This is a lone, seated figure that has presided over Bascom Mall for decades and is inscribed on the hearts of those who have spent time — as I did for more than 30 years — at Wisconsin's beautiful university. I've taken many photographs of the statue, but I'll give you Lincoln in winter:
The Channel 3000 article quotes Nalah McWhorter, the president of the Wisconsin Black Student Union:
“He was also very publicly anti-Black. Just because he was anti-slavery doesn’t mean he was pro-Black. He said a lot in his presidential campaigns. His fourth presidential campaign speech, he said that he believes there should be an inferior and superior, and he believes white people should be the superior race.”UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank responded, saying that "Lincoln’s legacy is complex and contains actions which, 150 years later, appear flawed," but that "Lincoln is widely acknowledged as one of our greatest presidents," because he issued the "Emancipation Proclamation, persuaded Congress to adopt the 13th Amendment ending slavery and preserved the Union during the Civil War."
McWhorter rejects that response: "For them to want to protect a breathless, lifeless statue more than they care about the experiences of their black students that have been crying out for help for the past 50, 60 years, it’s just a horrible feeling as a student, as a black and brown student on campus."
Who can balance the caring for the statue against the caring for students? These things — assuming we could assign weights to them — are not on opposite sides of a balance. We can leave the statue where it is — do nothing about it — and concentrate our efforts on helping students as much as possible. Why put these things in conflict, as if to leave the statue alone is to express callous disregard for students? Because demands need to be made — made about tangible objects that can be acted upon?
It's so much harder to figure out how to really help students. But giving in to a demand like this will not help. It will only set the stage for the creation of another demand to do something that can be done right now. Acquiring a real education cannot happen instantaneously, nor is it something that occurs in a theatrical way before the eyes of an assembled crowd. It's complex and subtle and never truly accomplished. But if the university doesn't dedicate itself to real education, what does any of this matter?
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346 comments:
1 – 200 of 346 Newer› Newest»Tell the poor students to grow up.
If a statue of Lincoln sitting on a chair threatens you perhaps it is you that has a problem.
When they let the "kids" get away with anything......
Whats the odds of a certain person (Inga), responding to this particular post?
Power-craving loons feel the adults yielding, yielding; gotta keep it up now, who knows how far we can ride this wave!
The "looming" statue was paid for entirely by freed slaves and Frederick Douglass spoke at its dedication, it shows rather than looming an image of the way slave holders treated black Americans. To object to that depiction is to whitewash the slave holders.
At a university, you help student by giving them an outstanding education.
This isn't about help, or eve Abraham Lincoln. This is about power- about getting people to do what you want them to do for the victory of it. It's very cultish behavior.
The bitter fruit from ceding academe to the Liberal Left has come to fruition.
The collapse of "higher" education cannot come soon enough for me.
Burn it down, and make the rubble bounce.
Free speech shows it’s value. We learn what they Actually want. And it’s is not equal. It is black supremacy. It’s their turn for the next 150 years to make it equal.
If the University caves to the students on this, then there is no hope.
Rebecca Blank should know that this will pass. The students are only there for four years. She should be there longer.
Who are "the students". How many are simply cowed or hiding away because they don't want to be bothered? Living in a world where a wrong word can get you ostracized or beat up is what left wing democracy looks like. Don't expect the faculty to step up, they are probably happy servants of the totalitarian state.
Was he pro-Life? The risk of a progressive condition is real. McWhorter doesn't want reconciliation, but retributive and redistributive change, including diversity and exclusion (e.g. affirmative discrimination, color quotas, color judgments), and for people of color (e.g. white, brown, yellow, orange) to kneel and clean their feet in an act of social justice and contrition.
Has anyone pointed out that the UW chapter of BLM is in fact racist? Anti-white racist? Your mayor is apparently too cowed to even think such a thing.
Dump it in Lake Mendota.
Lincoln shouldn’t have freed Blacks. He unleashed a filthy, violent, evil race that needs leashing.
Althouse, was it intentional that you are showing us a bunch of snowflakes?
Ann, I have explained it several times. Iconoclasm is about only one thing, destroying the symbols that others value as a way of dominating them. Your question "but Lincoln??" shows you don't realize this yet. They will come for your family photographs eventually.
None of this is new folks. Famous examples include Crowell's army, who did indeed come even for family chapels and portraits.
... black students have been crying out for help for the past 50, 60 years, it’s just a horrible feeling as a student, as a black and brown student on campus
Even after the university administration complies the demand and removes the statue, colored students still will fail academically if they cannot and will not read at the university level.
Students who read inadequately will not succeed academically at a university even if all the campus's statues are removed, all the buildings are renamed and all Halloween costumes are forbidden.
Everyone would benefit from reading Frederick Douglass' oration at the installation of the Lincoln Emancipation sculpture in DC right after the war (and Lincoln's death). It's posted today on Powerline and specifically talks about Lincoln's flaws and strengths related to the abolition duty, with a very cogent analysis of why he had to pursue the retention of the Union over abolition at least initially.
We should understand our history, and if so, no one in their right mind would want to be tearing down ANY statue of Lincoln.
Affirmative action is an admission that blacks ARE inferior. Why else would we need affirmative action?
I know how you feel, Ms. Althouse.
It seems like only yesterday that my mother finally pulled that whole rubber mask thing off - with that gorgeous red hair - and revealed that she was actually a giant, shrimp-headed alien named Twil.
"For them to want to protect a breathless, lifeless statue more than they care about the experiences of their black students that have been crying out for help for the past 50, 60 years, it’s just a horrible feeling as a student, as a black and brown student on campus."
McWhorter makes it clear that a campus with a statue of Lincoln is unacceptable. Either Lincoln goes, or McWhorter goes.
I think I see a potential solution, but let's clarify this. Does this McWhorter person own the property in question?
Expel Mcwhorter. Now!
I have a question! We just celebrated Juneteenth which to my understanding is celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation. So if the writer of the Emancipation Proclamation is such a "racist", why are we celebrating Juneteenth??
I'm just wondering when the student's will wake up and realize that James Madison, 4th President of the US and namesake of Madison, WI, was a slave owner his whole life. Where's the petition to change the name of Wisconsin's state capitol? Where does the redress of history end?
"For them to want to protect a breathless, lifeless statue more than they care about the experiences of their black students that have been crying out for help for the past 50, 60 years, it’s just a horrible feeling as a student, as a black and brown student on campus."
She should really take this up with the Democrat Party, not with Lincoln. She is horribly misinformed. Can one ever be "pro-black" enough in today's world? Imagine using her standards to judge the thinking of those in the 19th or 18th centuries. My word- how does she address black on black crime today? Right now, in this country? Or black on black slavery in Africa? Today. right now. Are they "pro-black" enough? Or are they OK because...
Democrats fought to keep slavery. They were willing to break up the country to keep slavery. They then started the KKK. Followed by Jim Crow laws. Followed by a tepid vote on the Voting Rights Act. Followed by years of enslaving the black communities in the cities and foisting on them horrible schools, crime, poverty- as Democrats have run all of our major and most of our mid-sized cities for 50-100 years. And most of all: Democrats are owned by the Teachers Unions. They resist charter schools or school vouchers. It's always Republicans who fight for it, and always Democrats (and their union buddies)who defeat it.
