Race in America - Riots Explode in Chicago

[ggait]

because no one warned anyone that once the Left went after Confederates, surely they would stop there and not go after Lincoln Washington and Jefferson...

I can assure you that almost all of us UVA grads (of all colors) are just fine with keeping TJ around. He's deeply woven into our school and always will be. His face is on my degree. We recognize all aspects (positive and negative) of that association. By the way, I highly recommend taking a tour of the Grounds and Monticello sometime if you have the chance.

They both do a great job (now) of telling all sides of the story, which is about as American as it gets. In the past, the story was definitely whitewashed -- which was simply inaccurate as a historical matter.

TBD what happens with W&L -- that's up to them. Personally, I'd keep Lee, since he served as president of the school and the name was changed back in 1870. So a very different thing than renaming some random middle school after REL in the 1950s as a way to show the black folks that Jim Crow was in charge.

P.S. Petey -- how's that Democrat wife of yours doing?

[jhu72]

How many times do folks have to come with the slippery slope argument.

It's not an argument. It's pure conjecture. e.g. If we allow for gay marriage, next, people will want to marry their pets. This statement is possibly true but... Far from true. It's not an argument. It's an anxiety-based fantasy.

We allowed for gay marriage—didn't get "marry their pets," yet, but we did get 11 dozen genders instead of 2.

https://dudeasks.com/how-many-genders-a ... e-in-2020/

You allowed nothing! The gay community fought for it and won. You allowed it

Was using Matnum PIs vocabulary. Pay attention

… learn some history! Modern gender studies pre-date the gay marriage SCOTUS decision by decades. Gay marriage did not lead to "11 dozen genders".

When did allowing men who wear dresses and use young girls bathrooms happen? Did that predate the gay marriage decisions too?

men have been using women's bathrooms probably since forever. I used a few when I was in college. So yes, men have been using women's bathrooms since before modern gender studies and long before the SCOTUS decision. I have seen women in men's bathrooms over as long a period of time.

oh the outrage! No one seemed to care until those BAD GAY PEOPLE came out of the closet. They should just go back, or better yet catch a disease and die eh Peanut Butters?

… I am still wondering how that elk is doing. Do you really care about the elk?

Hows the DA doing with those Freddie Grey cop convictions. You guaranteed those. And you'er so fn brilliant and accurate.

… she beat the civil lawsuit. The COPs / union ended up paying their own legal fees. All good for Mosby.

so do you know how the elk is doing?

[jhu72]

because no one warned anyone that once the Left went after Confederates, surely they would stop there and not go after Lincoln Washington and Jefferson...

I can assure you that almost all of us UVA grads (of all colors) are just fine with keeping TJ around. He's deeply woven into our school and always will be. His face is on my degree. We recognize all aspects (positive and negative) of that association. By the way, I highly recommend taking a tour of the Grounds and Monticello sometime if you have the chance.

They both do a great job (now) of telling all sides of the story, which is about as American as it gets. In the past, the story was definitely whitewashed -- which was simply inaccurate as a historical matter.

TBD what happens with W&L -- that's up to them. Personally, I'd keep Lee, since he served as president of the school and the name was changed back in 1870. So a very different thing than renaming some random middle school after REL in the 1950s as a way to show the black folks that Jim Crow was in charge.

P.S. Petey -- how's that Democrat wife of yours doing?

… strange how folks who have a relationship with / affinity for TJ are cool with the recognition of his flaws, its only the folks paying lip service losing their sh!t.

[Typical Lax Dad]

because no one warned anyone that once the Left went after Confederates, surely they would stop there and not go after Lincoln Washington and Jefferson...

I can assure you that almost all of us UVA grads (of all colors) are just fine with keeping TJ around. He's deeply woven into our school and always will be. His face is on my degree. We recognize all aspects (positive and negative) of that association. By the way, I highly recommend taking a tour of the Grounds and Monticello sometime if you have the chance.

They both do a great job (now) of telling all sides of the story, which is about as American as it gets. In the past, the story was definitely whitewashed -- which was simply inaccurate as a historical matter.

TBD what happens with W&L -- that's up to them. Personally, I'd keep Lee, since he served as president of the school and the name was changed back in 1870. So a very different thing than renaming some random middle school after REL in the 1950s as a way to show the black folks that Jim Crow was in charge.

P.S. Petey -- how's that Democrat wife of yours doing?

