this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 183 points 7 months ago (5 children)

"When I look at Robert E Lee, the comparisons to him and George Washington are immense," he said, noting Washington also owned slaves.

Not the same.

"I wonder when George Washington's name and things like that will then have to come off of things."

One helped found this country. Another fought this country.

"But to be taught that everyone who fought for the Confederacy, or did this, or did that, is a racist slave holder, that's all or nothing, and that really isn't doing history justice," he added.

We really need to teach better in history class. THAT is where we need to stop removing things, not statues and dedications to traitors of the country. He doesn't understand WHY the Confederacy started the war, does he? Maybe he should dive into the declarations from the various states on why they seceded. It's plainly mentioned in almost all of them.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 7 months ago (2 children)

One helped found this country.

Canadians don't have a cult of personality around our first Prime Minister the way Americans do around George Washington.

Canada was apparently founded on uniting white Europeans to eradicate the "savage" indigenous populations here.

So... founding the country can be overlooked to an extent if the person was otherwise an asshole.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago

There's a difference between founding a country by winning a war against a monarchy and founding a country when a CEO sucks a monarch off.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

And Canada still continues that tradition today, don't worry. Y'all might acknowledge your First Nations people better, but that doesn't mean Canadian police and the RCMP especially hesitate when they see a chance to shoot some indigenous people.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

No doubt. Our police aren't quite as gun happy as the US cops, but they still find their own ways to murder people they consider to be lesser than them if a gun might be too egregious for a given situation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

We really need to teach better in history class. THAT is where we need to stop removing things, not statues and dedications to traitors of the country

Did you miss the insane freakouts by conservatives related to critical race theory?? They refuse to allow history to be taught, it's not that we need to "do better" like we've made some mistakes, these are malicious purposeful actions.

They prefer to teach this kind of history:

The Florida Board of Education approved new social studies standards July 19 following a law passed by the legislature in 2022, known as "Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees Act" or the "Stop W.O.K.E. Act."

The law bans workplaces and schools from teaching that anyone must feel guilt based on their race as a result of actions by others in the past. Earlier this year, Florida rejected a new high school Advanced Placement course on Black studies.

The 216-page standards document covers a broad sweep of Black history, along with topics such as the Holocaust, world history and geography. It includes different standards for elementary, middle and high school students.

The part of Florida’s new standards that Harris was citing is for grades six through eight. It says:

"Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation)."

The controversial part is in this "benchmark clarification" about slave labor: "Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/jul/24/kamala-harris/do-Florida-school-standards-say-enslaved-people/

THAT is where we need to stop removing things, not statues and dedications to traitors of the country

I wholeheartedly DISAGREE. We do NOT NEED monuments to literal fucking traitors. Should we put up a goddamn statue of Benedict Arnold too?? Jesus Christ. Do black people really need to see the face of the oppressors of their ancestors every day?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

My statement agreed with you, saying we should stop removing (or start including) uncomfortable lessons of history in schools, and remove the objects that as you say were put there long after the war not as a memorial but as a reminder (and a promise to go back if they can) of the oppression. I'm not sure how you read it as the opposite, I called them traitors.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I remember spending almost an hour reading some of the declarations of the states, and I remember Texas writing that they were given the right to own slaves by God, and that they will fight to defend that that right against anything 🙄. They couldn't have been more clear.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Not the same.

More so than we like to admit. Washington was a loyalist until the Dunmore Proclamation threatened his human chattel.

Lee broke for the Confederacy with the election of Lincoln.

Both these men were fundamentally driven by their economic conditions. The difference between Washington and Lee is that Washington won.

He doesn’t understand WHY the Confederacy started the war, does he?

The regional industrial power threatened the South's economic position as a confederacy of slave holders. That's what got Washington, Jefferson, and a host of other Southern planters on board, too.

[–] [email protected] 125 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Chandra Manning, a professor of history at Georgetown University, said the naming of schools after Confederate soldiers really took off in the 1950s after the government mandated that whites-only segregated schools accept black pupils, as a way to make black students feel unwelcome.

"It wasn't a widespread trend until the Brown versus Board of Education decision in 1954, which mandated the desegregation of public schools," she told the BBC. "And it was after that decision that the number and the frequency of schools named for Confederate generals quite dramatically and suddenly accelerated.

If your excuse for keeping this shit and the statues and everything around is “culture”, then your fucking “culture” is nothing more than just being an asshole. That’s it.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago

Pretty fucking short lived culture if slap bracelets were around longer than it

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

feel unwelcome.

This is the basis of systematic oppression in US.

  • Freedom of speech to treat minority like shit who will likely be lynched if they speak up in the past. Now when minorities do speak up, and can't be silenced with "traditional means", it's woke.
  • Guns to deter minorities who can't afford to. Now minorities can own guns, use police as cartels to kill them with impunity and be promoted.
  • Taxes for poor people, and cuts for the rich.
  • Two justice systems based on class
  • Separation of religion and government, but only for non-christian beliefs
  • Portrays itself as science leader, does not really give a fuck about climate change.
  • Portrays itself as defenders of democracy, has a well documented history of destroying democracies around the world.
  • Supports genocide when it's favorable to them.

They know how to oppress by seeming altruistic with false sense of progress, that only benefit itself, the racists and the rich.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago

If your excuse for keeping this shit and the statues and everything around is “culture”, then your fucking “culture” is nothing more than just being an asshole. That’s it.

As evidence: Their current Messiah. Their humor (always at someone else's expense). Their obsession with "liberal tears" and doing anything that makes "the left" upset. Their conquest against "woke" (as in: giving a shit about other peoples experience.) etc...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 42 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

For people who love history so much they seem awfully timid about tagging Lee for what he was: a traitor and a loser.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 7 months ago

why would you want to name a school after a bunch of losers?

oh thats right; racism. got keep it racist.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago (1 children)

"Muh heritage" (of racism)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Long storied tradition of profiting off the labor of others. It's the American way.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

Traitor Jackson High School.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (3 children)

One of the people leading the charge to restore the schools' names is Mike Scheibe, a father of two students at Ashby Lee and Civil War re-enactor, who is also the spokesperson for the Coalition for Better Schools, a local organisation that campaigned for the school board to change the names back.

. . . "But to be taught that everyone who fought for the Confederacy, or did this, or did that, is a racist slave holder, that's all or nothing, and that really isn't doing history justice," he added.

Well, I’ll give him the point that he didn’t use the word “heritage”, so. Good job with that. However he did mention something about justice.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

Wonder which side he cosplays for

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

At first I was like "is this oniony?" Then it clicked and I was all, "oof this isn't pulling any punches"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

If it weren't for the Virginia Senate, it would be just as bad as Texas and Alabama.