They are picking a fight with a figure loved by most all Americans. They want to stick a big finger in the eye of everyone in America. Are there any adults left at UW?
...that have been crying out for help for the past 50, 60 years...
..and yet keep voting for Democrats claiming to want to help them.
Ann, I am really reading disillusionment in your comments this week. Or maybe it's disappointment. Your University and your City are not changing. They had already changed. You're just getting to see the death throes of it.
It is disheartening. Everywhere.
Lincoln in Winter fits well these days.
Lincoln was a trial lawyer who took on the slaves case for 10+ years with 90% of the population against him. Trump has had it easy compared to Lincoln. But with a lucky secession war that was finally Won by Grant and Sherman he beat The 90%. And then as his stay fee they killed him. Saying they feel that they were insulted by Lincoln is astronomically insane.
their black students that have been crying out for help for the past 50, 60 years years, it’s just a horrible feeling as a student, as a black and brown student on campus
Big babies, crying for help. Give 'em a ba-ba.
However, they are partially correct about Lincoln, but another "however" is that the existence of statues shouldn't depend on how the depicted person felt about blacks.
Why would a student choose to attend a university in a city named after a slaveholder in the first place?
I have a question! We just celebrated Juneteenth and, in fact, there are calls to make it a national holiday. To my understanding, it is a celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Well if the writer of the Emancipation Proclamation is such a "racist", why are we celebrating Juneteenth let alone considering it as a national holiday?
Well maybe she should fuck right off. Find somewhere else to go to school. The world owes you nothing. I owe you nothing,
This movement, whatever it is or was, has lost my interest.
Show of hands- how many of you honestly thought this was going to stop after all the Confederate statues were down?
If the school won’t take it down someone else will.
BTW, the McWhorter's pronoun is apparently "she". Not all that woke, I'm afraid, someone needs to slap the bitch upside her cis-privileged face-twat. Anyway. she's right about Lincoln. He was perfectly aware of the huge mistake the Southerners had made by importing large numbers of African negroes to the Americas, and the immense problems that would ensue if they were freed from bondage. That he freed only the slaves in the Confederacy, as an act of war, is a good indication of what he expected from Emancipation. Truman faced a similar choice, and made a similar decision.
MayBee, GMTA. In addition to that cultish behavior, there IS something else underlying all this. Eliminate all "The Man's" history and then we've cleared the decks to install the new order we want: we can all get paid off the efforts of the few smart ones who are always around. And the not-as-smart ones who will still work hard, for some reason. We can just keep guilting them into it! So cool.
Socialism, communism, totalitarianism -- or just plain farm smarts: make the mules do the work, we eat the cherry pie. We are gettin over! Seems so easy, why haven't those honkeys ever tried this? Oh, they have, they did; now we are going to be the masters, and they are going to be the slaves. We'll call it social justice.
Does anyone think that Ms. McWhorter will be satisfied when Joe Biden is president?
I don't either.
"inscribed on the hearts of those who have spent time — as I did for more than 30 years — at Wisconsin's beautiful university."
The universities ached for the day this monster would arise.
No one could have seen this coming.
I mean, half the country saw this coming.
The other half laughed when Trump saw this coming.
Just because Marx and his political philosophy expresses the goal of a peaceful, prosperous egalitarian utopia, does NOT excuse the uniformly hellhole Marxist governments of the past 100+ years, who killed over 100,000,000 of their own people to maintain their totalitarian control. China is still a Marxist hellhole, and most of the previously Marxist countries are struggling to avoid remaining hellholes.
Denounce your Marxist ideology, you darling idiots. Doing so is like removing the beam from your own eye, before demanding to remove the mote from mine.
Can you imagine telling your grandchildren that you didn’t tear down any statues in 2020?
How will you prove you were one of the good white people?
So you want to decide a man's character 150 years ago on the basis of your preferred standard today. How will you react when we decide your fate based on our standard tomorrow?
Most of us grownups learned long ago that education starts after University.
While a state representative in Illinois, Lincoln voted against a resolution condemning abolitionists. In his one term in Congress, he introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.
I wonder if my ancestors and those of my wife who fought in the Union Army to end slavery were pro-black enough for Ms. McWhorter.
Where is the admin who will tell this obnoxious kid to get the fuck out and go home?
For a while I traveled a lot by car with a certain black lady, and we stopped by Gettysburg, which is near my mother’s house, and she was really touched and wanted to have her picture taken next to the statue there of Lincoln. Of course there was one of those annoying costumed pests there who tried to horn into the picture so that he could demand a “tip” but we got the picture without him and without paying him.
This is about saying that there is no forgiveness for slavery no matter what and that the entire American system needs to be discarded, starting with free speech and secret ballots, the rest will fall into place naturally for them then.
Once you've been indoctrinated to the view that the United States is a fundamentally evil country, its ideals a fraud and its history one of unrelieved blood and oppression, then everything is subject to being torn down.
In the very near future, we will all be Confederates for 15 minutes.
You'll be shocked, shocked I tells ya, that Nalah McWhorter, the president of the Wisconsin Black Student Union, is an anti-white racist:
"I am petitioning to place a multicultural space within the Wisconsin School of Business. The intentionality is to cultivate a “safe space” for students, staff, and faculty of color."
This was funny: "We are plastered all over the walls, and brochures of the WSB, but are not truly heard or prioritized."
It’s time for the whole world to rise up and in one clear voice say: fuck the goddamn students.
The statue is there to remind people that Lincoln defeated a greater evil than McWhorter could even begin to comprehend.
It's so much harder to figure out how to really help students. But giving in to a demand like this will not help. It will only set the stage for the creation of another demand to do something that can be done right now. Acquiring a real education cannot happen instantaneously, nor is it something that occurs in a theatrical way before the eyes of an assembled crowd. It's complex and subtle and never truly accomplished. But if the university doesn't dedicate itself to real education, what does any of this matter?
A little late in the day to have discovered this. Where were you all the time you taught there?
So being "pro-Black" is the universal measure of righteousness now? I'm not even sure what "pro-Black" means but I think it is something like thinking that they are something unique as humans and then being for that. OK, I'll play. Blacks as a group have never shown me squat; they've never, anywhere, shown the world squat. So whatever that is, yeah, I'm with Lincoln -- I'm not pro-Black...in the least.
All history must be purged. That way you can repeat the same dumb mistakes and have the plausible deniability to say who knew?
They kept telling me it was some boogeymen that wanted to take the statues down to make the protests look bad.
"It's so much harder to figure out how to really help students. But giving in to a demand like this will not help. It will only set the stage for the creation of another demand to do something that can be done right now. Acquiring a real education cannot happen instantaneously, nor is it something that occurs in a theatrical way before the eyes of an assembled crowd. It's complex and subtle and never truly accomplished. But if the university doesn't dedicate itself to real education, what does any of this matter?"
Great statement.
After they take down all the statues, they will begin ransacking churches.