… strange how folks who have a relationship with / affinity for TJ are cool with the recognition of his flaws, its only the folks paying lip service losing their sh!t.

I have an in-law that’s related to old Tom. Nobody cares.

[Farfromgeneva]

because no one warned anyone that once the Left went after Confederates, surely they would stop there and not go after Lincoln Washington and Jefferson...

I can assure you that almost all of us UVA grads (of all colors) are just fine with keeping TJ around. He's deeply woven into our school and always will be. His face is on my degree. We recognize all aspects (positive and negative) of that association. By the way, I highly recommend taking a tour of the Grounds and Monticello sometime if you have the chance.

They both do a great job (now) of telling all sides of the story, which is about as American as it gets. In the past, the story was definitely whitewashed -- which was simply inaccurate as a historical matter.

TBD what happens with W&L -- that's up to them. Personally, I'd keep Lee, since he served as president of the school and the name was changed back in 1870. So a very different thing than renaming some random middle school after REL in the 1950s as a way to show the black folks that Jim Crow was in charge.

P.S. Petey -- how's that Democrat wife of yours doing?

My son who "finished" first grade this year was very interested in TJ so when we spent the week between Xmas and New Years at somewhat nearby Massanutten we took a day and went over to Monticello. Nice spot, pretty sweet panoramic views up there. Strange house design,even for that period IMO. They did, as you state, present a fairly circumspect view of TJ.

[Nigel]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fKIwj1TQmFs

Hate, hate, hate.

Hateful genius - "...I'm gonna go home and put some water in Buck Nasty's momma's dish."

[HooDat]

they say BLM wants change... next sentence says:

These changes must be seen in how we recruit students, faculty, staff and administrators––in how we signal to them the need to embrace our community values as a bottom line, non-negotiable condition of enrollment and employment.

then the next sentence says:

As part of the CU community, we must set expectations for living these values as a core set of guidelines for what it means to be anti-racist in all that we do at the university.

There is a LOT packed into that second quote. The prerequisite that one be "anti-racist" in order to be a student at a public university is dangerous, because of how the term "anti-racist" is used. It is one thing to not be racist, the term anti-racist has come to mean a whole lot more. You are naive if you think this is anything other than setting the stage for thought crime as a tool for limiting debate and enforcing a codified viewpoint. The parallels to 1984 are so poignant that it hurts.

[Typical Lax Dad]

they say BLM wants change... next sentence says:

These changes must be seen in how we recruit students, faculty, staff and administrators––in how we signal to them the need to embrace our community values as a bottom line, non-negotiable condition of enrollment and employment.

then the next sentence says:

As part of the CU community, we must set expectations for living these values as a core set of guidelines for what it means to be anti-racist in all that we do at the university.

There is a LOT packed into that second quote. The prerequisite that one be "anti-racist" in order to be a student at a public university is dangerous, because of how the term "anti-racist" is used. It is one thing to not be racist, the term anti-racist has come to mean a whole lot more. You are naive if you think this is anything other than setting the stage for thought crime as a tool for limiting debate and enforcing a codified viewpoint. The parallels to 1984 are so poignant that it hurts.

1984 has been prevalent since Trump took office. Anyone surprised?

[jhu72]

they say BLM wants change... next sentence says:

These changes must be seen in how we recruit students, faculty, staff and administrators––in how we signal to them the need to embrace our community values as a bottom line, non-negotiable condition of enrollment and employment.

then the next sentence says:

As part of the CU community, we must set expectations for living these values as a core set of guidelines for what it means to be anti-racist in all that we do at the university.

There is a LOT packed into that second quote. The prerequisite that one be "anti-racist" in order to be a student at a public university is dangerous, because of how the term "anti-racist" is used. It is one thing to not be racist, the term anti-racist has come to mean a whole lot more. You are naive if you think this is anything other than setting the stage for thought crime as a tool for limiting debate and enforcing a codified viewpoint. The parallels to 1984 are so poignant that it hurts.

BLM, the most radical members, will moderate. They will lose all support if they don't and will become marginalized. They know this. They are already seeing some push back from people who in general support them.

[ggait]

They did, as you state, present a fairly circumspect view of TJ.

The big turning point regarding TJ happened when the majority scholarly opinion (driven by DNA analysis) turned strongly in favor of TJ being the father of Sally Hemmings' children. After many prior decades of denial, whitewashing and gaslighting.

