Thread of Statue Removals

[Hugo Stiglitz 23362]

Maybe I’ve spent too much time in Virginia Civil War museums. 

[SimonBolivar 10938]

5 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

First iron clad ships, first use of trench warfare. We were the precursor to ww1

Eh both navies, especially the CSA, were weak. It also wasn't the first use of trench warfare but it was some nasty ones for sure. I find it interesting too and it's probably our most "fascinating war" for sure. One thing historiographacially that's trending right now is the religiousness of the people which often gets overlooked when looking at the war as a whole.

[jettrink 41]

39 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Maybe I’ve spent too much time in Virginia Civil War museums. 

Maybe you are an ironclad lsu loving dumbass who should get the fuck off a Longhorn message board!

[Hugo Stiglitz 23362]

I’m a refugee. 

[workswithseed 2037]

1 minute ago, SimonBolivar said:

Eh both navies, especially the CSA, were weak. It also wasn't the first use of trench warfare but it was some nasty ones for sure. I find it interesting too and it's probably our most "fascinating war" for sure. One thing historiographacially that's trending right now is the religiousness of the people which often gets overlooked when looking at the war as a whole.

I'm glad Texas won independence. We had something to fall back on after the war, also we didn't have many slaves, and we were barely touched by the Civil war, so we didn't look like the rest of the south. Texas was the Japan of the Civil War.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23362]

 

[TwiceHorn 31304]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Yall need to ease up on Saint Austin, I think.

He's not arguing that slavery wasn't the root cause of the Civil War, as if to somehow legitimize slavery or the CSA.

He is arguing that secession created another sovereign nation of somewhat dubious legitimacy founded on a repugnant principle and that was the casus belli for the Civil War.  Conquering that nation and repatriating the states and citizens thereof into a nation that had emancipated slaves and banned slavery was the goal of the war.

Without succession, one wonders what might have happened.

To this end, I couldn't remember if there was a formal Declaration of War or not.  There was, but it took the form of a Presidential Proclamation, and rather than a Declaration against the CSA, it took the form of federalizing state militias to put down an insurrection in the states making up the CSA.  It didn't reference the CSA, secession, or even rebellion.

http://www.civilwar.com/resources/government-77630/148355-declaration-of-war.html

I think I knew this in one form or another, but it's an interesting document.

[HRSchenker 2259]

 

[RomaVicta 29803]

2 hours ago, HRSchenker said:

 

Looks like they need to come up with a better statue in this case. Like the TR Equestrian statue, the portrayal of the ex-slaves is off point. This is another statue that belongs in a museum with a record of its history. The figure captures the attitude towards blacks as inferior but deserving of benevolence.

Good intentions. Poor execution.

I would wager that BLM doesn't want this movement to become all symbolic and focused on statue removal. Taking down statues does not address the murder of blacks at the hands of the police; they just provide great optics for feel-good moments.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

Petition to rename Calhoun Blvd (runs through Third Ward and UH) to George Floyd Blvd

 

I love this on so many levels and I just think it might actually get done.

First, Calhoun is among the most irredeemable figures in American history. He invented the concept of slavery as a "positive good" and spent much of his career trying to start a Civil War so he could preserve it forever and expand it all over America and likely into parts of Mexico and Cuba too. The man was a human primary tumor. 

Second, George Floyd was not only from Third Ward, but a victim of Calhoun's policies carried ahead 170 years.

Third, if there is an afterlife, this would be a new form of torture for John C. in whatever deep pit of sulfuric lava he's already in.

Fourth, it might piss off Cal McNair. Yep, the Cal is not short for Calvin. Ol' Bob was a big fan of John C. 

[HenryJames 65890]

 

[Guest Lobo]

For all his mental limitations, Trump can still talk statues.  I think he's about halfway to an extra chromosome.  

[Chad Fuck 17570]

Looks like they need to come up with a better statue in this case. Like the TR Equestrian statue, the portrayal of the ex-slaves is off point. This is another statue that belongs in a museum with a record of its history. The figure captures the attitude towards blacks as inferior but deserving of benevolence.
Good intentions. Poor execution.
I would wager that BLM doesn't want this movement to become all symbolic and focused on statue removal. Taking down statues does not address the murder of blacks at the hands of the police; they just provide great optics for feel-good moments.

And the further they move from Confederate statues, the more nuanced -and less persuasive- their argument against statues becomes. It threatens to turn the whole thing sideways. It’s not an art critique, it’s a cry for the recognition of basic human rights.