Images of Jesus and of the saints will be defaced because they are White.
It's so much harder to figure out how to really help students.
Give them the boot. Every last one of these ungrateful snots.
“McWhorter rejects that response: "For them to want to protect a breathless, lifeless statue more than they care about the experiences of their black students that have been crying out for help for the past 50, 60 years...”
In other words, we are emotionally hurt. Therefore we want you to loose something and be emotionally hurt too. Let’s get it over with and require every white family to kill one of their children as punishment for slavery, would that do it? That is what God did to the Egyptians.
I note the name McWhorter, there is a Professor McWhorter I greatly respect and admire, I wonder if this person is a relative.
Boy, it must hurt to see what your lifetime of democrat and liberal advocacy has born. I would find it difficult to not be pretty bummed out.
Yeah! Do it! We all Lincoln didn't give money to BLM.
"Near Disbelief."
What's to disbelieve? Why the naive pose that the protesters are operating in good faith and making reasonable requests?
They're not.
They never have been.
The Social Justice Warrior/Black Lives Matter nexus is a radical Marxist organization that wants a complete overthrow of capitalism and democracy. it wants to cast down not just statues, but all American institutions.
They lured police into an ambush in Tampa.
Did you watch all of the Joe Rogan interview with Bret Weinstein? They oppose the Enlightenment itself.
Giving in to any of their demands only emboldens them to demand more. Giving them the Sudetenland will not give you peace in our time.
What's unclear?
All hatred is, at its core, self-hatred. After you've burned the books, torn down the statues, imprisoned the enemy, you're still stuck with yourself.
"The Multicultural Student Center is honored to present the Social Justice Advocacy Award to Nalah McWhorter for her work in striving to create a multicultural student space within the School of Business. Nalah understands that the best way to create change and advocate for social justice is to work in an organized and communicative manner. This is apparent in her work with faculty on this mission, and in helping them understand the work she was trying to accomplish. She has also been a part of the Wisconsin Black Student Union, and is in the first cohort of BEL Scholars on campus which is intended to engage more students of color in the school of business. This award allows us to recognize Nalah for her efforts and leadership on a timely and needed campus conversation and initiative."
She works and strives and helps with her efforts, but it doesn't sound like she actually gets much done. Tsk. The legacy of slavery!
These BLM-types can take their racist Marxist philosophy and stuff it up their strada chocolada...
All human beings are flawed. That's probably too close to a religious kind of message so nobody's going to go there but that's the lesson.
Lincoln probably didn't approve of women having the vote and he would have been against abortion and didn't believe that sodomy should be decriminalized and he would have been against the space program and NAFTA and admitting Alaska as the 49th state. Whatever, who knows.
Better than Lincoln is a really high standard.
Ah, so when they said they wanted to fuck your ass, you didn't realize they wanted sodomy, you thought they just found you sexy.
Then when they said they wanted to fuck you in the ass, you thought they just meant doggy style.
Do you understand finally that they want to insert their penis into your anus and move it back and forth until they ejaculate inside your rectum? Or did the pomodoro go off and you're thinking about "sodomy" and wondering if you can get away with fellatio? (In this case it would doubtless be irrumatio)
Or are you checking the price of personal lubricants?
I am not Laslo.
And who appointed you High Commissioner Who Gets To Decide What Stands and What Doesn't?
"It's about who's to be master, that's all" -- Humpty Dumpty, in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland."
the experiences of their black students that have been crying out for help for the past 50, 60 years, it’s just a horrible feeling as a student, as a black and brown student on campus.
The faculty and administration on campus must be terrible racists. There can be no other explanation.
Affirmative action does not bring you the smartest students.
Removing Abe won't sit well with the Alumni Association, or at least it shouldn't. Certainly not with this alumnus.
White university administrators and faculty telling black students what to do.... How is this different from slavery?
"with near disbelief." [AA]
Living in the place under assault makes it harder, harder to see in your pre-existing normal world what is so clear to those viewing from outside that perspective. I sympathize. But as everyone has been commenting, this is the logical outcome of the long-prevailing practices in "liberal" academe and in Democratic governance. Know-nothingism; utter irresponsibility; and now add in leaders who are scared to death of leading. Who knows why it is happening at this particular moment; but its nature is anything but a mystery and should not defy belief.
University brain power.
Power to the leftwing lunatic.
This focus on statues and symbols strikes me as a focus on the superficial at the expense of doing something substantive to improve the lives of those that are in vulnerable circumstances. Is it accurate to say that students at such a prestigious university are members of a vulnerable class suffering a debilitating life experience?
Now we're all getting a lesson in what it was like to live in China starting in 1966 or thereabouts.
Batten down. It's gonna be a long rough ride.
McWhorter can find her answers about Lincoln in this great speech given by Frederick Douglass at the dedication of the Freedmen's Monument in Washington, DC, on 14 April 1876. Perhaps if she were better educated she and her fellow travelers wouldn't be putting the whole country through all this nonsense. She is a perfect representative of the failure of American public education, something from which I am afraid we will never recover.
Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln - Frederick Douglass
How is this surprising? Those of us on the right have been pointing out for years that these activists aren't actually interested in any sort of justice. This is about power, and about the demand that society affirm every little neurosis they have and treat every thing that they do as some great achievement.
This is basically the gay rights tactics amplified. "We just want the right to marry" has morphed into "you must actively support and approve of our lifestyle or else we'll destroy you." Likewise, "we want to remove statues of people actively hostile to blacks" has become "we must remove anyone from the public sphere who doesn't wholeheartedly grovel before us."
Teachers' job is to teach.
Tell them "No."
"Help students"?
That is condescending. Check that white savior complex.
They don't want your "help."
"Black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy, and God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men. God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and the creation of a society where all men will live together as brothers, and all men will respect the dignity and the worth of all human personality."
MLK, back when he was known as Reverend rather than "Dr."
https://www.depauw.edu/news-media/latest-news/details/33427/
Take it down. The University of Wisconsin no longer deserves a Lincoln Statue. Send it over to the Village Park in Sussex, WI. We'll gladly take it.
I don't why pro-black would be good. There's a sociological interest in what makes societies work well and what ruins them, and blacks might be an interest in stopping self-defeating cultural tendencies and introducing self-supporting ones. That interest looks pro-black but is just pro-society.
Take it down. The University of Wisconsin no longer deserves a Lincoln Statue. Send it over to the Village Park in Sussex, WI. We'll gladly take it.
Eventually enough history may be removed that “slavery denier” might become a thing.....
"caring for the statue against the caring for students" If the University of Wisconsin actually cared about their students, they would control costs, thin out the administration, and quit driving students into debt owed to the company store.
Conservatives aren't taking this seriously enough and as a result the nation will be lost forever. I'm not saying I know what to do, but our leadership is awol, and letting the straight up maoists run amok. These people are playing for keeps, and if you don't know where that leads then I don't know what to tell you.
Althouse seems to believe that the desire to remove the Lincoln statue is a sincere, but wrong-headed, expression of political dissatisfaction.
It is not. It is a power move. McWhorter wants you to know that he, and not you, who controls the iconography of UWM.