Once that fact was admitted, folks could then start coming to terms with TJ's tangled legacy. Rather than continuing to argue/dispute the facts. Happened very quickly.

It is somewhat of a similar process that our country is going through now. Once you see the incontrovertible cell phone video evidence, most decent folks (i.e. excluding Petey Brown) recognize and admit the problem. And start figuring out how to deal with it.

[Typical Lax Dad]

They did, as you state, present a fairly circumspect view of TJ.

The big turning point regarding TJ happened when the majority scholarly opinion (driven by DNA analysis) turned strongly in favor of TJ being the father of Sally Hemmings' children. After many prior decades of denial, whitewashing and gaslighting.

Once that fact was admitted, folks could then start coming to terms with TJ's tangled legacy. Rather than continuing to argue/dispute the facts. Happened very quickly.

It is somewhat of a similar process that our country is going through now. Once you see the incontrovertible cell phone video evidence, most decent folks (i.e. excluding Petey Brown) recognize and admit the problem. And start figuring out how to deal with it.

It’s amazing what openness and honesty will do. Btw, one branch of the Hemmings family moved to Minnesota and basically disappeared into society.

[seacoaster]

I suppose some of you have already seen this, and read it or passed it by. It is an article in the NYTime Sunday Magazine by Isabel Wilkerson, the author of the book, The Warmth of Other Suns. I include excerpts below, but the article is long and worthwhile and worth one of your free-bees.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/maga ... caste.html

"The inspector trained his infrared lens onto a misshapen bow in the ceiling, an invisible beam of light searching the layers of lath to test what the eye could not see. This house was built generations ago, and I had noticed the slightest welt in a corner of plaster in a spare bedroom and chalked it up to idiosyncrasy. Over time, the welt in the ceiling became a wave that widened and bulged despite the new roof. It had been building beyond perception for years. An old house is its own kind of devotional, a dowager aunt with a story to be coaxed out of her, a mystery, a series of interlocking puzzles awaiting solution. Why is this soffit tucked into the southeast corner of an eave? What is behind this discolored patch of brick? With an old house, the work is never done, and you don’t expect it to be.

America is an old house. We can never declare the work over. Wind, flood, drought and human upheavals batter a structure that is already fighting whatever flaws were left unattended in the original foundation. When you live in an old house, you may not want to go into the basement after a storm to see what the rains have wrought. Choose not to look, however, at your own peril. The owner of an old house knows that whatever you are ignoring will never go away. Whatever is lurking will fester whether you choose to look or not. Ignorance is no protection from the consequences of inaction. Whatever you are wishing away will gnaw at you until you gather the courage to face what you would rather not see.

We in this country are like homeowners who inherited a house on a piece of land that is beautiful on the outside but whose soil is unstable loam and rock, heaving and contracting over generations, cracks patched but the deeper ruptures waved away for decades, centuries even. Many people may rightly say: “I had nothing to do with how this all started. I have nothing to do with the sins of the past. My ancestors never attacked Indigenous people, never owned slaves.” And yes. Not one of us was here when this house was built. Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it, but here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures in the foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, but they are ours to deal with now.

And any further deterioration is, in fact, on our hands.

Unaddressed, the ruptures and diagonal cracks will not fix themselves. The toxins will not go away but rather will spread, leach and mutate, as they already have. When people live in an old house, they come to adjust to the idiosyncrasies and outright dangers skulking in an old structure. They put buckets under a wet ceiling, prop up groaning floors, learn to step over that rotting wood tread in the staircase. The awkward becomes acceptable, and the unacceptable becomes merely inconvenient. Live with it long enough, and the unthinkable becomes normal. Exposed over the generations, we learn to believe that the incomprehensible is the way that life is supposed to be.

In my own house, the inspector was facing the mystery of the misshapen ceiling, and so he first held a sensor to the surface to detect if it was damp. The reading inconclusive, he then pulled out the infrared camera to take a kind of X-ray of whatever was going on, the idea being that you cannot fix a problem until and unless you can see it. He could now see past the plaster, beyond what had been wallpapered or painted over, as we now are called upon to do in the house we all live in, to examine a structure built long ago.

Like other old houses, America has an unseen skeleton: its caste system, which is as central to its operation as are the studs and joists that we cannot see in the physical buildings we call home. Caste is the infrastructure of our divisions. It is the architecture of human hierarchy, the subconscious code of instructions for maintaining, in our case, a 400-year-old social order. Looking at caste is like holding the country’s X-ray up to the light.

