My Dad was a member of SDS who marched at Selma and I was raised to strongly support affirmative action for African-Americans and their descendants who were enslaved and/or suffered under Jim Crow. If affirmative action consisted of a light thumb on the scale for those people and those people alone, I'd still support it. But it was nonsensically extended to groups who had no claim to that distinctive historical experience, and fostered a racial grievance-industrial complex systematically discriminating against and demonizing almost all people of predominantly European ancestry. Never mind my progressive bona fides: as an elder millennial heterosexual white male, my career prospects were severely curtailed and I could only become a quasi-academic affiliated with well-known institutions through the back door, as there was literally zero chance an institution like Duke or Columbia would consider hiring me on a traditional academic track. The DEI cartel proved that any form of legalized racial discrimination will be weaponized to ruin the lives of people from disfavored groups, so I disagree that the SFFA decision has been over-interpreted. All ethnic preferences must be dismantled and those who discriminate against people for the sin of their immutable characteristics should be incarcerated and sued into oblivion.
My claim about SFFA is a legal one. The Trump Admin lost numerous times in court on the dear colleague letter attempting to interpret it quite broadly and then stopped defending their position. Many univ pre-complied, over complied, whatever, but we see that the pendulum never stops swinging. I'd like to try and get it to stop somewhere in the road on the way to somewhere positive. I assume there will be some legal tests that find where/how/when/if SFFA is more broadly applied beyond undergrad admissions. Bakke of course was a school of medicine admissions case and did come to be more broadly applied in education, but it took time, cases, etc.
In terms of the Lee statue and others (or Lanier, as Robin mentioned), I prefer the Hungarian approach to memorializing former Soviet-era statues in a park. People can learn about the history but it isn't celebrated in parks and in the streets of Budapest. https://www.mementopark.hu/en/concept/history/
Certainly a defensible position, especially for confederate monuments put up on courthouse lawns and the like. If you recall, there was a commitment made to use the removed Lee statue from in front of Duke Chapel in a museum of some sort. That commitment seems to have drifted away.
Of course they should. The complete rewriting and redefining of history shouldn't be left to one erabor generation, which is what we are seeing. It snacks of the Red Guard's dismantling of Chinese traditional culture, excesses of which everybody regrets.
I asked a simple question & you provided simple answer. Fair enough. If we were having a conversation about this, I would point out the history of when & where (cemetery v. public, like courthouse lawn) Confederate monuments were erected. From end of CW to 1868, all were erected in cemeteries; from 1868-1900, 80% of those erected were in cemeteries; after 1900, the pace of confederate monuments picked up and ~90% of them were in public places and were commonly celebrated at erection as symbols of ongoing white supremacy. This report focuses on this history in North Carolina which you can check out if interested https://silentsam.online/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
My point is that one generation re-writing the story of confederate monuments as you note a removal would be is ahistorical. Many successive generations have fought over whether,how,when, where to memorialize. The data noted are NC specific, so not fully sure of other states. thx for reading and commenting. Best, Don
This is more complicated than "should we or shouldn't we," and I know you'd agree. What we know of the history of why the Lee statue was there in the first place is important. None of those statues (anywhere on the facade) represent people connected to Duke. All are symbolic in different ways. On the left, the symbolism is religious. On the right, it's the "great men of the South," according to what we know of how the three people were chosen. A case could be made for Jefferson (complicated to be sure). I don't see any case for Lee--or, for that matter, Sidney Lanier, the "poet of the Confederacy," whose only connection to the state was that he died here. He still stands, largely, I suspect, because people have no idea who he is. What Lee and Lanier symbolize is the "Lost Cause" lie propagated during the height of the white supremacy campaign championed by someone who did have a connection to Duke: Julian S. Carr. Why should we reconsider for a millisecond returning Lee there (and by the way, Price should remove Lanier). Statues are not history -- they represent us. Why should we want to be represented by the disgrace of white supremacy (and I write that pointing out that this is not my phrase for them but the phrase they proudly and violently used to describe themselves)?
Good points all. A conversation! There is a bizarre/funny aspect of of the Duke chapel but—copy a Catholic Church but don’t have nailed down ‘saints’ you got a problem. Also, why did they get a vandy historian to inform?
So I geeked out on Savaronola and Wycliffe this weekend. Both could be viewed as frontrunners of the reformation, with Wycliffe promoting study of the Bible (in 14th Century), having church in English and talking about doubting the doctrine of transubstiation (when you take Eucharist it becomes literal body and blood of christ) in nearly exact language that I heard growing up in fundamentalist circles when anti-'Papist' talk arose. Savaronola was really a populist-meets-fundamentalist orator who was explicitly calling out the pope for being corrupt, but very much wanted to reform from within catholicism. He mostly ignored debate of others and was pretty uncompromising, including actively foreswearing art and driving florentine renaissance painters out of Italy to spread renaissance. Machiavelli had some admiring things to say about him, but i think thought he was an example of why dogma was not the greatest route to being a good politicians. Sav was also more of a orator than a writer. He lost control and was deemed a heretic, hung and burned in main square of Florence by an emissary of the Pope. interestingly enough, 80 years after Wycliffe died, they exhumed his body for being a heretic, burned his remains and threw them into a river. Just thought you would want to know all this!
