Statues, Monuments, and When to Take Down or Leave Up Ones Dedicated To Flawed Historical Figures

[Ran]

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

When the establishment

That is, eminent scholars over the last decades, including as recently as 2018.

Quote

ranks TJ, the out and out racist,

John Adams, too, was a racist. And JQA as well, despite father and son being the only non-slaveholding Presidents for the first 50-odd years of the United States.

Quote

white supremacist

Sadly, a position held by most Americans at that time.

Quote

vampire

Okay, now I've learned something new! 

Quote

who wrote the founding documents of eugenics

Sir Francis Galton, the actual father of eugenics, was 4 years old when Jefferson died. This is absurd. Eugenics cannot exist before Darwin, much less Galton.

If you want to say he was an early scientific racist, sure, but he inherited his notions from Carl von Linnè and other Enlightenment figures.

Quote

who destroyed the navy that John Adams so carefully built up

John Adams signed the bill that sold off half the frigates! This is an absurd calumny that has been popular, but is wrong-headed.  

In the early days, of course, it was Jefferson who was the advocate for the existence of a navy, but a navy focused on protecting American shores and American merchantmen, and in fact his advocacy for a navy of this kind during Washington's presidency was disliked by Hamilton, who wanted to build something comparable to European naval forces -- that is, ocean-going ships that could be used in offensive operations to get America's way. Jefferson expressly did not want the United States to be some kind of global power, vying with the Europeans for influence beyond its shores, falling into the same corrupt traps, and he saw (rightly, as it happened) that when you have a thing like a strong navy, the impulse to use it to get what you want becomes stronger.

It's very strange to be explaining this to someone who normally has no sympathy for American imperialism. You cannot have imperialism without a war machine. 

Quote

, leaving the US totally vulnerable to British navy attacks

'Totally vulnerable' is rather overstating the case. The British Navy was largely tied up in the blockade of Europe and the American Navy was pretty much an equal to the British American Squadron, with more modern and heavily-gunned frigates than the British had on hand. Yes, the war led to a need to more ships, but again, it was Adams who signed the law requiring so many to be sold, and in any case it was Congress that held the purse strings.

Quote

unconstitutionally accepted the drop in lap territory of Louisiana

This was a matter of debate, and one that Jefferson was actively a part of. As President, he had the right to negotiate treaties, and ultimately nothing would have come of it in the Senate had not ratified and the House had not approved the funding. Mostly it was angry Federalists up in New England who hated it purely for economic reasons, and because it was their great rival doing it. 

Quote

, stabbed his boss, Washington in the back, scheming with the French to push the US into war with Britain

Don't you mean Adams here? I don't recall Jefferson doing any such thing when Secretary of State. He favored France and support of its revolution, yes, but he ultimately wanted the U.S. to be neutral, just without being explicit about it to use it as a leverage. 

Now, as Adam's VP, yes, he encouraged the French to invade Britain and so on. But he and Adams had, shall we say, a dysfunctional relationship.

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

By the way, guess who said this first:

"The racism of the nation came to its shores long before Thomas Jefferson was ever born, and it's absurd to suggest otherwise, yet the above does so."

 

I doubt anyone said any such thing before me, to be quite honest, since it's doubtful anyone else has ever attempted to convince people that Thomas Jefferson was the root cause of racism in the United States.

 

[BigFatCoward]

18 minutes ago, Week said:

 

There is nothing hypocritical here. The diversity of thought and culture within the social construct of "race" - whether it be white, Black, Indigenous, etc. - is incomparable to the job of cop. Fucking please. The persecution complex here is what leads to cops crying about their McMuffins.

Things dont have to be exactly the same, for someone to be hypocritical about them. 

'A person who claims to have certain moral principles or beliefs but  behaves in a way that shows they are not sincere'

Its hypocritical to say one group can't be easily grouped together by a set of beliefs or values, but that another can. 

[Week]

6 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Things dont have to be exactly the same, for someone to be hypocritical about them. 

Its hypocritical to say one group can't be easily grouped together by a set of beliefs or values, but that another can. 

They are completely different. Apples and oranges. Hypocrisy is not relevant here. A group of people that choose a profession - particularly law enforcement - are going to have more affinities to similar culture, values, etc. I'm flabbergasted that you'd think this. Of course some break the stereotypical mold but, jesus, some perspective here, please.

[Conflicting Thought]

11 minutes ago, Week said:

I'm flabbergasted that you'd think this

He IS a cop though. 

[BigFatCoward]

11 minutes ago, Week said:

They are completely different. Apples and oranges. Hypocrisy is not relevant here. A group of people that choose a profession - particularly law enforcement - are going to have more affinities to similar culture, values, etc. I'm flabbergasted that you'd think this. Of course some break the stereotypical mold but, jesus, some perspective here, please.

Ok, you arent even disagreeing with what I'm saying so I'm just going to go and eat some doughnuts. 

[Ran]

Enough meta, folks. You have issues with a poster, PM or ignore them.