....

And yet, in recent decades, we have learned from the human genome that all human beings are 99.9 percent the same. “Race is a social concept, not a scientific one,” said J. Craig Venter, the genomics expert who ran Celera Genomics when the initial sequencing was completed in 2000. “We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonized the world.” Which means that an entire racial caste system, the catalyst of hatreds and civil war, was built on what the anthropologist Ashley Montagu called “an arbitrary and superficial selection of traits,” derived from a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of genes that make up a human being. “The idea of race,” Montagu wrote, “was, in fact, the deliberate creation of an exploiting class seeking to maintain and defend its privileges against what was profitably regarded as an inferior social caste.”

Caste and race are neither synonymous nor mutually exclusive. They can and do coexist in the same culture and serve to reinforce each other. Race, in the United States, is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste. Caste is the bones, race the skin. Race is what we can see, the physical traits that have been given arbitrary meaning and become shorthand for who a person is. Caste is the powerful infrastructure that holds each group in its place. Its very invisibility is what gives it power and longevity. And though it may move in and out of consciousness, though it may flare and reassert itself in times of upheaval and recede in times of relative calm, it is an ever-present through line in the country’s operation.

Caste is rigid and deep; race is fluid and superficial, subject to periodic redefinition to meet the needs of the dominant caste in what is now the United States. While the requirements to qualify as white have changed over the centuries, the fact of a dominant caste has remained constant from its inception — whoever fit the definition of white, at whatever point in history, was granted the legal rights and privileges of the dominant caste. Perhaps more critical and tragic, at the other end of the ladder, the subordinated caste, too, has been fixed from the beginning as the psychological floor beneath which all other castes cannot fall.

Thus we are all born into a silent war game, centuries old, enlisted in teams not of our own choosing. The side to which we are assigned in the American system of categorizing people is proclaimed by the team uniform that each caste wears, signaling our presumed worth and potential. That any of us manages to create abiding connections across these manufactured divisions is a testament to the beauty of the human spirit.

....

Caste, on the other hand, predates the notion of race and has survived the era of formal state-sponsored racism long officially practiced in the mainstream. The modern-day version of easily deniable racism may be able to cloak the invisible structure that created and maintains hierarchy and inequality. But caste does not allow us to ignore structure. Caste is structure. Caste is ranking. Caste is the boundaries that reinforce the fixed assignments based upon what people look like. Caste is a living, breathing entity. It is like a corporation that seeks to sustain itself at all costs. To achieve a truly egalitarian world requires looking deeper than what we think we see.

Caste is the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy. Caste pushes back against an African-American woman who, without humor or apology, takes a seat at the head of the table speaking Russian. It prefers an Asian-American man to put his technological expertise at the service of the company but not aspire to chief executive. Yet it sees as logical a white 16-year-old serving as store manager over employees from the subordinate caste three times his age. Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred; it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.

What is the difference between racism and casteism? Because caste and race are interwoven in America, it can be hard to separate the two. Any action or institution that mocks, harms, assumes or attaches inferiority or stereotype on the basis of the social construct of race can be considered racism. Any action or structure that seeks to limit, hold back or put someone in a defined ranking, seeks to keep someone in their place by elevating or denigrating that person on the basis of their perceived category, can be seen as casteism.

Casteism is the investment in keeping the hierarchy as it is in order to maintain your own ranking, advantage or privilege or to elevate yourself above others or keep others beneath you. For those in the marginalized castes, casteism can mean seeking to keep those on your disfavored rung from gaining on you, to curry the favor and remain in the good graces of the dominant caste, all of which serve to keep the structure intact.

In the United States, racism and casteism frequently occur at the same time, or overlap or figure into the same scenario. Casteism is about positioning and restricting those positions, vis-à-vis others. What race and its precursor, racism, do extraordinarily well is to confuse and distract from the underlying structural and more powerful Sith lord of caste. Like the cast on a broken arm, like the cast in a play, a caste system holds everyone in a fixed place.

For this reason, many people — including those we might see as good and kind people — could be casteist, meaning invested in keeping the hierarchy as it is or content to do nothing to change it, but not racist in the classical sense, not active and openly hateful of this or that group. Actual racists, actual haters, would by definition be casteist, as their hatred demands that those they perceive as beneath them know and keep their place in the hierarchy.