>>This isn't about help, or eve Abraham Lincoln. This is about power-
Exactly right. The "students" want the power to tell other people what they can't do, what they can't say, and what they are not allowed to believe.
And there is no "that's enough". No matter how insane today's demands are, tomorrow's will be worse.
For them to want to protect a breathless, lifeless statue more than they care about the experiences of their black students that have been crying out for help for the past 50, 60 years, it’s just a horrible feeling as a student, as a black and brown student on campus.
This is the rub, isn't it? Are we going to be held hostage to the psychological state of every minority person in the world? How can we possibly adjudicate between conflicting claims among the various minority persons? Or, even worse, what if minority person says "X id horrible" & another says "X is fine"? What then? How did the consideration of someone's psychological state become a moral concern in the first place? It all seems to carry a lot of metaphysical baggage that its adherents refuse to admit is metaphysical baggage.
The problem with all this post-Marxist crap is that, essentially, it's just incoherent. Marxism was evil, but it was more or less coherent. The other problem is that the kids who have their brains full of this PoMo mush can't even think it through even if you walk them through it.
Honestly Ann, how can you be surprised?
Dad used to say that I was always free to ask for what I wanted, to argue my point as much as I wanted.
BUT
Sometimes, the answer is ,”No.”
So, when the statues are all gone, will the mob invade public and college libraries and start destroying books they don't like?
If a statue of Lincoln must come down, wouldn't most biographies of Lincoln be even more "hurtful"? How do you expect students to use the library when they know there are such books in it, and they might accidentally come across it while perusing the stacks? Even if they don't actually have to confront such books, isn't just knowing that these books are there intolerable??
If "educators" really cared about these students, they would try and educate them about the complexities of people and the past. But that would require them to care, face down their critics and act maturely. All these seem beyond the capabilities of the modern college professor or administer, outside Hillsdale.
"But if the university doesn't dedicate itself to real education, what does any of this matter?" If UW had dedicated itself to "real education" over the last 20 or 30 years, they wouldn't be in this predicament. Instead they replaced "education" with indoctrination. When do they start to admit that to themselves, or is the entire Campus and system absent of any self-awareness?
"with near disbelief"
Why? It's just another small step in prog devastation of the pubic sphere.
"Why put these things in conflict, as if to leave the statue alone is to express callous disregard for students?"
Well, they say so, so it is. Who are you to disagree?
"Because demands need to be made — made about tangible objects that can be acted upon?"
Not just that: demands that specifically destroy what others value, to cause "disbelief" and let them soak in it.
"It's so much harder to figure out how to really help students. But giving in to a demand like this will not help."
This is not about "helping." This is about power: the power to define the culture, and to destroy all you value.
I thought you were doing well there for several days. This is backsliding from the path to full awareness.
I am surprised how forgetful or maybe willfully blind people are. "We only want this one thing." But the thing is not the thing. What people want cannot be had, but they ask for it thinking it is. "If we only did 'X' it would make everything better." but once 'X' is done, then it is on to the next thing. "Really if we just did 'Y' that would be all we need." It never ends. We warn and warn that this will NOT be the last, and we are always ridiculed as alarmists. And when the prediction comes true we are never given credit for the prediction, just ridiculed more for it. Lincoln? Really? He's not pure enough? Radicals need something to destroy or change to make Utopia, but somehow utopia never comes. We are at our least racist stage in our entire history, but hearing from the leftists, we are WORSE than we have ever been. There is no goal for the radical, there is only the next cause.
"I'm reading the news report at Channel 3000 with near disbelief."
It's hard when your whole world view collapses,isn't it
It's so much harder to figure out how to really help students.
It's interesting watching professors and administrators act as if this is their responsibility. After all these same people intentionally inflict distress on any student deviating from their far left politics, and have bragged this is so for decades. This demonstrates their concern is entirely political. "Real" help is not even a consideration.
Shocking.
Ladies and gentleman of the left,
You own this problem. Lock stock and smoking barrel. You wanted this, and you're going to get it, good and hard. This is just for openers. "Pro-black"....can you even understand what that statement means? This is not a re-fighting of the civil war. This is straight-up black American racism for anyone that is not them. They will not be satisfied until there's an acknowledgment of black superiority...'black power' if you will.
You own this. You trained your foot-soldiers well. We are going to hold you accountable. There will be repercussions.
This is how you get Trump. You look around and see that institutions are no longer persuaded by logic or reason, that bullying is wielded against you instead of discourse, and you reach for a very blunt tool.
It is mentioned that black students thave been crying out for help "for the past 50, 60 years." That period corresponds with the left's control of higher education and suggests a solution.
"For them to want to protect a breathless, lifeless statue more than they care about the experiences of their black students that have been crying out for help for the past 50, 60 years, it’s just a horrible feeling as a student, as a black and brown student on campus.""
I no longer give a fuck about your god damn feelings. Grow up.
it’s just a horrible feeling as a student, as a black and brown student on campus.
The university is so desperate for black students that they throw money at them. I doubt any graduates with student loan debt.
These people want animosity between the races. And they're going to get it.
Unknown at 19:19 AM
James Madison, 4th President of the US and namesake of Madison, WI, was a slave owner his whole life
There is no reason for a Wisconsin city to be named after Madison. It's just strange.
Madison was one of the worst Presidents.
To have Madison in your residential address is embarrassing.
Complaint: University not doing enough for "their black students that have been crying out for help for the past 50, 60 years."
Doesn't that sound like the 'mismatch' effect of affirmative action, where students not prepared for the work required by elite institutions are nonetheless admitted to the top schools, on account of their skin color? (Pursuant to a so-called 'holistic' admissions process, no doubt; one in which their skin color trumps everything.) I would guess there's a lot of humiliation caused by that mismatch, and humiliation causes rage.
Affirmative-action chickens coming home to roost.
I think Althouse should have used "inconceivable" instead of "disbelief".
The best way to look at this issue is through the lens of black nationalism.
Creating a mythical past is an essential part of any sort of nationalism. The myth must tell of a people originally proud, free, and superior to the nations around them. Then there is a period of darkness when the nation is oppressed by other nations, not because the other nations are superior, but because the other nations are wicked and/or betrayers.
Then the nation breaks its bonds and, with sacrifice, frees itself.
It is intolerable to black nationalists to believe that Lincoln & white people "gave them their freedom." To the black nationalist, any freedom they have they had to have fought and sacrificed to gain. To cast doubt on this myth is to be "anti-black."
if the university doesn't dedicate itself to real education, what does any of this matter?
The statue doesn't matter. Abraham Lincoln doesn't matter. The university doesn't matter. Real education doesn't matter.
You don't matter.
Black Lives Matter.
Nalah McWhorter, the president of the Wisconsin Black Student Union:
McWhorter, may want to get a little primer in History.
Revisit University of Missouri 2015. Check on freshman class 2017 McWhorter is not as intelligent as any wild animal that learns early not to shit where the sleep. I remember when I was as smart as her. Every year I know less and less, as I learn more. By all means take orders from emotional 20 somethings.
