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'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts

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coppice:

--- Quote from: tooki on June 15, 2020, 08:02:35 pm ---
--- Quote from: james_s on June 15, 2020, 07:57:56 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on June 15, 2020, 07:46:20 pm ---Yeah but it’s not “the party” wanting the things removed. Again, it’s just not wanting to have statues of racist assholes shoved in their faces all the time, in particular, in public places that should be neutral.

--- End quote ---

Who is it then? Because I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to refer to authoritarian leftist progressives as "the party" in this context. Do any of these people actually know for a fact that those people the statues memorialize were "racist assholes"? Did they know them personally? Did those people not have other virtues alongside their faults? Does a negative trait mean that a person cannot be admired or remembered for other reasons? Was their view considered negative or unacceptable by society during the time that they lived? Does that matter?

I don't like the trend of judging historical figures through the lens of the present. I can guarantee that there is something you do or some view that you hold that is perfectly acceptable today but 200 years from now some people will find abhorrent.  It seems that some people consider morals and values to be absolute and innate while in reality it seems obvious that they are largely learned from the society in which they are raised.

--- End quote ---
It’s not the government demanding the statues be taken down, it’s the people.

Yes, they were racist assholes. They fought a fucking war against their own country for the right to keep slaves. It doesn’t get much more clear than that. (Remember, the US had already decided that slavery was bad.)

I do agree with you to a point about judging through a different lens. But does today’s lens not give us the right to say “no, we aren’t going to glorify this guy any more”??

--- End quote ---
The people? Just how many people? What percentage of the population are these people? Could they win their goals through the ballot box?

tom66:
I think it's also worth noting that most of these statues aren't ancient artifacts left behind by people loyal to these men.  They were often put up hundreds of years after they died, some as recent as 1940, in response to the Civil Rights Movement.  One particularly prolific group responsible for putting these statues up is "The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC)" who have links to the KKK.

As far as I am concerned there is no doubt that these statues are put up as anything other than a racist endeavour, to say, "this time was good; let's try to remember it."

I *don't* support the changing of legitimate, well-used technical terms like master and slave.  Newer projects might consider neutral terms such as primary and secondary, but I think of all our problems, language is far from the most serious and we risk insincerity in trying to paper over the cracks in society with memes like these.

Nominal Animal:

--- Quote from: Cerebus on June 15, 2020, 05:10:14 pm ---I don't think either of us think our own seasonably variable skins colours have anything to do with 'race', it's just passing musings on the subject of identity and how we think about it.
--- End quote ---
Agreed; on my part, I was musing on why skin color alone, say seeing only someones hands or neck, isn't enough to trigger the sense of "different" for me.  Facial features, quite possibly do.  And I explicitly didn't claim to be free from prejudices/preconceptions; I have plenty of those.  So do you, and so does everyone else.  If it causes any kind of conflict, then we work on it.  It if doesn't, we never find out we had them.

Still, and I want to repeat this once again, just eliminating the words or terms that appear to cause emotional pain by proxy to some, will not achieve anything.

This is not the same thing as dismissing the issue: it is the opposite.  I am saying that if there is a source of conflict, we need to talk about it, and find the root cause, and work on that; and not just paper over the issue with the simplest answer that first comes to mind, because that causes more harm than good, with history as proof.

james_s:

--- Quote from: tooki on June 15, 2020, 08:02:35 pm ---It’s not the government demanding the statues be taken down, it’s the people.

Yes, they were racist assholes. They fought a fucking war against their own country for the right to keep slaves. It doesn’t get much more clear than that. (Remember, the US had already decided that slavery was bad.)

I do agree with you to a point about judging through a different lens. But does today’s lens not give us the right to say “no, we aren’t going to glorify this guy any more”??

--- End quote ---

In a "government of the people, for the people, by the people" what is the differentiation between "the government" and "the people"? Which people exactly are we talking about? All of the people? A specific group of people?

There are a lot more historical figures being judged than confederate leaders. We don't have to glorify them but I don't want to pretend they never existed either and I don't agree with destroying art, especially historical art. If people don't want it on public land then it should be moved into a museum or something, not toppled. And it should be decided by a vote, not by mob justice.

vodka:

--- Quote from: james_s on June 15, 2020, 07:43:28 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on June 15, 2020, 11:37:56 am ---Law enforcement in USA is too rotten to be saved. It needs a total reboot.

--- End quote ---

What do you base this on and what do you propose replacing it with?

I do not interact with the police often, but the times I have interacted with them I've always been impressed by their professionalism, and I've seen them deal with situations that I would not have the restraint to deal with myself. There are a lot of rather terrible and dangerous people out there who simply refuse to play by the rules and show a complete disregard for their fellow citizens, somebody has to deal with them and I don't know how to do it better than the way we do. My limited observations have been that police in this country are not fundamentally different than police in most other countries, and generally public approval has never fallen below 50% and typically sits much higher. A large majority of the population is not anti-police.

--- End quote ---

There are many example  of  "soft policy" with the criminals,in example Barcelona.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1269672622360416256
https://twitter.com/i/status/1260311600466182144
https://twitter.com/i/status/1260543358059130882
https://twitter.com/i/status/1243625785908486145

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