I sympathize with the irritation about wars over symbols. But: I think these things sometimes have a tendency to look sillier from far away than they do up close, and one should take that into account, and cut the local activists a little slack as a result.
For example: as someone who has lived in Champaign-Urbana much of my adult life, I can see how someone far away might see the struggle over the Chief Illiniwek mascot as a struggle over a mere symbol. But as someone living here, it's painfully obvious that "the past didn't go anywhere, it's not even past." It's totally obvious that the resistance to getting rid of the Chief mascot was deeply intertwined with majority investment in a particular way of seeing the indigenous population of the United States, an investment that has tangible negative consequences for their descendants who are alive right now. With that experience, I can empathize, for example, with why some students at Amherst would demand getting rid of a mascot named after a guy who advocated giving small pox-infested blankets to the indigenous population, even if that is not why the school was named after him. Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org [email protected] (202) 448-2898 x1 On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 3:10 PM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 3:00 AM, Joseph Catron <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Personally, I often share Raghu's instincts when it comes to challenging >> historical figures and symbols, from Woodrow Wilson to the Confederate >> flag. But then, I'm white and none of these things feel like attacks on me >> or my community. That's not an insignificant distinction. >> > > > I'd say Wilson's name and the Confederate flag are not quite comparable. > > Wilson's racism is not the reason his name is on those buildings and > centers. > > The Confederate flag on the other hand was specifically put on those state > flags relatively recently as an explicit and affirmative assertion of white > supremacy. > > I think that context matters. > -raghu. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > >
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