Discussion for article #243065
And obviously, the name Jefferson must be scrubbed from US history, because slavery.
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And Lincoln. He held racist beliefs.
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And Washington as well. He owned slaves and didn’t he–gasp!–father a child with a slave? You know, I completely understand the issue of the confederate flag, and even the confederate generals, but this is going too far.
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…and Washington and perhaps as many as a majority of all presidents who supported the idea of white supremacy even if they never owned slaves.
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While I understand the motivation to not celebrate people who held objectionable views, neither white-washing history, nor throwing away all the good done by the man who created the League of Nations (and, if he’d had his way, it would’ve been far closer to the modern UN w/peacekeeping authority, rather than the toothless debate club that was enacted), serve the interests of a society that seeks not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
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Don’t understand this at all… so the administration is advocating the rewrite of history… with that being done is it anyone surprised with the jingoism of the current crop of GOP/TP Presidential Candidates and the irrationality of many in the right and even a substantial portion of the Left…
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Meanwhile, Clemson University won’t change the name of Tillman Hall.
Well, the Princeton football team was threatening to strike, and you know what a blow that would be to the Ivy League TV revenues.
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They could save on administrative and remodeling costs by renaming it after Pat Tillman.
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I’m pretty sure removing a name is not even remotely like “scrubbing history”. I’m guessing the students can get a good education regardless of what the building is called.
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It is much better to learn from history than to erase it.
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Yes. Anybody who doesn’t meet the current day’s standards of morality must be expunged.
In a couple hundred years, when eating meat is seen as an horrific act, I assume anyone who wasn’t a vegan will have their named scrubbed, too.
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Na it wasn’t slavery it was the 3/5ths person he liked. He liked them so well he fathered a number of them himself.
At least I am not susceptible to “Red Meat”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Mercer County, NJ: Children Living Below Poverty Level: 15%. Increase in percentage of people living in poverty from 2009 to 2013: from 9% to 11.2% Percentage of People who are African-American: 21.2%.
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Salmon, it’s the other pink meat!
I don’t really like this. Wilson was a shitty racist who SINGLE-HANDEDLY set civil rights progress back 50 years and he is also one of the most influential U.S. presidents in history on other grounds. This doesn’t go away if you just pretend it never happened. Historical whitewashing makes me uncomfortable.
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Issues like this don’t usually arise in a vacuum. Princeton has (or, at a more precise minimum, has had) a serious problem with student and alumni racism, and I’m not sure the school has been effective or even necessarily all that dedicated to dealing with it. While I disagree with the initiative to remove WW’s name from the school, I appreciate the animating concerns underlying the effort.
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How do we cover the 8-year gap in the US presidency? Do we extend Taft’s term by 4 years and let Harding start 4 years early, or would some other split be better?
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