On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 3:27 PM, Robert Naiman <[email protected] > wrote:
> 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. > You raise a good point. I certainly do not want to trivialize all issues regarding offensive symbols in general. I do however, believe that some offensive symbols (e.g. the Confederate flag) are more offensive than others (Woodrow Wilson's name). (For what it is worth, I'd put the Chief Illiniwek alongside the Confederate flag. I have been following the Salaita affair fairly closely and I have come to learn that the same repulsive characters who have lined up against Salaita also happen to love the Chief mascot. Funny how that works..) I fully understand that this is a subjective judgment and perhaps even an arbitrary one. But what choice do we have? We have to choose our battles, which means we do have to make such distinctions. This entire country was built on the blood and tears of enslaved Africans, dispossessed Native Americans and other groups. If you go looking for offensive symbols, you will find them literally everywhere. E.g. we are all walking around with pictures of slave owners in our wallets. (And the one guy who was not a slave owner, they want to replace his picture with someone else's..) What are we going to do? To me the most important criterion for whether some such symbol is worth caring about is its present-day significance and local context. In Wilson's case, I just haven't heard a convincing story or context that makes me want to care. Maybe as Carrol Cox implies, that is just my own ignorance of the local context. Or, just maybe, some of these wars over symbols really do reflect political correctness taken too far. -raghu. > 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 >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > >
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