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

To minimize or deny that these Founding Fathers were the conscious founding fathers of racism, white supremacy and the domestic slave breeding trade that led ultimately to the War of the Rebellion is to choose inequality consciously.

This is complete and utter nonsense. The Founding Fathers had nothing to do with the origination of any of those things -- they were part of society long, long before the American Revolution. Try to understand what the world of the late 18th century was like: inequality was not only everywhere, but it was considered the right and proper. Not only were people of different skin color treated differently, but people of what would now be considered the same race, but different ethnicities were also strictly different and even within a single ethnicity, most people were rigidly divided by class and governed by a hereditary aristocracy. This is why this sentence

Quote

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

is a moral firebomb that is still famous centuries later. Yes, it excludes women and yes, neither Jefferson nor anyone who edited or signed that Declaration came anywhere close to living up to this idea, but it was still a challenge to the existing order. The Founding Fathers of the US managed a fairly large step forward in terms of fighting inequality and, unlike most revolutions (e.g. the French one at nearly the same time), they also managed to keep what they gained.

Again, this does not mean that they went all the way -- we're still walking on that road centuries later -- but they went in the right direction and faster than people had gone before.

[sologdin]

yeah, the US revolution is a leftwing moment in context.  because of evolving standards of decency, to hold the same beliefs now as they held then would be manifestly nasty. this is why the cult of the founding fathers is manifestly nasty.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

28 minutes ago, Ran said:

Enough meta, folks. You have issues with a poster, PM or ignore them.

I can still mock the Germans and French though, right?

I get some of the English are a bit oversensitive though. 

And I mean the Welsh..... It's like they think they're real people or something. Ridiculousness!  

[Fragile Bird]

Actually, from what I’ve been reading, racism was an invention of Europeans to justify slavery. Someone posted elsewhere a meme about how shocked some people would be to find out that no one in the Holy Land was white, and I answered back that likely Romans and Greeks were. I expected a response about white people crucifying a PoC, but instead people posted that no people living around the Mediterranean were white, which took me by surprise. In fact I even saw stories that were racist the other way, that nobody was white until ‘ruthless bandit hordes of Teutonic and Slavic tribes invaded Italy’. As far as I can tell that’s quite untrue, but that’s a whole other thread, I think, if someone wants to discuss that.
 

But what I did read on line was that Greeks and Romans were truly color blind, that the color of your skin was just another part of your body, like blue or brown eyes. One article I read by an ancient history scholar suggested that if you asked a Greek back then if they were white, they’d have no idea wtf you were talking about. What was important to Greeks and Romans was citizenship, and anyone could earn their citizenship and therefore their place in society. (Or would that just be men?)
 

But once Europeans started getting involved in the slave trade, they had to justify the buying and selling of humans by suggesting they were inferior because of the color of their skin.

As I said, this is not a subject I have ever studied, feel free to expand on the topic.

[Hereward]

There's probably some truth in this. But we should also not forget that slaving existed, and still exists, in west Africa long before Europeans got involved. as a market for the results of the fighting. Arab slave trading was, apparently, at least as great in terms of numbers as European, started earlier and continued far later, in fact to the present day. Mauritania only "officially" banned slavery in the 70s and no-one has ever taken any notice.

I am, for my sins, these days an "expert" in west African VEO issues, and I can tell you that slaving persists, massacres and the selling of survivors into slavery is still a thing, and, on the other side, massacres by sub-Saharan Africans of "white" Africans such as Arabs and Tuaregs, continues, with a particular fondness for burning them alive while posting that they are, as a result, black like proper Africans. 

In summary, that is not to excuse Europeans' guilt, but if we are, rightly, being asked to pay attention to the actual events of history, we should pay attention to all of them. 

[Hereward]

2 minutes ago, Hereward said:

There's probably some truth in this. But we should also not forget that slaving existed, and still exists, in west Africa long before Europeans got involved. as a market for the results of the fighting. Arab slave trading was, apparently, at least as great in terms of numbers as European, started earlier and continued far later, in fact to the present day. Mauritania only "officially" banned slavery in the 70s and no-one has ever taken any notice.

I am, for my sins, am these days an "expert" in west African VEO issues, and I can tell you that slaving persists, massacres and the selling of survivors into slavery is still a thing, and, on the other side, massacres by sub-Saharan Africans of "white" Africans such as Arabs and Tuaregs, continues, with a particular fondness for burning them alive while posting that they are, as a result, black like proper Africans. 

In summary, that is not to excuse Europeans' guilt, but if we are, rightly, being asked to pay attention to the actual events of history, we should pay attention to all of them. 

 

[Hereward]

Not sure why I'm quoting myself there, apologies.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 minutes ago, Hereward said:

Not sure why I'm quoting myself there, apologies.

The historical racism overtook you.

So said by one of the chosen people. 

[Hereward]

Just now, Tywin et al. said:

The historical racism overtook you.

So said by one of the chosen people. 

I'm am Englishman, the updated chosen people.* Therefore my words have double the importance.

