The States: North Dakota is Still the Worst

[Handyman]

Re: The States: North Dakota is Still the Worst

Of course we can change it, and as I've previously posted, the name of these objects is entirely irrelevant.

But, there are real world financial consequences for making those changes. There are people and businesses that identify by that street name or that lake name. Maybe they have to change signs and business cards and websites, etc... Maybe they have to chisel the word "Coffman" out of 100 year old granite. I have no idea of the real impact.

If the student union at the U of M was named Adolph Hitler Memorial Union people would be like, w t f?

I didn't attend the U of M but I've been in the memorial union many times. I knew it was called Coffman, but I had no idea who that was, whether it was a man or woman, or what their past may have been like. All around me I would see black kids and brown kids and yellow kids and red kids and white kids sitting and socializing or eating some food or studying and not a single one of them gave a second thought as to the name of the building.

If that's the case, then is it really that bad?

I went to the U, loved Coffman Union and had zero idea who the person was. I am not sure how I feel on the subject because I no longer go there but if I was there I might want it changed I dont know.

[Handyman]

Re: The States: North Dakota is Still the Worst

Whereas pretty much all of Calhoun's "accomplishments" are virtually inseparable from the cause of slavery and its westward expansion.

No that is true which is why I never cared they changed the name to Bde Maka Ska

My questioning of trix isnt cause I am glad it stayed Calhoun it is because being pro slavery isnt a good lens by which to judge these things imho.

[Handyman]

Re: The States: North Dakota is Still the Worst

Let's say there is a beautiful old tree on a college campus, famous for decades for sportsball victory celebrations, iconic graduation photos, and fumbling midnight trysts.

One day a historian realizes it was used for lynchings long before the college was founded. The black student association protests. The liberals on campus demand action. Finally the student council recommends the tree be cut down because its presence is deeply offensive to many students and visitors.

(Mostly white, rich) alumni protest and threaten to withhold money. Environmentalists are split -- everybody agrees it's not the poor tree's fault. Everybody agrees that the removal of the tree will cost the campus a tremendous amount of history; all of it, prior to the revelation, positive -- all of it shared by all students of whatever color.

What has been seen cannot be unseen.

So is it your contention then that any tree used to lynch Black People should be cut down? Honest question not ripping you.

Me personally, I would rather the tree stay as a reminder of both the good and the bad. That is a living breathing teachable moment.

What is it we always say, those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Memorials to evil are part of the past and if we get rid of them history dies as well. Mush easier to forget a fact from a book that happened 200 years ago than it is to ignore that which is right in front of your face.

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: The States: North Dakota is Still the Worst

What is it we always say, those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it. Memorials to evil are part of the past and if we get rid of them history dies as well. Mush easier to forget a fact from a book that happened 200 years ago than it is to ignore that which is right in front of your face.

Fine, we keep the statues. But once a year everyone in the vicinity is allowed to drop trou and water the soil under them, without penalty.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The States: North Dakota is Still the Worst

Fine, we keep the statues. But once a year everyone in the vicinity is allowed to drop trou and water the soil under them, without penalty.

I like it

[Handyman]

Re: The States: North Dakota is Still the Worst

Fine, we keep the statues. But once a year everyone in the vicinity is allowed to drop trou and water the soil under them, without penalty.

Wont hear me argue (hell I see some road trips in my future)

I dont want statues in most places (battlefields I think they are warranted or some other major significance) but I also dont think you have to destroy everything from that era. I mean we still can tour Robert E. Lee's house at Arlington I think that makes sense. There is no right or wrong answer here because times are changing rather quickly.

My worry is this: if we start to get rid of everything that reminds of the racist past of America it becomes that much easier for school districts in Texas to leave slavery out of the curriculum (or white wash it to "forced servitude" or some other name) and have it stick. We need to have reminders of the bad to fight against it in the future.

And this goes without saying but that is just my opinion as I said I dont think anyone is really "right" in this discussion.

[Kepler]

Re: The States: North Dakota is Still the Worst

So is it your contention then that any tree used to lynch Black People should be cut down? Honest question not ripping you.

Me personally, I would rather the tree stay as a reminder of both the good and the bad. That is a living breathing teachable moment.