[FondrenRoad 4378]

14 hours ago, workswithseed said:

I'm glad Texas won independence. We had something to fall back on after the war, also we didn't have many slaves, and we were barely touched by the Civil war, so we didn't look like the rest of the south. Texas was the Japan of the Civil War.

Texas was more like Italy. Japan killed around 8 million Chinese civilians in a crimes against humanity fashion. Japan was also completely destroyed, moreso than Germany. Tokyo was practically erased from the map. 

[HenryJames 65890]

 

[workswithseed 2037]

1 hour ago, FondrenRoad said:

Texas was more like Italy. Japan killed around 8 million Chinese civilians in a crimes against humanity fashion. Japan was also completely destroyed, moreso than Germany. Tokyo was practically erased from the map. 

In first war they fought against Russia, but never in Japan. That's what I was thinking of.

[Asithappens 974]

22 hours ago, Saint Austin said:

So when Virginia voted not to secede before Lincoln's call for volunteers, and then switched its vote to secede after Lincoln's call to put down the rebellion by force, that was about slavery?

It's all about slavery. 

Some people still don't get it. 

 

[Guadaloopy 10927]

So what are the statue posses going to do about Mt. Rushmore?

[Parliament 14140]

Lotsa dynamite?

[FORTY NINE TO ZERO 2630]

12 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Petition to rename Calhoun Blvd (runs through Third Ward and UH) to George Floyd Blvd

 

I love this on so many levels and I just think it might actually get done.

First, Calhoun is among the most irredeemable figures in American history. He invented the concept of slavery as a "positive good" and spent much of his career trying to start a Civil War so he could preserve it forever and expand it all over America and likely into parts of Mexico and Cuba too. The man was a human primary tumor. 

Second, George Floyd was not only from Third Ward, but a victim of Calhoun's policies carried ahead 170 years.

Third, if there is an afterlife, this would be a new form of torture for John C. in whatever deep pit of sulfuric lava he's already in.

Fourth, it might piss off Cal McNair. Yep, the Cal is not short for Calvin. Ol' Bob was a big fan of John C. 

I always figured it was named after some other Calhoun 

Edited June 24, 2020 by Xian

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

15 minutes ago, Guadaloopy said:

So what are the statue posses going to do about Mt. Rushmore?

It's a bit of a hike. People don't think that the Black Hills are all that imposing, and it's not like the Rockies, but it'll wear you out if you start scrambling around the trails and you're not used to it.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23362]

1 hour ago, Guadaloopy said:

So what are the statue posses going to do about Mt. Rushmore?

Hopefully hand it over to Native American tribes and let them decide.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23362]

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23362]

I am so close to starting a go fund me page to build Trump statues. 

[Brisketexan 104661]

I am so close to starting a go fund me page to build Trump statues. 

Fuck that. I’m going to make a fortune selling Trump shitters. People will pay money to shit on Trump every day.

[bad_teammate 13133]

10 hours ago, Guadaloopy said:

So what are the statue posses going to do about Mt. Rushmore?

Final boss.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

If these mobs seriously wanted to spark a national conversation about shit that really matters, and maybe even get some results, or at least hasten what now seems to be an inevitable revolution, they'd go after this guy:

But wait -- wasn't he one of the good guys?

That's what his recent biographers and the musical and his Wikipedia would have you believe, but in fact Hamilton bought and sold slaves and owned a few himself and was a diehard hater of the common people. Big banks were more his thing, and Big Bank runs this country now lock stock and barrel. 

(Interesting that his Wiki bio goes to great length to talk about all his so-called Abolitionism when he never ever wrote a thing on the subject. It says "some of his relatives" owned slaves. Relatives like his fucking wife, who he married because of her wealth, a wealth that included slaves. It also touts his enrollment in a high-society NYC club dedicated to the Manumission of slaves. That means, "Oh, I'd sure like to free my slaves one day, when and if I can afford it."

Kind of like a wishful sort of AA, where you would kind of talk about how some day you might quit drinking. Which I guess describes many bars, but I digress.  Key point it it was a far cry from abolitionism, and at any rate, I've read that club was more a networking spot than a place where anything got done. Most people would be shocked to learn that slavery was legal in NYC until 1827, much less that Hamilton was himself a slaveowner by marriage, which means he's a slaveowner, right? I don't know why even some critics give him a pass for "just" marrying into it. 