In everyday terms, it is not racism that prompts a white shopper in a clothing store to go up to a random Black or brown person who is also shopping and to ask for a sweater in a different size, or for a white guest at a party to ask a Black or brown person who is also a guest to fetch a drink, as happened to Barack Obama as a state senator, or even perhaps a judge to sentence a subordinate-caste person for an offense for which a dominant-caste person might not even be charged. It is caste or rather the policing of and adherence to the caste system. It’s the autonomic, unconscious, reflexive response to expectations from a thousand imaging inputs and neurological societal downloads that affix people to certain roles based upon what they look like and what they historically have been assigned to or the characteristics and stereotypes by which they have been categorized. No ethnic or racial category is immune to the messaging we all receive about the hierarchy, and thus no one escapes its consequences.

When we assume that a woman is not equipped to lead the meeting or the company or the country, or that a person of color or an immigrant could not be the one in authority, is not a resident of a certain community, could not have attended a particular school or deserved to have attended a particular school, when we feel a pang of shock and resentment, a personal wounding and sense of unfairness and perhaps even shame at our discomfort upon seeing someone from a marginalized group in a job or car or house or college or appointment more prestigious than we have been led to expect, we are reflecting the efficient encoding of caste, the subconscious recognition that the person has stepped out of his or her assumed place in our society. We are responding to our embedded instructions of who should be where and who should be doing what, the breaching of the structure and boundaries that are the hallmarks of caste.

Race and caste are not the cause of and do not account for every poor outcome or unpleasant encounter. But caste becomes a factor, to whatever infinitesimal degree, in interactions and decisions across gender, ethnicity, race, immigrant status, sexual orientation, age or religion that have consequences in our everyday lives and in policies that affect our country and beyond. It may not be as all-consuming as its targets may perceive it to be, but neither is it the ancient relic, the long-ago anachronism, that post-racialists, post-haters of everything, keep wishing away. Its invisibility is what gives it power and longevity. Caste, along with its faithful servant race, is an X-factor in most any American equation, and any answer one might ever come up with to address our current challenges is flawed without it.

....

Some years ago, I was a national correspondent at The New York Times, based in Chicago, and decided to do a lighthearted piece about Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, a prime stretch of Michigan Avenue that had always been the city’s showcase, but now several big luxury names from New York and elsewhere were about to take up residence. I figured retailers would be delighted to talk. As I planned the article, I reached out to them for interviews. Everyone I called was thrilled to describe their foray into Chicago and to sit down with The Times.

The interviews went as expected until the last one. I had arrived a few minutes early to make sure we could start on time, given the deadline I was facing.

The boutique was empty at this quiet hour of the late afternoon. The manager’s assistant told me the manager would be arriving soon from another appointment. She went to a back corner as I stood alone in the showroom. A man in a business suit and tie finally walked in, harried and breathless. From the back corner, she nodded that this was he, so I went up to introduce myself and get started. He was out of breath, had been rushing, coat still on, checking his watch.

“Oh, I can’t talk with you now,” he said, brushing past me. “I’m very, very busy. I’m running late for an appointment.”

I was confused at first. Might he have made another appointment for the exact same time? Why would he schedule two appointments at once? There was no one else in the boutique but the two of us and his assistant in back.

“I think I’m your appointment,” I said.

“No, this a very important appointment with The New York Times,” he said, pulling off his coat. “I can’t talk with you now. I’ll have to talk with you some other time.”

“But I am with The New York Times,” I told him, pen and notebook in hand. “I talked with you on the phone. I’m the one who made the appointment with you for 4:30.”

“What’s the name?”

“Isabel Wilkerson with The New York Times.”

“How do I know that?” he shot back, growing impatient. “Look, I said I don’t have time to talk with you right now. She’ll be here any minute.”

He looked to the front entrance and again at his watch.

“But I am Isabel. We should be having the interview right now.”

He let out a sigh. “What kind of identification do you have? Do you have a business card?”

This was the last interview for the piece, and I had handed them all out by the time I got to him.

“I’ve been interviewing all day,” I told him. “I happen to be out of them now.”

“What about ID? You have a license on you?”

“I shouldn’t have to show you my license, but here it is.”

He gave it a cursory look.

“You don’t have anything that has The New York Times on it?”