Lincoln was responsible for the destruction of Federalism.
According to John Keegan in "The American Civil War", Lincoln, personally, did not care for black people. Fortunately, students don't read peerless historians, so shhh.
Purity tests for people. Purity tests for statues. Progress.
Clayton Hennesey wins the thread, for humor and incisiveness.
I totally agree with McWhorter and others who demand the eradication of all symbols of those who owned slaves or who failed to be sufficiently Woke by today's lip-quiveringly sensitive standards. And I notice that the figures shown on our currency are deep-down offensive: Washington on the $1, Lincoln on the $5, Hamilton on the $10, Jackson on the $20 and so on. (Heck, Ben Franklin was no prize when it came to fighting to let the slaves breathe free).
So here's the thing: McWhorter et al can purify themselves and strike a big blow for their cause by ridding themselves of that filthy stuff. All of it. Send it to PO Box 1234, My Town, Attention Me. I'll see that it is properly disposed of.
We plan to extend the program to digital currency because it can be represented by the same horrible criminal figures, and thus indirectly as polluting as the paper stuff.
Lincoln hurt black people when he didn’t let them rise up and claim their own freedom.
A pro-black President would have left them in chains.
The Walking Woke.
An entire Lost Generation
Give them an inch...
If anyone wanted to acquire an understanding of what Lincoln thought about slavery a good book is Herndon's Life of Lincoln. Herndon was Lincoln's law partner and was an abolitionist. His book includes several discussions of Lincoln's outlook on slavery at different times in his life. Herndon worked to convert Lincoln to the cause of abolition which was difficult because Lincoln saw such a stand as political suicide and Lincoln was an ambitious man. Lincoln's ambition is not something we think a lot about but there's no understanding him without recognizing that part of him, that very American part that wanted to succeed. But it was a part and he grew beyond it, became more than just that, and that is why I admire him. As an adult he came to deeper understanding of the life about him and this enabled him to lead this country through a civil war back to union and toward reconciliation. After Lincoln was shot, the entire reconciliation effort was embittered and led by the bitter, moving in violent jerks in different directions for thirty years and, ultimately, the black community was left out of the reconciliation formulation and that's where we are today. Herndon's book doesn't cover Lincoln's Civil War Presidency very well and, of course, not the post-Civil War era, but it presents a picture of a great man growing toward greatness and, for the rest of us, a picture of an adult coming to understand a bitterly divisive issue better than he did at first.
My own comment at 9:15 AM
Even after the university administration complies with the demand and removes the statue, colored students still will fail academically if they cannot and will not read at the university level.
My apology:
I inadvertently wrote the wrong expression colored students.
I meant to write Students of Color.
Please make the mental correction.
Lewis Wetzel @ 10:19: "...t is intolerable to black nationalists to believe that Lincoln & white people 'gave them their freedom.'..."
Word. Charity feels good to the giver but it is hard for the receiver to accept it with good grace. It creates a debt and generally cannot be repaid in a simple way, like a loan. Sometimes the recipient can "pay it forward" or otherwise discharge the sense of obligation. But often not; and that can lead to anger and self-contempt and other bad stuff.
When the charity has been applied in a massive and universal way for generations, expressly on the basis of race (affirmative action), there is simply no way to ignore it or to pretend that it can be repaid or worked off.
These people are still thinking like slaves, and the worst kind: self-enslaved.
A whole lot of anger is coming out. I am not optimistic.
LOL Ann. Have you not figured it out yet. It is not about the statute really it is about taking power. Get a population to despise its own history, hate and attack the police, then say give us what we want or we will burn it all down. I have seen videos of BLM leaders saying they are Marxist Leninist trained revolutionaries. The videos could be fake but judging by BLM action I think not. Can this racists revolution find enough useful idiots to burn it all down? Judging by all the people I see buy into the white privilege BS, the cancel culture, and the Ds and media almost cheering them on, I think they are getting near having enough idiots to burn it all down. I have not had a weapon for decades. I will arm myself soon. Just in case.
I have a better idea:
** Tear down the schools **
Rose Wilder Lane was very anti-public education. She argued that if you didn't want to learn and gain knowledge, then you shouldn't be forced to.
Merle Haggard ended-up in an adult prison because he was a truant.
Can you imagine incarcerating someone for skipping school?
Can you imagine forcing someone to look at a statue of Lincoln, when all they want is to study Idi Amin, or Karl Marx.
End the system.
Eric Weinstein was on Joe Rogan's show last week, and he said quite a few things that were highly thought-provoking. One of them was this, paraphrasing: The entire BLM movement is really about subjugating white people. The purpose of this is to put reparations - on a grand scale - in place, on a long-term ongoing basis.
I've thought about this, and it does seem to hang together as an idea. It is simply taking the concept of the perpetual welfare state and expanding it to include the notion of systemic reparations, forever and below the radar. The welfare state exists as a reality for a substantial segment of the African American population. It's not even really thought of as welfare. Its source is not even a topic of consideration. So it will be, for our new concept of reparations, except it will apply to all: Grift and perpetual victimization, for a perpetual gravy train.
Lewis Wetzel said...
The best way to look at this issue is through the lens of black nationalism.
Creating a mythical past is an essential part of any sort of nationalism. The myth must tell of a people originally proud, free, and superior to the nations around them. Then there is a period of darkness when the nation is oppressed by other nations, not because the other nations are superior, but because the other nations are wicked and/or betrayers.
That comment really hits the mark.
I wonder if Nalah McWhorter is related to Prof. John McWhorter of Columbia?
from Herndon's Lincoln:
"... it was charged that Lincoln was an Abolitionist, ... The records of the Legislature for March 3, 1837, contain this entry:
"Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery [of an abolitionist tone] having passed both branches of the General Assembly at its present session, the undersigned [Illinois Assemblymen Lincoln and Stone] hereby protest against the passage of the same.
"They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils.
"They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power under the Constitution to interfere with the institution of slavery in the different States.
"They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power under the Constitution to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of the District. The difference between these opinions and, those contained in the above resolutions is their reason for entering this protest.
"Dan Stone,
"A. Lincoln,
"Representatives from the county of Sangamon."
This document so adroitly drawn and worded, this protest pruned of any offensive allusions, and cautiously framed so as to suit the temper of the times, stripped of its verbal foliage reveals in naked grandeur the solemn truth that "the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy." A quarter of a century later finds one of these protesters righting the injustice and correcting the bad policy of the inhuman and diabolical institution."
From Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address
"One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
It seems perfectly predictable for black students and their consorts to attribute their lot in part to a statue of Lincoln. All this bullshit is reflective of the unwillingness of the black community to look at itself introspectively because it would lead to accepting some responsibility for its plight.
It is also reflective of the stupidity of white progressives - these morons are not “liberals.” The Chancellor’s cowardly compulsion to acknowledge that Lincoln was “flawed” (Duh!), exemplifies the misapprehension of Democrat dunces that this is about statues or Lincoln. It is actually about the willingness of a corrupt political party to cede our property, our safety and, ultimately, our liberty, to an irresponsible block of voters in order to elect a nincompoop President of the United States.
