22 Nov 2015

Who Will Be Next?

, , , ,

WoodrowWilson

Geoffrey R. Stone wonders out loud:

[I]f Woodrow Wilson is to be obliterated from Princeton because his views about race were backward and offensive by contemporary standards, then what are we to do with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson, all of whom actually owned slaves? What are we to do with Abraham Lincoln, who declared in 1958 that “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,” and that “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people”?

What are we to do with Franklin Roosevelt, who ordered the internment of 120,000 persons of Japanese descent? With Dwight Eisenhower, who issued an Executive Order declaring homosexuals a serious security risk? With Bill Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act? With Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both of whom opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage?

And what are we to do with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who once opined in a case involving compulsory sterilization that “three generations of imbeciles is enough”? With Leland Stanford, after whom Stanford University is named who, as governor of California, lobbied for the restriction of Chinese immigration, explaining to the state legislature in 1862 that “the presence of numbers of that degraded and distinct people would exercise a deleterious effect upon the superior race”?

And what are we do with all of the presidents, politicians, academic leaders, industrial leaders, jurists, and social reformers who at one time or another in American history denied women’s right to equality, opposed women’s suffrage, and insisted that a woman’s proper place was “in the home”? And on and on and on.

StumbleUpon.com
2 Feedbacks on "Who Will Be Next?"

SDD

How ironic, since Wilson is probably the first quintessential progressive president.
But, Off With Their Heads. All of Them.



GoneWithTheWind

I am sure getting tired of changing all these street names to MLK blvd. Can we change them all back now?

It is interesting that at the height of slavery in the U.S. there were about 600,000 slaves and about 10,000 slaver owners. The entire U.S. population then was about 30 million people so 29,990,000 Americans were NOT slaver owners. Additionally most Southern slave owners fought in the civil war and most of them died. Yet a white people are tarred with this descendants of slave owners brush.
On the other hand slavery was common in Africa, literally all black African tribes took slaves. It is ironic than that it seems likely that all blacks are descendants of slave owners while 99% of whites are not.

So I ask again can we get the name MLK blvd removed from our streets yet?



Comments

Please Leave a Comment!




Please note: Comments may be moderated. It may take a while for them to show on the page.
















Feeds
Entries (RSS)
Comments (RSS)
Feed Shark