The blowjob he's been getting by both academics and Broadway this last decade or two has got me all paranoid. The musical came out right around Occupy Wall Street, and Wall Street is pretty much Hamilton's creation. All of a sudden there's a surreal Broadway spectacular about how Hamilton was woke and black and rapped and all his enemies were sinister assholes. (Yes, save for the skin tones, it was based off Chernow's readable but propagandizing biography but I find it striking how guys like Hamilton and Adams have been ascendant in recent years while Jackson and Jefferson have been tossed in the garbage. I don't think it's all about race -- I think some of it has to do with the lionization of Wall Street, elitism, checking "sedition," and centralized power.)

So say a mob of 50k-100k marches on Wall Street and rips its patron saint down off his pedestal and that would get some motherfucking attention. Maybe get a little dialogue going about who really runs the show around here. 

The Confederates and lesser racists and collateral damage statues are small fry.

Hamilton? 

Head / snake. 

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by MaybeACoordinator

[David Dennison 18661]

I'd like to see your source on Alexander Hamilton owning slaves.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

2 hours ago, David Dennison said:

I'd like to see your source on Alexander Hamilton owning slaves.

https://www.varsitytutors.com/earlyamerica/early-america-review/volume-15/hamilton-and-slavery

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

And there's also this...

 

Quote

Ever since the historical musical “Hamilton” began its march to near-universal infatuation, one group has noticeably withheld its applause — historians. Many academics argue the portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the star of our $10 bills, is a counterfeit. Now they’re escalating their fight.

Ishmael Reed, who has been nominated twice for a National Book Award, has chosen to fight fire with fire — collecting his critique of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s acclaimed show into a play.

Reed’s “The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda” is an uncompromising take-down of “Hamilton,” reminding viewers of the Founding Father’s complicity in slavery and his war on Native Americans.

Quote

Miranda’s glowing portrayal of a Hamilton who celebrates open borders — “Immigrants, we get the job done!” — and who denounces slavery has incensed everyone from professors at Harvard to the University of Houston to Rutgers .

They argue that Miranda got Hamilton all wrong — the Founding Father wasn’t progressive at all, his actual role as a slave owner has been whitewashed and the pro-immigrant figure onstage hides the fact that he was, in fact, an anti-immigration elitist.

Quote

Reed’s own play borrows from Charles Dickens in portraying a naive Miranda being visited by a succession of ghostly slaves, Native Americans and indentured servants — people Reed argues never made it into the Tony-, Grammy-, and Pulitzer-winning musical. “What I tried to do was to cover the voices that were not present onstage,” Reed said.

Reed, who has not seen “Hamilton” but read it, criticizes the musical as just the latest piece of entertainment that is sympathetic to slave owners. “I say this is a successor to ‘Gone With the Wind,‘” he said. “But at least in ‘Gone With the Wind,’ Hattie McDaniel had a speaking part.”

 

[mdmost 42866]

I guess it's a good thing there's not a Lin Manuel Miranda as Hamilton statue up somewhere for Reed to try to pull down. I'm sure his "play" was a great success. 

And maybe you should've included this portion because it's exactly what the musical is, a dramatization.

Quote

However, Miranda has said in interviews that he felt a responsibility to be as historically accurate as possible but that “Hamilton” is necessarily a work of historical fiction, including dramatizations and imprecisions.

 

[HenryJames 65890]

NASHVILLE — I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.

If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.

Dead Confederates are honored all over this country — with cartoonish private statues, solemn public monuments and even in the names of United States Army bases. It fortifies and heartens me to witness the protests against this practice and the growing clamor from serious, nonpartisan public servants to redress it. But there are still those — like President Trump and the Senate majority leader,Mitch McConnell — who cannot understand the difference between rewriting and reframing the past. I say it is not a matter of “airbrushing” history, but of adding a new perspective.

I am a black, Southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow.

According to the rule of hypodescent (the social and legal practice of assigning a genetically mixed-race person to the race with less social power) I am the daughter of two black people, the granddaughter of four black people, the great-granddaughter of eight black people. Go back one more generation and it gets less straightforward, and more sinister. As far as family history has always told, and as modern DNA testing has allowed me to confirm, I am the descendant of black women who were domestic servants and white men who raped their help.

It is an extraordinary truth of my life that I am biologically more than half white, and yet I have no white people in my genealogy in living memory. No. Voluntary. Whiteness. I am more than half white, and none of it was consensual. White Southern men — my ancestors — took what they wanted from women they did not love, over whom they had extraordinary power, and then failed to claim their children.

