Does erasing history cure racism?

[Red Arrow]

I think at one time there was a consensus that the toll was around a million Americans lost, once disease and starvation were figured in.

I didn't do my Master's Thesis on the number of casualties in the US Civil War.  I just did some quick Google checks.  Most were around 620,000 military casualties but these guys upped it some to about 750,000.  But hey,  anything over "0.5" rounds up to "1" so a million or more it is.

[BKDotCom]

only became a slaveowner by inheritance. 

So, the first thing he did was free them?

[cannon_fodder]

Wow, you want to walk about white washing history?

The school is named after Robert E. Lee, it isn't named after Washington College (now Washington & Lee).    Nor were statutes raised of Robert E. Lee because of his academic career.  Name a school named after another president of an obscure college...

The school is named after a famous civil war general who fought against the United States of America, it isn't named for Capt. and then Major Robert E. Lee the Spanish American war officer.

While Lee did distinguish himself after his defeat, the monuments were not put up as a testament to his reconstruction efforts or his many statements on reconciling with the north.  The discussions when the statutes were erected, the commencements, and the timing of their placement all make it fairly clear he was being honored as a symbol of the mythology of the Confederacy.  Lee was a gentlemen of his time and place, a great general, a noble aid to reconstruction after the war, I have a lot of respect for him.  But he was also a traitor, a racist slave holder, and a a general who killed over a hundred thousand United States soldiers.

Lets be serious, the school, the statutes, and the monuments were put up to either commemorate the war sacrifices of the south or to glorify the mythology of the "old south."  Many of these monuments, and Lee Elementary school, were put up and named in the teens and early twenties, as the KKK was at its peak.  Some of the monuments have photos of hooded KKK attended the commemoration.   I haven't seen nor heard of any dedications that elicited the strong union building and education credentials of Robert E. Lee.

This isn't an argument for or against the name.  I don't really have a strong opinion.  If people know the facts and still feel we should honor Robert E. Lee, so be it.  But lets not pretend it was named Lee elementary because of his academic credentials or good deeds.

My proposal:  if people want to rename a school, it goes to a vote of alumni, current parents, and staff (like an expanded PTA).  66% required for change.  The decision gets ratified by the school board.  If the vote carries, the side wanting to change the name is responsible for the fund raising to change the name.

If people want to change the name of their school, remove a statute from their town square, or put one up... so long as we aren't infringing someone elsels rights, then let the people have their way.

[swake]

I think at one time there was a consensus that the toll was around a million Americans lost, once disease and starvation were figured in.

Those same historians scoff at the notion that Lee was fighting "to preserve slavery" as he abhorred the practice, and only became a slaveowner by inheritance.  His foe Grant, however, was much more enthusiastic about the practice. Grant was a wealthy incompetent that was only tapped because of his military popularity (like N.B. Forrest) and let his corrupt cabinet run his administration to the ground.  (sound familiar?)

In the thinking of the day, Virginia was Lee's "country" and he only took up arms against his former West Point classmates when they became the invading army.

Wrong on both counts. Lee was a vicious slave master and Grant only an accidental one. It's alternate southern history to say otherwise:
Lee:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/

Grant:
https://pastexplore.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/did-ulysses-s-grant-own-slaves-during-the-civil-war/

[swake]

I didn't do my Master's Thesis on the number of casualties in the US Civil War.  I just did some quick Google checks.  Most were around 620,000 military casualties but these guys upped it some to about 750,000.  But hey,  anything over "0.5" rounds up to "1" so a million or more it is.

was going from memory without checking, apologies.

[heironymouspasparagus]

The question is, why should he have ever been honored with naming a school after him in the first place? What is Lee famous for? What did he do for this country that we would honor him for?

He's famous for being a traitor to this country. He was the top general of the CSA, which was founded to preserve slavery and the result was a war with more than a million deaths. Today he is a hero to the KKK, White Pride and Nazi types.