I'm saying that the people who feel real pain from the symbolism of it should be listened to. You and I don't get to dictate to them from our position where it's all just theory and abstraction.

Most of the bad in this world comes from safe people explaining patiently and rationally to victims why their suffering is no big deal.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: The States: North Dakota is Still the Worst

Wont hear me argue (hell I see some road trips in my future)

I dont want statues in most places (battlefields I think they are warranted or some other major significance) but I also dont think you have to destroy everything from that era. I mean we still can tour Robert E. Lee's house at Arlington I think that makes sense. There is no right or wrong answer here because times are changing rather quickly.

My worry is this: if we start to get rid of everything that reminds of the racist past of America it becomes that much easier for school districts in Texas to leave slavery out of the curriculum (or white wash it to "forced servitude" or some other name) and have it stick. We need to have reminders of the bad to fight against it in the future.

And this goes without saying but that is just my opinion as I said I dont think anyone is really "right" in this discussion.

I think we can differentiate between a monument honoring someone and historical places.

A statue honoring Robert E. Lee is different than his house.
A statue honoring Hitler won't be found in Germany, but you can still visit historical Nazi sites.

[FadeToBlack&Gold]

Re: The States: North Dakota is Still the Worst

Plenty of statues of Lenin still lying around in some sympathetic parts of the former Eastern Bloc, even though authoritarian communist/socialist regimes have only killed about 100 million people in the last century...

[GrinCDXX]

Plenty of statues of Lenin still lying around in some sympathetic parts of the former Eastern Bloc, even though authoritarian communist/socialist regimes have only killed about 100 million people in the last century...

I'm confused, why would Lenin have to answer for the violence of future regimes? I'm not a Lenin expert, did he advocate for anything like what those future murderous regimes did?

[Kepler]

Re: The States: North Dakota is Still the Worst

I'm confused, why would Lenin have to answer for the violence of future regimes? I'm not a Lenin expert, did he advocate for anything like what those future murderous regimes did?

Oh, yeah.

Marx' hands are clean. Lenin's... good strategist and excellent writer but maybe not such a nice man.

Lenin had sent telegrams "to introduce mass terror" in Nizhny Novgorod in response to a suspected civilian uprising there, and to "crush" landowners in Penza who resisted, sometimes violently, the requisitioning of their grain by military detachments:

Comrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity ... You must make example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bast-rds, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday's telegram. Do all this so that for miles around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves that we are killing the bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so ... Yours, Lenin. P.S. Find tougher people.

...

On 15 October, the leading Chekist Gleb Bokii, summing up the officially ended Red Terror, reported that in Petrograd 800 alleged enemies had been shot and another 6,229 imprisoned. Casualties in the first two months were between 10,000 and 15,000 based on lists of summarily executed people published in newspaper Cheka Weekly and other official press.

[GrinCDXX]

Oh, yeah.

Marx' hands are clean. Lenin's... good strategist and excellent writer but maybe not such a nice man.

Ah ok, I forgot about Marx and in his absence reassigned Lenin to that mostly academic role.

edit: yeah, he seems like a nice guy.

[joecct]

Re: The States: North Dakota is Still the Worst

Perhaps this might temper the tantrums

The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least. The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;—was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? Instructions had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier's salutation, from the "order arms" to the old "carry"—the marching salute. Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual,—honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!

— Joshua L. Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies, pp. 260–61

[Kepler]

Re: The States: North Dakota is Still the Worst

Another place dealing with changing views of the past.

[Slap Shot]

Re: The States: North Dakota is Still the Worst

As far as I can tell, the only way I "lost" was as a tax paying citizen of Minnesota.

https://www.missourieconomy.org/indi...ost_of_living/
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-sta.../affordability
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money...tate/34567549/
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/22/amer...e-in-2018.html
https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gal...ed/1901557002/
https://www.homesnacks.net/these-are...merica-123067/
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings
https://realestate.usnews.com/real-e...he-us?slide=21
https://www.businessinsider.com/top-...arizona-tie-20
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/real...PhkXO#image=47
https://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk.../#1f3a88331a80

Some of the above is subjective and ymmv but taxation doesn't seem to be an issue when factoring in a overabundance of measurements by significant number of studies.