What is a monument but a standing memory? An artifact to make tangible the truth of the past. My body and blood are a tangible truth of the South and its past. The black people I come from were owned by the white people I come from. The white people I come from fought and died for their Lost Cause. And I ask you now, who dares to tell me to celebrate them? Who dares to ask me to accept their mounted pedestals?

You cannot dismiss me as someone who doesn’t understand. You cannot say it wasn’t my family members who fought and died. My blackness does not put me on the other side of anything. It puts me squarely at the heart of the debate. I don’t just come from the South. I come from Confederates. I’ve got rebel-gray blue blood coursing my veins. My great-grandfather Will was raised with the knowledge that Edmund Pettus was his father. Pettus, the storied Confederate general, the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, the man for whom Selma’s Bloody Sunday Bridge is named. So I am not an outsider who makes these demands. I am a great-great-granddaughter.

And here I’m called to say that there is much about the South that is precious to me. I do my best teaching and writing here. There is, however, a peculiar model of Southern pride that must now, at long last, be reckoned with.

This is not an ignorant pride but a defiant one. It is a pride that says, “Our history is rich, our causes are justified, our ancestors lie beyond reproach.” It is a pining for greatness, if you will, a wish again for a certain kind of American memory. A monument-worthy memory.

But here’s the thing: Our ancestors don’t deserve your unconditional pride. Yes, I am proud of every one of my black ancestors who survived slavery. They earned that pride, by any decent person’s reckoning. But I am not proud of the white ancestors whom I know, by virtue of my very existence, to be bad actors.

Among the apologists for the Southern cause and for its monuments, there are those who dismiss the hardships of the past. They imagine a world of benevolent masters, and speak with misty eyes of gentility and honor and the land. They deny plantation rape, or explain it away, or question the degree of frequency with which it occurred.

To those people it is my privilege to say, I am proof. I am proof that whatever else the South might have been, or might believe itself to be, it was and is a space whose prosperity and sense of romance and nostalgia were built upon the grievous exploitation of black life.

The dream version of the Old South never existed. Any manufactured monument to that time in that place tells half a truth at best. The ideas and ideals it purports to honor are not real. To those who have embraced these delusions: Now is the time to re-examine your position.

Either you have been blind to a truth that my body’s story forces you to see, or you really do mean to honor the oppressors at the expense of the oppressed, and you must at last acknowledge your emotional investment in a legacy of hate.

Either way, I say the monuments of stone and metal, the monuments of cloth and wood, all the man-made monuments, must come down. I defy any sentimental Southerner to defend our ancestors to me. I am quite literally made of the reasons to strip them of their laurels.

Caroline Randall Williams (@caroranwill) is the author of “Lucy Negro, Redux” and “Soul Food Love,” and a writer in residence at Vanderbilt University.

[Bama Chick 28596]

Watch out for flying pigs.

[Brisketexan 104661]

[/url]

NASHVILLE — I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.

If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.

Dead Confederates are honored all over this country — with cartoonish private statues

, solemn public monuments and even in the names of United States Army bases. It fortifies and heartens me to witness the protests against this practice and the growing clamor from serious, nonpartisan public servants to redress it. But there are still those — like President Trump and the Senate majority leader,Mitch McConnell — who cannot understand the difference between rewriting and reframing the past. I say it is not a matter of “airbrushing” history, but of adding a new perspective.

I am a black, Southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow.

According to the rule of hypodescent (the social and legal practice of assigning a genetically mixed-race person to the race with less social power) I am the daughter of two black people, the granddaughter of four black people, the great-granddaughter of eight black people. Go back one more generation and it gets less straightforward, and more sinister. As far as family history has always told, and as modern DNA testing has allowed me to confirm, I am the descendant of black women who were domestic servants and white men who raped their help.

It is an extraordinary truth of my life that I am biologically more than half white, and yet I have no white people in my genealogy in living memory. No. Voluntary. Whiteness. I am more than half white, and none of it was consensual. White Southern men — my ancestors — took what they wanted from women they did not love, over whom they had extraordinary power, and then failed to claim their children.

What is a monument but a standing memory? An artifact to make tangible the truth of the past. My body and blood are a tangible truth of the South and its past. The black people I come from were owned by the white people I come from. The white people I come from fought and died for their Lost Cause. And I ask you now, who dares to tell me to celebrate them? Who dares to ask me to accept their mounted pedestals?

