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Why are statues of abolitionists being torn down as well?

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Brictoria
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22 May 2021, 2:20 am

Mikah wrote:
What they did is irrelevant. What matters is the colour of their skin.


That seems to be a common approach now - Judging people on the colour of their skin, not on the content of their character (generally in the name of "anti-racism").



chris1989
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22 May 2021, 11:41 am

funeralxempire wrote:
Mikah wrote:
What they did is irrelevant. What matters is the colour of their skin.


So who targeted a Frederick Douglass statue because of the colour of his skin? :chin:


Yes possibly



funeralxempire
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22 May 2021, 11:44 am

chris1989 wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
Mikah wrote:
What they did is irrelevant. What matters is the colour of their skin.


So who targeted a Frederick Douglass statue because of the colour of his skin? :chin:


Yes possibly


Who's yes?


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chris1989
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22 May 2021, 11:49 am

funeralxempire wrote:
chris1989 wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
Mikah wrote:
What they did is irrelevant. What matters is the colour of their skin.


So who targeted a Frederick Douglass statue because of the colour of his skin? :chin:


Yes possibly


Who's yes?


At the moment the perpetrators of the frederick douglass statue being torn down haven't been caught yet and no one knows who they are at the moment



funeralxempire
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22 May 2021, 11:53 am

chris1989 wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
chris1989 wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
Mikah wrote:
What they did is irrelevant. What matters is the colour of their skin.


So who targeted a Frederick Douglass statue because of the colour of his skin? :chin:


Yes possibly


Who's yes?


At the moment the perpetrators of the frederick douglass statue being torn down haven't been caught yet.


If we don't know who did it we don't know their motives and it's dishonest for posters to act like it was definitely the fault of civil rights activists even if it was retaliation by white supremacists because, hey it's all ethnic tension with the implication that ethnic tension is always the fault of anti-racist activists and not the racism that motivates them towards activism.


Mikah wrote:
To clarify: I'm suggesting it's all a front, as most things like this are these days, for plain and simple "ethnic tension" as the BBC might diplomatically call it. An abolitionist statue being torn down by a pissed off white person would still count.


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22 May 2021, 12:12 pm

Most likely just teenagers on a rampage.


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22 May 2021, 12:38 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
Can you provide a specific example we can investigate?



Statue Of Lincoln With Formerly Enslaved Man At His Feet Is Removed In Boston

December 29, 20203:44 PM ET


Image

Quote:
Even Frederick Douglass – who spoke at the Washington, D.C., monument's dedication in 1876 – had his reservations about the statue.

"Admirable as is the monument by Mr. Ball in Lincoln park, it does not, as it seems to me, tell the whole truth," Douglass wrote in a letter that came to light this summer. He continued, "and perhaps no one monument could be made to tell the whole truth of any subject which it might be designed to illustrate."

Douglass noted that the monument omits mention of the role President Ulysses S. Grant played in enfranchising former enslaved people. He also said memorials should aspire to portray Black people in a new light.

"The negro here, though rising, is still on his knees and nude," Douglass wrote. "What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man."




https://www.npr.org/2020/12/29/95120641 ... -in-boston



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22 May 2021, 12:41 pm

The_Znof wrote:

Quote:
Even Frederick Douglass – who spoke at the Washington, D.C., monument's dedication in 1876 – had his reservations about the statue.

"Admirable as is the monument by Mr. Ball in Lincoln park, it does not, as it seems to me, tell the whole truth," Douglass wrote in a letter that came to light this summer. He continued, "and perhaps no one monument could be made to tell the whole truth of any subject which it might be designed to illustrate."

Douglass noted that the monument omits mention of the role President Ulysses S. Grant played in enfranchising former enslaved people. He also said memorials should aspire to portray Black people in a new light.

"The negro here, though rising, is still on his knees and nude," Douglass wrote. "What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man."



I'd say the quote provided describes what is problematic about that example pretty effectively.


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22 May 2021, 12:43 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
with the implication that ethnic tension is always the fault of anti-racist activists and not the racism that motivates them towards activism.


I wouldn't blame it on them, most of them don't even know what they are doing. The mistakes were made long before you or I were born. We're just the ones who have to live with or through it.


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22 May 2021, 1:08 pm

Mikah wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
with the implication that ethnic tension is always the fault of anti-racist activists and not the racism that motivates them towards activism.


I wouldn't blame it on them, most of them don't even know what they are doing. The mistakes were made long before you or I were born. We're just the ones who have to live with or through it.


I agree that the mistakes were made before our lifetimes, but they weren't made by civil rights activists. They were made by people who contributed to the problem, not by those who sought to address it. Obviously it's not perfectly binary and there's people who have contributions to both columns (take George Custer, for example) but none of that lends any truth to the canard that civil rights activists are the real problem for discussing long-standing problems.

If fragility causes people to get upset when these issues are discussed perhaps they should stop sympathizing with the perpetrators. That fragility is why that canard exists. People get caught up on viewing it as team white vs. team black when actually it's team human rights violators vs. team humanity. If one sympathizes with humanity there's no false feelings of guilt that cause fragility anymore. But first people need to take off the team white jersey.

We'll live through this and ideally we'll ensure future generations have less of an issue to deal with.


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22 May 2021, 1:16 pm

^ Alas, we have different ideas of what the real problem is.


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22 May 2021, 1:18 pm

Mikah wrote:
^ Alas, we have different ideas of what the real problem is.


So what exactly is the real problem?


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Mikah
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22 May 2021, 1:38 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
Mikah wrote:
^ Alas, we have different ideas of what the real problem is.


So what exactly is the real problem?


That, in this world, there is no lasting unity for Man - at least nothing beyond the superficial. Sufficiently dissimilar people will compete, displace, and war against each other given proximity.


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funeralxempire
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22 May 2021, 1:53 pm

Mikah wrote:
funeralxempire wrote:
Mikah wrote:
^ Alas, we have different ideas of what the real problem is.


So what exactly is the real problem?


That, in this world, there is no lasting unity for Man - at least nothing beyond the superficial. Sufficiently dissimilar people will compete, displace, and war against each other given proximity.


People will compete all of the time and will form subgroups all the time, I don't argue that. I fail to see how that makes racism not a problem worth addressing. Skin colour probably shouldn't be a relevant dissimilarity.


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22 May 2021, 2:19 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
People will compete all of the time and will form subgroups all the time, I don't argue that. I fail to see how that makes racism not a problem worth addressing.


Racism in this context is just a weapon of the competition and war between peoples I mentioned - a product of diversity and proximity. There is no addressing it as such without addressing the root cause. As I intimated earlier, this modern trend of attacking statues is not really an attack on racism, it's an attack on an ethnic group by attacking their history - a well known tactic with a long and well documented history of its own. The Left might call it or at least recognise "racism" as a dog whistle if they were on the other side.

funeralxempire wrote:
Skin colour probably shouldn't be a relevant dissimilarity.


Wishing doesn't make it so unfortunately. Recognising one's genetic kin through physical features is deeply ingrained within all humans and gives birth to very powerful identities.

Edit: typos and clarified language


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22 May 2021, 3:17 pm

Mikah wrote:
As I intimated earlier, this modern trend of attacking statues is not really an attack on racism, it's an attack on an ethnic group by attacking their history


And if that history is racist and still celebrated? Are you saying the society cannot reevaluate its position on racism and white supremacy?