audience knew what was happening, or they removed the images in which Jews are dehumanized and treated as less than human. Removing the N word isn't quite as dramatic, but it does serve a purpose in that it reinforces how accepted it was to dehumanize an entire race at that point in our history. Sometimes we need to be reminded...viscerally...how bad things were for African Americans at that point in our history.

Thanks. I was trying to figure out how to phrase an answer, but you did a better job than I would have. Besides, I still have nightmares about arguing with RM9!

Folks need to be VERY careful about this whole endeavor. It's surprisingly easy to find horrible truths about even the most loved of historical figures.

I agree with that. Otherwise we're going to approach a point where we can't have any respected figures prior to the 20th century. Most of them in the second half. The odds are that if you were powerful enough to have an impact on early America, you either had slaves, supported having slaves, or just hand-waved slave ownership. There were a few who spoke out about slavery, but many of them had been slave owners themselves at one point (Franklin, for example.) And even those who were genuinely against slavery were most likely incredibly racist by current standards.

[LordMortis]

Digression ahead...

Spoiler:

In 1986, in a predominantly white suburb, it was on reading lists as an option for American Lit I in High school. It was also on the local parent censorship shitlist, not for being racist but rather for being vulgar and teaching values out of their control (along side Catcher in the Rye, The Breakfast Club, and long list of other books I don't remember so clearly). It'd be nearly another decade before it make the shitlist locally for being racist.

While looking for historical record, parents in the district still are at it

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/boo ... on-schools

January 20, 2012

Last month, teachers in Plymouth-Canton Community Schools were instructed by the district’s interim superintendent to remove Graham Swift’s Waterland from the AP English curriculum. He also submitted Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer-winning Beloved to be reviewed by an independent book review committee. The fate of Waterland will be decided when it is referred for review in the coming weeks. The decisions were made in response to complaints from two parents even though, in at least one case, the offended student was given an alternative book to read.

Beloved was my introduction to Morrison in College and pulled me into a world wholly outside of what I thought I knew and Waterland was my college "ah ha" novel for how our -isms changed after the World Wars. Both novels are dear to me.




I did find this about our particular banning attempts

https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-54 ... -ban-books

3 - It might cause Buddhism to erupt.

E.T. Suzuki's Zen Buddhism: Selected writings was challenged at the Plymouth-Canton, Michigan, school system in 1987 because "this book details the teachings of the religion of Buddhism in such a way that the reader could very likely embrace its teachings and choose this as his religion."

Right banning, but I can't find Huck Finn mentioned.

http://198.111.164.111/observer/1987/03 ... 2-1987.pdf

[Holman]

Folks need to be VERY careful about this whole endeavor. It's surprisingly easy to find horrible truths about even the most loved of historical figures.

I agree with that. Otherwise we're going to approach a point where we can't have any respected figures prior to the 20th century. Most of them in the second half. The odds are that if you were powerful enough to have an impact on early America, you either had slaves, supported having slaves, or just hand-waved slave ownership. There were a few who spoke out about slavery, but many of them had been slave owners themselves at one point (Franklin, for example.) And even those who were genuinely against slavery were most likely incredibly racist by current standards.

"Careful" how? Isn't it better to know than not know?

The current wave of "cancellations" and statue removals is about understanding the past, not forgetting it. No one is erased from history because their monument no longer stands on a street corner. That Woodrow Wilson's name is off the Princeton School of Whatever doesn't mean Wilson is erased and forgotten; it means that his hugely problematic racism is now a bigger part of how we understand who he was.

If we "protect" our respect for past figures by refusing to acknowledge their crimes and errors, we're just making myths. It's entirely possible to appreciate the contributions of problematic figures without lying to ourselves about them. The history of art and literature is pretty much nothing but this; it's only in the world of politics that we seem to want the simple myth to hide the more complex truth.

Perhaps the reason we prefer political myths is that we still benefit from them, so a reckoning threatens our sense of ourselves, not just our sense of the past. That's the real challenge posed by BLM and related efforts, and the reason they provoke such resistance.

[RunningMn9]

Maybe it’s time we stop worshipping people from ye olden times? We can still learn about them - but actually learn about them instead of being fed the worship propaganda that we are fed today.

[LawBeefaroni]

Wayne can certainly be on the table but it seems like one you'd want to save for later. Doesn't seem like a good use of resources at this moment.


But it's not like this is out of the blue.

Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant shit to me you see
Straight up racist that sucker was
Simple and plain
Motherfuck him and John Wayne