You cannot dismiss me as someone who doesn’t understand. You cannot say it wasn’t my family members who fought and died. My blackness does not put me on the other side of anything. It puts me squarely at the heart of the debate. I don’t just come from the South. I come from Confederates. I’ve got rebel-gray blue blood coursing my veins. My great-grandfather Will was raised with the knowledge that Edmund Pettus was his father. Pettus, the storied Confederate general, the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, the man for whom Selma’s Bloody Sunday Bridge is named. So I am not an outsider who makes these demands. I am a great-great-granddaughter.

And here I’m called to say that there is much about the South that is precious to me. I do my best teaching and writing here. There is, however, a peculiar model of Southern pride that must now, at long last, be reckoned with.

This is not an ignorant pride but a defiant one. It is a pride that says, “Our history is rich, our causes are justified, our ancestors lie beyond reproach.” It is a pining for greatness, if you will, a wish again for a certain kind of American memory. A monument-worthy memory.

But here’s the thing: Our ancestors don’t deserve your unconditional pride. Yes, I am proud of every one of my black ancestors who survived slavery. They earned that pride, by any decent person’s reckoning. But I am not proud of the white ancestors whom I know, by virtue of my very existence, to be bad actors.

Among the apologists for the Southern cause and for its monuments, there are those who dismiss the hardships of the past. They imagine a world of benevolent masters, and speak with misty eyes of gentility and honor and the land. They deny plantation rape, or explain it away, or question the degree of frequency with which it occurred.

To those people it is my privilege to say, I am proof. I am proof that whatever else the South might have been, or might believe itself to be, it was and is a space whose prosperity and sense of romance and nostalgia were built upon the grievous exploitation of black life.

The dream version of the Old South never existed. Any manufactured monument to that time in that place tells half a truth at best. The ideas and ideals it purports to honor are not real. To those who have embraced these delusions: Now is the time to re-examine your position.

Either you have been blind to a truth that my body’s story forces you to see, or you really do mean to honor the oppressors at the expense of the oppressed, and you must at last acknowledge your emotional investment in a legacy of hate.

Either way, I say the monuments of stone and metal, the monuments of cloth and wood, all the man-made monuments, must come down. I defy any sentimental Southerner to defend our ancestors to me. I am quite literally made of the reasons to strip them of their laurels.

Caroline Randall Williams (@caroranwill) is the author of “Lucy Negro, Redux” and “Soul Food Love,” and a writer in residence at Vanderbilt University.

That....is one of the most amazing pieces of writing I have ever read. Holy shit. Seriously, people - read it.

[Parliament 14140]

The Duke is next.

https://abc7.com/john-wayne-airport-renamed-orange-county-santa-ana/6275725/

[safe sex 11686]

Well, he was.

[RDCanecutter 26290]

21 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

That....is one of the most amazing pieces of writing I have ever read. Holy shit. Seriously, people - read it.

Nice to see that the subtle brushstrokes of a Velvet Elvis painting can be translated into metal sculpture.

[Hank Kingsley 20716]

Fuck yes. This is a big deal. 

 

[HenryJames 65890]

[ChiTownDoc 21102]

On 6/23/2020 at 7:22 PM, jettrink said:

Maybe you are an ironclad lsu loving dumbass who should get the fuck off a Longhorn message board!

This is a pretty funny post from someone who's teetering on the edge of surly oblivion.  

[Brothahorn 10085]

[Brothahorn 10085]

The Duke is next.

https://abc7.com/john-wayne-airport-renamed-orange-county-santa-ana/6275725/

[elfenix 34183]

woodrow wilson's statue in front of the tower got paint bombed (maybe?  vandalized definitely and i'm pretty sure it was paint) while i was at UT and a lot of people couldn't figure out what the issue was.  one daily texan letter said, "ya missed, jeff davis is the other one"

[workswithseed 2037]

1 hour ago, Brothahorn said:

 

 

[Helobious 9482]

I do find it funny that Wayne always played the quintessential masculine badass in all his movies yet he avoided service in WW2. Definitely deserved getting an airport named after him. 

[GRHorn 105]

Pretty amazing how much things have changed in 10 years. 

[mdmost 42866]

BUT OBAMA!

[HenryJames 65890]

Yeah, you usually bring up the bad stuff during a eulogy.

[Bama Chick 28596]

Whatever, fuck John Wayne.

He’s a fricking dead movie star.

[HenryJames 65890]