Isn't your Utopia wonderful!????? I hope you enjoy it as much as they say you will. It will be so inspiring to the rest of us when you turn into another Detroit. Enjoy the artwork!!
Is this where Progressivism inevitably leads? It appears so.
Wipe out the past and start over at The Year Zero. But this time, with angry black girls in charge.
Utopia awaits.
A place where unspeakable monsters roam... and “Kneel !!!” is the order of the day
Blogger Lucid-Ideas said...
Ladies and gentleman of the left,
You own this problem... Blah blah blah...You own this. You trained your foot-soldiers well. We are going to hold you accountable. There will be repercussions.
Lots of talk about a shooting civil war from you people ever since Trump was elected. Even more talk now that the BLM and the Libtards have taken to the streets protesting violence against people by destroying icons. The left is doing what you people have bragged about for years but never did anything about it.
Bring it on. The more you people threaten violence against political opponents, the less likely you are to actually do something. The consensus is that Trump and his cult are cowards. You might not be a coward, but your comrades are. If it does get hot, you are more likely to catch a bullet in the skull from one of your panicking bro's in the Barney Fife obesity militia.
2 Parties. One wants to tear this country apart. Imagine if they were fully in charge.
"I'm reading the news report at Channel 3000 with near disbelief."
Why would any cockamamie blather coming from any of these folks surprise you? You have more regard for the thought processes of activists than I do. They have departed from the middle way of moderation in all things long ago.
Either tell the thugs to pound sand or just shut the damn U down for good.
Cast iron logic from cast iron heads.
Narr
Expell him now or hand him the keys
All old statues of white people are problematic and have to go. Other represeentations of white people, murals, paintings and photographs of former deans, etc. all have to go as well. All of then were created at a time of institutional racism, and students are upset by them.
The Chancellor, undoubtedly a Democrat, acknowledges that although flawed Lincoln was a great President even as she prepares to demonstrate her qualifications for that judgment by supporting and voting for Joe the Grifter.
"It's so much harder to figure out how to really help students."
I don't remember needing help. I went to class and I did the work.
wholelottasplainin: "The Walking Woke.
An entire Lost Generation"
This happens to be the 3rd Lost Generation that has been cultivated and harvested by the marxist left which is why the lefties were oh so confident after obambi won in 2008 with control of the House and a stolen MN Senate seat for a 60 vote majority in the Senate.
Remember "We Are All Socialists Now?" and the republicans would never win again?
However, America was not yet quite Europe which takes just 1 generation of marxist indoctrination to go socialist left.
The Left's Gramscian march thru the institutions is nearly complete and we hang by a thread in terms of Cloward-Piven destruction of the system by overwhelming it completely.
We are about to see if the American experiment can even be saved at all....and thats just for now.
" Blogger BADuBois said...
Now we're all getting a lesson in what it was like to live in China starting in 1966 or thereabouts.
Batten down. It's gonna be a long rough ride.
6/26/20, 9:51 AM"
Not many truer words have been spoken today.
Your racist if you don’t let people destroy whatever they want.
" Blogger Owen said...
Lewis Wetzel @ 10:19: "...t is intolerable to black nationalists to believe that Lincoln & white people 'gave them their freedom.'...""
It is a fact of the human condition that those who are given things quickly resent that they are not given more. In this university I expect that people and professors bend over backwards to excuse black behavior and lack of scholarship.
But that is just not enough, they always feel they deserve more.
"I couldn't make the Fight Against Cancer rally you guys had last week"
"You didn't make the rally. YOU'RE FOR CANCER!"
policraticus: "Dad used to say that I was always free to ask for what I wanted, to argue my point as much as I wanted.
BUT
Sometimes, the answer is ,”No.”'
What if it was your "Dad" who taught you to demand what you wanted and to destroy if you dont get your way in every thing...and encouraged you to keep doing that...and rewarded you everytime you did?
What then?
Lumumba guevara perhaps sukarno are better names for the place.
Owen: "These people are still thinking like slaves, and the worst kind: self-enslaved."
Nope. They are thinking like marxists and they want their Year Zero so they can destroy everything that came before them and have absolute power and control over the lives of others.
This is not complicated.
The United States needs to seriously consider abandoning its nuclear program. The US needs to do it before the dummies get control.
How many times do you need to see this, Ms. Althouse, before you realize just how intolerant the modern left has become?
You are being told what to think, what not to think, and who deserves your respect. Any violations from what is acceptable must be destroyed, no matter what the cost.
You may not like the Republican party. You may not respect Republican politicians. I don't either. But this is not a "lesser of two evils" decision. At this point, any vote for a Democrat is a vote for the destruction of this country.
Some people can't be educated.
Some people are not worth educating.
Thank God we have Universities that don't educate.
I am Laslo.
Lewis Wetzel: "The best way to look at this issue is through the lens of black nationalism."
Marxism rides atop all the other "isms".
Marxism as a movement works best when it co-opts and subsumes other movements that contain a degree of actual grievance, which the marxists then proceed to make far far worse and then weaponize.
Social conservatives have been sounding the alarm for 50-100 years now. And for their trouble they were ignored, laughed at, berated, looked upon with disdain by other conservatives, hated, and treated with contempt. It got worse -- not so much for social conservatives, but for humanity as a whole -- with the rise of the libertarians.
The culture has been trashing tradition, history, legacy and heritage, and the fundamental nature of the human person and family and society -- and God (to the extent of declaring "God is dead" -- for well over a century.
Reap now the harvest which so many either planted or sat back and did nothing about.
MLKjr speeches and writings wouldn't make any sense to these students.
It was really sad I saw a video of yesterday in DC- at the freedmen's monument and she said that Lincoln owned slaves.
It's really just painful to hear.
@Robert Marshall
"Doesn't that sound like the 'mismatch' effect of affirmative action, where students not prepared for the work required by elite institutions are nonetheless admitted to the top schools, on account of their skin color? (Pursuant to a so-called 'holistic' admissions process, no doubt; one in which their skin color trumps everything.) I would guess there's a lot of humiliation caused by that mismatch, and humiliation causes rage."
I am sure they get academic supports. If they don't have the foundation to keep up they need to in community college. Finishing a two year degree with a strong foundation, is more then barely graduating with a four degree with soft classes.
Never understood why we focus our energies getting a small amount of students into a four year schools they can't compete at, when so much could progress for 1st generation college students (no matter their race) from a community college.
I went to a four year public college, my parents both have vocational/two year degrees. My oldest is at a very good 2nd tier college in an employable major.
If your parents didn't attend a four year college- stay close to home with community and public colleges.
Lincoln absolutely changed his views on blacks over time. Read Frederick Douglass on Lincoln. He was a fan because he saw Lincoln grow. Lincoln is honored for what he did and became.
" Blogger wildswan said...
If anyone wanted to acquire an understanding of what Lincoln thought about slavery a good book is Herndon's Life of Lincoln"
Why would I really give a crude about what Lincoln thought about slavery. It's certainly irrelevant to today. What this lunatic child is saying is even more irrelevant.
What the democrat party is NOT SAYING is extremely relevant.