“Why would I be here if I weren’t here to interview you? All of this time has passed. We’ve been standing here, and no one else has shown up.”

“She must be running late. I’m going to have to ask you to leave so I can get ready for my appointment.”

I left and walked back to the Times bureau, dazed and incensed, trying to figure out what had just happened. This was the first time I had ever been accused of impersonating myself. His caste notions of who should be doing what in society had so blinded him that he dismissed the idea that the reporter he was anxiously awaiting, excited to talk to, was standing right in front him. It seemed not to occur to him that a New York Times national correspondent could come in a container such as mine, despite every indication that I was she.

The article ran that Sunday. Because I had not been able to interview him, he didn’t get a mention. It would have amounted to a nice bit of publicity for him, but the other interviews made it unnecessary in the end. I sent him a clip of the piece along with the business card that he had asked for. To this day, I won’t step inside that shop. I will not mention the name, not because of censorship or a desire to protect any company’s reputation but because of our cultural tendency to believe that if we just identify the presumed-to-be-rare offending outlier, we will have rooted out the problem. The problem could have happened anyplace, because the problem is, in fact, at the root."

[HooDat]

they say BLM wants change... next sentence says:

These changes must be seen in how we recruit students, faculty, staff and administrators––in how we signal to them the need to embrace our community values as a bottom line, non-negotiable condition of enrollment and employment.

then the next sentence says:

As part of the CU community, we must set expectations for living these values as a core set of guidelines for what it means to be anti-racist in all that we do at the university.

There is a LOT packed into that second quote. The prerequisite that one be "anti-racist" in order to be a student at a public university is dangerous, because of how the term "anti-racist" is used. It is one thing to not be racist, the term anti-racist has come to mean a whole lot more. You are naive if you think this is anything other than setting the stage for thought crime as a tool for limiting debate and enforcing a codified viewpoint. The parallels to 1984 are so poignant that it hurts.

BLM, the most radical members, will moderate. They will lose all support if they don't and will become marginalized. They know this. They are already seeing some push back from people who in general support them.

you are more optimistic than I.

1984 has been prevalent since Trump took office. Anyone surprised?

Trump is a lot of things (almost all of them bad), but he is not the one using wrongthink as a weapon to silence dissent.

[6ftstick]

they say BLM wants change... next sentence says:

These changes must be seen in how we recruit students, faculty, staff and administrators––in how we signal to them the need to embrace our community values as a bottom line, non-negotiable condition of enrollment and employment.

then the next sentence says:

As part of the CU community, we must set expectations for living these values as a core set of guidelines for what it means to be anti-racist in all that we do at the university.

There is a LOT packed into that second quote. The prerequisite that one be "anti-racist" in order to be a student at a public university is dangerous, because of how the term "anti-racist" is used. It is one thing to not be racist, the term anti-racist has come to mean a whole lot more. You are naive if you think this is anything other than setting the stage for thought crime as a tool for limiting debate and enforcing a codified viewpoint. The parallels to 1984 are so poignant that it hurts.

BLM, the most radical members, will moderate. They will lose all support if they don't and will become marginalized. They know this. They are already seeing some push back from people who in general support them.

Sure they will. What do we want? Dead cops! When do want them! Now!

Together, we can — and will — transform. This is the revolution.

[Typical Lax Dad]

they say BLM wants change... next sentence says:

These changes must be seen in how we recruit students, faculty, staff and administrators––in how we signal to them the need to embrace our community values as a bottom line, non-negotiable condition of enrollment and employment.

then the next sentence says:

As part of the CU community, we must set expectations for living these values as a core set of guidelines for what it means to be anti-racist in all that we do at the university.

There is a LOT packed into that second quote. The prerequisite that one be "anti-racist" in order to be a student at a public university is dangerous, because of how the term "anti-racist" is used. It is one thing to not be racist, the term anti-racist has come to mean a whole lot more. You are naive if you think this is anything other than setting the stage for thought crime as a tool for limiting debate and enforcing a codified viewpoint. The parallels to 1984 are so poignant that it hurts.

BLM, the most radical members, will moderate. They will lose all support if they don't and will become marginalized. They know this. They are already seeing some push back from people who in general support them.

you are more optimistic than I.

1984 has been prevalent since Trump took office. Anyone surprised?

Trump is a lot of things (almost all of them bad), but he is not the one using wrongthink as a weapon to silence dissent.