My Dad was a member of SDS who marched at Selma and I was raised to strongly support affirmative action for African-Americans and their descendants who were enslaved and/or suffered under Jim Crow. If affirmative action consisted of a light thumb on the scale for those people and those people alone, I'd still support it. But it was nonsensically extended to groups who had no claim to that distinctive historical experience, and fostered a racial grievance-industrial complex systematically discriminating against and demonizing almost all people of predominantly European ancestry. Never mind my progressive bona fides: as an elder millennial heterosexual white male, my career prospects were severely curtailed and I could only become a quasi-academic affiliated with well-known institutions through the back door, as there was literally zero chance an institution like Duke or Columbia would consider hiring me on a traditional academic track. The DEI cartel proved that any form of legalized racial discrimination will be weaponized to ruin the lives of people from disfavored groups, so I disagree that the SFFA decision has been over-interpreted. All ethnic preferences must be dismantled and those who discriminate against people for the sin of their immutable characteristics should be incarcerated and sued into oblivion.
https://ivyexile.substack.com/p/positively-discrimination
My claim about SFFA is a legal one. The Trump Admin lost numerous times in court on the dear colleague letter attempting to interpret it quite broadly and then stopped defending their position. Many univ pre-complied, over complied, whatever, but we see that the pendulum never stops swinging. I'd like to try and get it to stop somewhere in the road on the way to somewhere positive. I assume there will be some legal tests that find where/how/when/if SFFA is more broadly applied beyond undergrad admissions. Bakke of course was a school of medicine admissions case and did come to be more broadly applied in education, but it took time, cases, etc.
In terms of the Lee statue and others (or Lanier, as Robin mentioned), I prefer the Hungarian approach to memorializing former Soviet-era statues in a park. People can learn about the history but it isn't celebrated in parks and in the streets of Budapest. https://www.mementopark.hu/en/concept/history/
Betsy
Certainly a defensible position, especially for confederate monuments put up on courthouse lawns and the like. If you recall, there was a commitment made to use the removed Lee statue from in front of Duke Chapel in a museum of some sort. That commitment seems to have drifted away.
Of course they should. The complete rewriting and redefining of history shouldn't be left to one erabor generation, which is what we are seeing. It snacks of the Red Guard's dismantling of Chinese traditional culture, excesses of which everybody regrets.
I asked a simple question & you provided simple answer. Fair enough. If we were having a conversation about this, I would point out the history of when & where (cemetery v. public, like courthouse lawn) Confederate monuments were erected. From end of CW to 1868, all were erected in cemeteries; from 1868-1900, 80% of those erected were in cemeteries; after 1900, the pace of confederate monuments picked up and ~90% of them were in public places and were commonly celebrated at erection as symbols of ongoing white supremacy. This report focuses on this history in North Carolina which you can check out if interested https://silentsam.online/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
My point is that one generation re-writing the story of confederate monuments as you note a removal would be is ahistorical. Many successive generations have fought over whether,how,when, where to memorialize. The data noted are NC specific, so not fully sure of other states. thx for reading and commenting. Best, Don
This is more complicated than "should we or shouldn't we," and I know you'd agree. What we know of the history of why the Lee statue was there in the first place is important. None of those statues (anywhere on the facade) represent people connected to Duke. All are symbolic in different ways. On the left, the symbolism is religious. On the right, it's the "great men of the South," according to what we know of how the three people were chosen. A case could be made for Jefferson (complicated to be sure). I don't see any case for Lee--or, for that matter, Sidney Lanier, the "poet of the Confederacy," whose only connection to the state was that he died here. He still stands, largely, I suspect, because people have no idea who he is. What Lee and Lanier symbolize is the "Lost Cause" lie propagated during the height of the white supremacy campaign championed by someone who did have a connection to Duke: Julian S. Carr. Why should we reconsider for a millisecond returning Lee there (and by the way, Price should remove Lanier). Statues are not history -- they represent us. Why should we want to be represented by the disgrace of white supremacy (and I write that pointing out that this is not my phrase for them but the phrase they proudly and violently used to describe themselves)?
Good points all. A conversation! There is a bizarre/funny aspect of of the Duke chapel but—copy a Catholic Church but don’t have nailed down ‘saints’ you got a problem. Also, why did they get a vandy historian to inform?
And (I'm no religious scholar but...) Savonarola? Sort of stinks of "new money" carelessness, TBH.
So I geeked out on Savaronola and Wycliffe this weekend. Both could be viewed as frontrunners of the reformation, with Wycliffe promoting study of the Bible (in 14th Century), having church in English and talking about doubting the doctrine of transubstiation (when you take Eucharist it becomes literal body and blood of christ) in nearly exact language that I heard growing up in fundamentalist circles when anti-'Papist' talk arose. Savaronola was really a populist-meets-fundamentalist orator who was explicitly calling out the pope for being corrupt, but very much wanted to reform from within catholicism. He mostly ignored debate of others and was pretty uncompromising, including actively foreswearing art and driving florentine renaissance painters out of Italy to spread renaissance. Machiavelli had some admiring things to say about him, but i think thought he was an example of why dogma was not the greatest route to being a good politicians. Sav was also more of a orator than a writer. He lost control and was deemed a heretic, hung and burned in main square of Florence by an emissary of the Pope. interestingly enough, 80 years after Wycliffe died, they exhumed his body for being a heretic, burned his remains and threw them into a river. Just thought you would want to know all this!