>beloved Lincoln statue
In fairness, this isn't the first time Lincoln has come under heavy criticism from the so-called "anti racists." A year or two ago, the criticism centered around his mass execution of Native Americans.
To have Madison in your residential address is embarrassing.
Our address includes a mass-murdering crazed Aztec as well as the mass-murdering crazed Spaniard who killed him. It's pretty cool.
To the "kick them out/give them a binky/tell them to grow up/expel them" crowd:
How exactly do you propose that college admins can do that? Do you think they have any move here at all that even faintly approaches what you are saying that does not end in career suicide, social ostracism and potential violence against them and their families?
In other words, we are fucked. The people who have the power to push back against this, in fact don't and won't.
See you all in New Zealand.
It's fair to say that black students like McWhorter take more inspiration from the example of Nat Turner than the fictional Uncle Tom. It is, however, difficult to imagine people like my great grand uncles marching off to war to liberate Nat Turner....I don't think either Nat Turner or Uncle Tom were representative of the enslaved population, but Uncle Tom was the inspirational figure for abolitionists....Whatever discomfort Ms. McWhorter feels on campus in Madison would be multiplied many times over if she were forced to live in certain neighborhoods in Chicago.....I don't think she has an idea in the world as to how the limit the number of shootings in such neighborhoods, but she's got many ideas as to how to straighten out these Lincoln worshipping whites.
I've given to understand that because of the rate of cultural change (glacial) in the days of the Roman Empire and its contemporaries, that the average citizen was barely aware that their entire civilization was steadily collapsing into dust.
I'm kind of sad. We were on the edge of so many great things, you know. The coming advances in healthcare alone were so exciting, never mind the new space age. Who knew that the hippie infiltration of higher education would lead to all of this?
Gradually at first, then all at once the archaeologists will say.
@bgates 10:21. +1.
Tear down the statue of Lincoln. Up with statues of Nat Turner and Huey Newton. Make America the new Rwanda.
Jim Goad put it pretty well in "Redneck Manifesto" -- to paraphrase:
I can understand why a group that has endured centuries being told it is nothing might react eventually by insisting that it is everything.
But nobody else has to believe it. Yet.
When I was still working I used to amuse my leftie friends by acting the part of an outraged history student demanding to know what that racist Abraham Lincoln ever did for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Queer, Transgender/sexual, Othersexual/gender, and Questioning [including but not limited to permutations] Persons!?!
Narr
They thought I was joking . . .
So...a statue is just a hunk of metal and tearing it down does no more than make it so you no longer have to look at it if you are in the place where it sat? That's what they think tearing down statues accomplishes? That explains a lot.
I blame the educational system. The schools have failed these kids. They are exacyl what we should expect them to be given how they've been raised.
1) By today's standards Lincoln was an irredeemable racist. (I have had students in my classes cry when we read some of Lincoln's statements on race) However by the standards of his time, he was so radical on race that the South seceded before he took office. That's why you don't judge historical figures by modern standards.
2) While Lincoln did oppose slavery, he often said preserving the union was more important than ending slavery.
3) The Emancipation Proclamation was nothing more than a P.R. stunt. It was intended to revive support for the war, which was flagging. The Proclamation actually accomplished nothing. it feed the slaves in the land under rebellion and controlled by the Confederacy. They obviously ignored it. In the lands controlled by Lincoln and the Union that had slavery, it was unaffected and the slaves weren't freed.
All of that being said, Lincoln was still a great man and a great president who preserved the union and ended slavery.
Althouse: “It's so much harder to figure out how to really help students.”
Help them do what? They are having the time of their lives. No classes! Breaking shit! If they wanted to be educated, there would be no demand for the race and gender-based classes that have displaced real education. There would be no snowflake-cuddling safe spaces, segregated student unions, workout facilities, canceling of conservative speakers.
Your concern is appreciated, but a majority of these students are useful idiots or cowards. When antiwar demonstrators took over a building on our campus in the sixties, students went in and ran them out of the building into the hands of the campus cops. We wanted an education.
These dalliers are ripping off the taxpayers in so many ways already.
The part about the rock is what raises this story to high comedy. You wonder how the Pleistocene ice sheets knew that there would someday be racists who needed honoring.
"These people want animosity between the races. And they're going to get it."
"Racism" today is learned not taught. Maybe it always was that way.
Anyway, this is what turned me off of college in 1968. When interviewed the protesters sounded like morons, like the kind of student one would say didn't belong in college.
Sadly, I think a lot of them were smart but rode the wave because general education requirements were stressing them out. Welcome to collehe. I went to play music in Nevada.
Hell if they didn't manage to get gen ed requirements dropped!
"These people are still thinking like slaves, and the worst kind: self-enslaved."
Obviously Candace Owens and Kanye West are spot on.
I'll take lifeless statues over brainless students.
Bye, Felisha.
Also, Althouse, as someone who has read you nearly daily for eight years, and who is very attuned to your blog persona (which may or may not be similar to your real life persona): I know you are not big on talking about yourself as intellectually or spiritually vulnerable. You're not big on talking about things you got wrong or beliefs you had to change. I'm not sure if that's a thing for your off-blog, private self; it would be presumptuous of me to assume anything one way or another -- but if you are experiencing anything like this and don't already, you might could go read at neoneocon. She had a political apostasy experience many years ago, with all the social and professional repercussions that suggests, and is she is an articulate and fair minded and gracious writer.
Also recommend the Red Pilled America podcast, which I was introduced to through Scott Adams.
I am only dipping into the world one day a week. The other six are dedicated completely to the inside of my own four walls and to deepening my discipleship through study of the Word and deep prayer.
This is what happens when you let the inmates run the asylum. You would think our academic elites could figure this out.
John Wilkes Booth: Social justice activist avant la lettre.
This Red Guard moment end when liberal white women finally realize they are part of the great deplorables. Althouse, have you had an epiphany yet?
In the end this is about tearing down western civilization and all the ideas that got us here.
The real issue with blacks is they don't want to compete in the classroom. That is the main reason why they lag behind all other races in education, test scores, and career achievements. Most blacks and their non-black liberal supporters would never admit that.
Caligula said...
So, when the statues are all gone, will the mob invade public and college libraries and start destroying books they don't like?
Oh, that began several years ago.
The BLM "protestors" invaded Baker Library at Dartmouth right before finals.
Want to know why they weren't studying like the white kids ? Who would fail a black kid in "African American Studies ?"
"with near disbelief" Really? Really? Where have you been?
McWhorter rejects that response: "For them to want to protect a breathless, lifeless statue more than they care about the experiences of their black students that have been crying out for help for the past 50, 60 years, it’s just a horrible feeling as a student, as a black and brown student on campus."
Except that black students have been getting all sorts of help for the past 50, 60 years. That help has been wrong-headed. What we need to do to really help black students is to immediately implement the following:
(1) End diversity quotas. Immediately terminate all faculty and administrators hired to meet diversity quotas.
(2) Move to race-blind admissions. If that results in the Madison campus containing only Asian students and scholarship athletes that’s quite all right.