Not wrong think? Ain’t kneeling the wrong think? Didn’t he use his platform to silence dissent in then NFL?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-trumps ... 1527685321

[Kismet]

They did, as you state, present a fairly circumspect view of TJ.

The big turning point regarding TJ happened when the majority scholarly opinion (driven by DNA analysis) turned strongly in favor of TJ being the father of Sally Hemmings' children. After many prior decades of denial, whitewashing and gaslighting.

Once that fact was admitted, folks could then start coming to terms with TJ's tangled legacy. Rather than continuing to argue/dispute the facts. Happened very quickly.

It is somewhat of a similar process that our country is going through now. Once you see the incontrovertible cell phone video evidence, most decent folks (i.e. excluding Petey Brown) recognize and admit the problem. And start figuring out how to deal with it.

The TJ conundrum is fascinating. Before trying to erase him, one would have to admit that without him we would have no country with the ability to erase anything (perhaps still part of the empire and having tea at 4PM everyday). Like, Washington, he was a man of his times and took an ENORMOUS risk to his personal safety to fight against arguably the largest power on the planet. Had they lost, unlike the Confederates we are currently talking about, they would have been strung up one by one or together in the nearest public square as examples of what happens to those who dare to rock the boat.

That said, another tidbit is also instructional - for such a smart guy he could not make a dime farming his estate with unlimited FREE LABOR.

[HooDat]

Not wrong think? Ain’t kneeling the wrong think? Didn’t he use his platform to silence dissent in then NFL?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-trumps ... 1527685321

have you even read 1984? seriously?

and to my point: https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice ... en-debate/

[6ftstick]

Not wrong think? Ain’t kneeling the wrong think? Didn’t he use his platform to silence dissent in then NFL?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-trumps ... 1527685321

have you even read 1984? seriously?

and to my point: https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice ... en-debate/

Whover controls the past controls the future. Whoever controls the present controls the past.

[old salt]

because no one warned anyone that once the Left went after Confederates, surely they would stop there and not go after Lincoln Washington and Jefferson...

I can assure you that almost all of us UVA grads (of all colors) are just fine with keeping TJ around. He's deeply woven into our school and always will be. His face is on my degree. We recognize all aspects (positive and negative) of that association. By the way, I highly recommend taking a tour of the Grounds and Monticello sometime if you have the chance.

They both do a great job (now) of telling all sides of the story, which is about as American as it gets. In the past, the story was definitely whitewashed -- which was simply inaccurate as a historical matter.

TBD what happens with W&L -- that's up to them. Personally, I'd keep Lee, since he served as president of the school and the name was changed back in 1870. So a very different thing than renaming some random middle school after REL in the 1950s as a way to show the black folks that Jim Crow was in charge.

P.S. Petey -- how's that Democrat wife of yours doing?

… strange how folks who have a relationship with / affinity for TJ are cool with the recognition of his flaws, its only the folks paying lip service losing their sh!t.

I have an in-law that’s related to old Tom. Nobody cares.

Is it the branch of the family which will be eligible for reparations ?

[Peter Brown]

How many times do folks have to come with the slippery slope argument.

It's not an argument. It's pure conjecture. e.g. If we allow for gay marriage, next, people will want to marry their pets. This statement is possibly true but... Far from true. It's not an argument. It's an anxiety-based fantasy.

We allowed for gay marriage—didn't get "marry their pets," yet, but we did get 11 dozen genders instead of 2.

https://dudeasks.com/how-many-genders-a ... e-in-2020/

You allowed nothing! The gay community fought for it and won. You allowed it

Was using Matnum PIs vocabulary. Pay attention

… learn some history! Modern gender studies pre-date the gay marriage SCOTUS decision by decades. Gay marriage did not lead to "11 dozen genders".

When did allowing men who wear dresses and use young girls bathrooms happen? Did that predate the gay marriage decisions too?

men have been using women's bathrooms probably since forever. I used a few when I was in college. So yes, men have been using women's bathrooms since before modern gender studies and long before the SCOTUS decision. I have seen women in men's bathrooms over as long a period of time.

oh the outrage! No one seemed to care until those BAD GAY PEOPLE came out of the closet. They should just go back, or better yet catch a disease and die eh Peanut Butters?

… I am still wondering how that elk is doing. Do you really care about the elk?

Interesting circumstances you grew up in.