*See, well, anything published in the 19th century.

[DanteGabriel]

My admittedly shallow understanding about the history of slaving is that American chattel slavery, where the slave was never able to earn their way out of slave status, and that their children would also become a master's property, is a good deal further than other slaving systems went. The need to permanently oppress a race of people so that they remained in bondage and torture for generation after generation was part of the impetus for the pseudoscience about racial inferiority.

Feel free to correct or inform me. I do not know much about current slavery practices or if chattel slavery was practiced by Africans at the same time as Europeans.

[Hereward]

Hi Dante, well, I'm not an expert on the history of Arab/Tuareg slavery, but I can tell you that, for instance, the Bellah in West Africa are the descendants of slaves captured from the Songhay and other sub-Saharan tribes and, to this day, remain, while legally free, in practice in multigenerational slavery to their Tuareg owners. They cannot leave, cannot advance in role or profession, and their children inherit the same status.

[DanteGabriel]

12 minutes ago, Hereward said:

Hi Dante, well, I'm not an expert on the history of Arab/Tuareg slavery, but I can tell you that, for instance, the Bellah in West Africa are the descendants of slaves captured from the Songhay and other sub-Saharan tribes and, to this day, remain, while legally free, in practice in multigenerational slavery to their Tuareg owners. They cannot leave, cannot advance in role or profession, and their children inherit the same status.

Thank you for that information. Do you know when this system arose? Did it predate the rise of American chattel slavery? Come about concurrently? Did one learn it from the other? I don't expect you specifically to answer these questions but those are what came to mind.

The degree to which American slavery is historically unique is on my mind mostly for the comparison with indentured servitude. A little while ago I saw the proliferation of "Irish were slaves in America too" memes on social media, which of course ignore the fact that those Irish "slaves" were under a much different system from African slaves.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Actually, from what I’ve been reading, racism was an invention of Europeans to justify slavery. Someone posted elsewhere a meme about how shocked some people would be to find out that no one in the Holy Land was white, and I answered back that likely Romans and Greeks were. I expected a response about white people crucifying a PoC, but instead people posted that no people living around the Mediterranean were white, which took me by surprise. In fact I even saw stories that were racist the other way, that nobody was white until ‘ruthless bandit hordes of Teutonic and Slavic tribes invaded Italy’. As far as I can tell that’s quite untrue, but that’s a whole other thread, I think, if someone wants to discuss that.
 

But what I did read on line was that Greeks and Romans were truly color blind, that the color of your skin was just another part of your body, like blue or brown eyes. One article I read by an ancient history scholar suggested that if you asked a Greek back then if they were white, they’d have no idea wtf you were talking about. What was important to Greeks and Romans was citizenship, and anyone could earn their citizenship and therefore their place in society. (Or would that just be men?)
 

But once Europeans started getting involved in the slave trade, they had to justify the buying and selling of humans by suggesting they were inferior because of the color of their skin.

As I said, this is not a subject I have ever studied, feel free to expand on the topic.

That explanation sounds a bit incomplete. Europeans (and most other people around the world) were involved in the slave trade for thousands of years before racism supposedly existed. Why did racism become necessary to justify slavery for 16th century Europeans, but no one else?

That other argument about Greeks and Romans being color blind also sounds like it is trying a bit too hard make a modern political point. Of course they didn't classify people as white or black or other racial groups used in modern day America and elsewhere. But implying that they viewed all humans as inherently equal aside from citizenship? I think plenty of claims by Greek and Roman writers on other ethnic groups around Europe and the Mediterranean would result in quick Twitter bans, and possible prosecution for hate speech, if they were aired today. 

It might not have been identical to modern racism, but they definitely stereotyped people according to their ethnicities. Like Anatolians being natural born slaves because they were stupid and submissive, Greeks being morally degenerate and feminine (according to some Romans) etc.

The thing about anyone being able to earn their citizenship comes with some caveats too. For Rome that only became realistic in the later era of the empire. Initially most citizens were from the original Roman homeland of Latium, and even in the beginning of the 1st century AD, (so the golden age of the Pax Romana) only a few percent of the populations in most provinces outside Italy were citizens. Many of these being Roman colonists rather than natives. 

 

 

[Hereward]

7 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Thank you for that information. Do you know when this system arose? Did it predate the rise of American chattel slavery? Come about concurrently? Did one learn it from the other? I don't expect you specifically to answer these questions but those are what came to mind.

The degree to which American slavery is historically unique is on my mind mostly for the comparison with indentured servitude. A little while ago I saw the proliferation of "Irish were slaves in America too" memes on social media, which of course ignore the fact that those Irish "slaves" were under a much different system from African slaves.

The historical record is, obviously, incomplete in that part of the world, despite the library in Timbuktu (and what wouldn't I give to visit it). But I believe the system is largely unchanged since the 12th century, though I wouldn't want to put money on it. I have done research pieces on the issue, but not going back that far. As I said, I'm not a scholar of the history of the issue.