(3) Terminate the Black Studies Department. Fire the faculty and give the students one semester to transfer to a legitimate discipline or leave the campus. Erase all Black Studies courses from every student’s transcript. If that leaves them short of credits to graduate tell them to buckle down and take real courses.
This will do for a start
Spot on Ann. This bullshit will never, ever end.
It’s not a serious attempt to negotiate in good faith, it’s just a lot of opportunistic playing the victim and demanding power and free stuff. Don’t give it to them.
Stand up for something, someday ... can we get some of that action? Or are all the alleged “leaders” just gift-wrapping our nation for mobs these days?
It’s so transparent but yet SO many people fall for it.
Engaging the "protesters" on an intellectual level will most certainly yield results. After all, they are educated.
Althouse helped educate them.
IMO many young black people actually believe they are superior to white people and they really are not interested in being equals. Generally speaking blacks are physically superior and everyone knows that blacks have extraordinary physical power. We've recently seen videos of young black men hammering out tempered glass doors and tearing out storefronts protected with plywood, we see that it takes six or more police officers to restrain a black man, we've seen black women hurl furniture in restaurants. It must be very frustrating for blacks to not be the dominant race as well as infuriating and painful to be treated as inferiors. All this destruction is cathartic but there has to be some kind of a reckoning besides physical destruction and demands for whites to be pro-black.
I've been thinking about the reparations idea floated by BET founder Robert Johnson. Maybe he's got a good point and the government should officially pay out cash and we would be "officially" done with the guilt, even though it makes no sense on a personal level. Would there be any more welfare or government programs for blacks after that? IDK
A widening gyre, indeed.
Our opportunity to convince our political opponents is over, on both sides. We had such a tiny window - now closed. The media have taken off the gloves and are putting forth straight-out lies, statements that could be fact-checked in thirty seconds but won't be, phrasing that obfuscates from where all the disorder, violence, destruction, and uncertainty emanate and who is responsible for the cities where it's been allowed to fester and grow without restraint... They are engaged in their biennial campaign to vilify Republicans and sanctify Democrats, and those whose minds were not already made up will, from now until November, hear, read, and see only that.
From here on out, it seems to me that it comes down to turnout. Which side will be less discouraged by all this mess? Which side can maintain even a shred of hope? It's not as if Democrats can claim that their candidate - or anyone who might actually be pulling his strings, now or post-election! - can or will do anything to restore the country to anything like what it was before they patted the children on the heads and told them to go ahead and burn it all down. And they know it. They've got to be as shocked by how far it's gone as Republicans are.
Or, worse, they really are what some voices on the Right have been saying for years: Mafia dons, invoking "family" and "community" and "tradition" while they extort "cooperation" by holding a gun to the heads of their own people's children.
According to the current absolutist gospel of critical social justice/critical race theory, it would be impossible for ANY historic person to be truly anti-racist or pro-black, as they understand it, because the "true" understanding of racism has only been discovered in the past few decades. Also, it's impossible for any white person to be truly anti-racist or pro-black---because every single thing is imbued with racism and whites are by definition always at best making tiny bits of progress. By definition, whites can never "arrive" at a place where they have shown themselves to be sufficiently anti-racist.
I highly recommend watching the discussions and lectures given by James Lindsay, Peter Bogghosian, and Helen Pluckrose explaining the scholarly underpinnings of the current madness. Especially the 3-part series called The Trojan Horse, and the three-part documentary on Bret Weinstein and the Evergreen State College terror.
Wait until they find out that JFK was a 1960's Catholic, who obviously thought homosexuality was a mortal sin and gay marriage an outrageous concept. He was rabid anti-communist, too!
He even blockaded a country full of minorities!
There is no bottom here. Letting them tear down the first statue set the standard that the mob gets to decide. If Lincoln isn't safe, no one is.
And, Anne, Lincoln *was* a big shot emancipator.
Sorry Ann for the misspelling!! :(
"But if the university doesn't dedicate itself to real education, what does any of this matter?"
One wonders what the universities are "dedicated" to. Real education doesn't seem to be at the top of their list.
re Iconoclasm - would it be bad to start tearing down the symbols of value of the BLM folks?
Students who read inadequately will not succeed academically at a university even if all the campus's statues are removed, all the buildings are renamed and all Halloween costumes are forbidden.
That entirely depends on who defines what success means and what is defined as a university. The continued financial survival of academia may require the production of degree holders who arrive with cognitive skills that place them increasingly on the leftward slope of that inconvenient bell curve we can't acknowledge on pain of cancellation.
Tests can be adjusted to meet needs. Standards are always subject to revision.
The institution must survive.
Imagine 20 years ago if somebody told you academia would convince white students to hate themselves simply because they're white.
For all the black men who have given up their lives of crime and moved to new cities to get their lives in order but are then killed by racist police, there is redemption and respect for them after death.
Lincoln was a product of his time and lived a life leading him to righteousness despite of his immersion in a culture that was not as moral as today. He had breakthroughs that no one before him had that led to much good for blacks. He was a flawed vessel ho gave up his life of crime and was trying to get his life in order, but he was killed by a racist before he could complete his purgatory. He deserves no statue, only vile venomous rebuke.
Temujin asks: how does she address black on black crime today? }}}}
The answer I have seen is, shut up. To the extent that it will be answered at all, the answer is systemic racism drives oppressed people to act out.
{{{ Or black on black slavery in Africa? }}}
The answer is, colonialism has perverted their development. The critical theorists have it covered, honestly, because any Western country is historically evil, and any non-Western country has been poisoned by exposure to Western thought and colonialism. No historical counter-examples can be offered, either, because there is no such thing as white history or science that is not tainted by the fact that white people have crafted the narrative to support white supremacy.
Also, shut up.
The current environment is difficult for those who instinctively seek a middle course. The balancers, the Appolonians, those who seek compromise. Such people find it impossible to deal with unreasoning fanaticism. Pity.
They will come after your house too Althouse then your pension. That is where this is headed. They absolutely hate America.
Giving adult children power is as smart as giving 13 year old children power
This McWhorter fellow sounds like he's 13
All this hoo-hah...BLM, marches, statue-drops, CHAZ, flag-kneeling, systemic racism, suburban white women...it's all about defeating Trump. Job 1.
If you want this to end, Biden. If Don, you get Round 2, 3, 4, etc, etc, etc. Can't be more obvious.
If the Emancipation Proclamation means nothing then there is no, uniquely horrible, African-American experience to atone for.
The mistake was not making June 19th a national holiday in 1865. It certainly merited it as a commemoration of Union sacrifice and the eradication of slavery from our great republic. People would sing The Battle Hymn of the Republic, fly the regimental battle flags of their ancestors alongside Old Glory, and grow commemorative side whiskers for the day. Not sure what they'd do in the South.
"The Proclamation actually accomplished nothing. it feed the slaves in the land under rebellion and controlled by the Confederacy."
This is just stupid bullshit. Lincoln had legal authority over areas in rebellion. He also had legal authority over the Federal army. Lincoln set it up so that every on every plantation that was taken by the army, the slaves were free - no further action needed.
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