Removing his name from a school is correct, he did nothing of value, added nothing but pain and death to our history and he did it on the side of evil.

A clear case of what I talk about all the time - a lack of knowledge or sense of history.   Read the quick once over at the link below.  There is a much more complex, nuanced, story than your sound bite version. 

And I know - you normally don't get even close to doing that sound bit thing - this time you need more information.  They have the Lee Barracks at West Point.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Lee

[patric]

My proposal:  if people want to rename a school, it goes to a vote of alumni, current parents, and staff (like an expanded PTA).  66% required for change.  The decision gets ratified by the school board.  If the vote carries, the side wanting to change the name is responsible for the fund raising to change the name.

If it were to happen, that sounds like a fair proposal.

FWIW I believe the Civil War numbers that venture towards the million mark included the massive civilian losses.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Wrong on both counts. Lee was a vicious slave master and Grant only an accidental one. It's alternate southern history to say otherwise:
Lee:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/

Grant:
https://pastexplore.wordpress.com/2015/06/29/did-ulysses-s-grant-own-slaves-during-the-civil-war/

So why did Grant keep his until 1859?  Apparently quite a few years after acquiring him....  Even Lincoln was not enthusiastic about freed slaves running around the country without the second half of the Republican plan - emancipation and colonization - the two pronged approach to the "colored problem".  Free them, even if the government had to buy them, but make sure they went back to Africa or the Caribbean.  This was the Republican plan from about the 1820's on.


Today's world still trying to put blanket judgements on 19th century thought.  Hey, sounds good - let's get ALL of them off the money and tear down all these vile, hypocritical memorials everywhere for what they did to the Native Americans!!   ALL of those old white guys were complicit and active participants in murder, torture, and extermination.

Which is worse - slavery or genocide and extermination??


Edit;
One more quick note - one of the quotes from a Lee slave talked about a beating...

Wesley Norris, one of the slaves who was whipped, recalled that "not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done."

I am the last person in the world to excuse someone beating another like that - it is unconscionable. 

As for the brine, well I have had salt used on me as an antiseptic, and the old family that are all gone now used that as a mainstay to clean wounds.  Several times some of the loggers in the family would get ax wounds and have a box of Morton salt with them in the forest.  Poor some over the wound with a little water to make a paste, bind it up, and go on chopping trees.  And yeah, it easily could be considered torture - that's how I felt about it.  But none of them nor I have died from infection treated that way.   Mostly luck I suspect, but that was a common medical treatment, lacking anything better...

Also used a treatment for bronchitis, pneumonia, etc - mixed 1 part whisky, 1 part kerosene, 1 raw egg, 2 or 3 parts water.  Make any sick family member drink it...including kids.   Yum!   Not!   But also, none died from those diseases.  Probably again, mostly luck.

[Ed W]

Aldrich Ames, a Russian mole within the CIA, was responsible for the deaths of numerous agents. He is serving a life sentence in the federal prison at Terre Haute.

Jonathan Pollard was a Navy intelligence analyst who sold or tried to sell secrets to several foreign governments. He served 30 years in federal prison before being paroled in 2015.

Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent, spied for Russian intelligence over 22 years. He's serving 15 consecutive life sentences in a federal supermax prison.

Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the United States Army to become a Confederate general leading the Army of Northern Virginia, an army that killed thousands of Union troops.

All these men were traitors. All these men did irreparable harm to our country. Lee is the only one we find on monuments, however. To understand why some of us view Confederate monuments as an affront to humanity since they glorify rebellion, traitorous actions, hatred, and slavery, you need only consider raising monuments to Ames, Pollard, and Hanssen. If that thought is repugnant, if the idea of glorifying men who harmed our nation is one that elicits a visceral reaction in your gut, you begin to understand your fellow countrymen who clamor for the removal of Confederate monuments.

[Hoss]

Aldrich Ames, a Russian mole within the CIA, was responsible for the deaths of numerous agents. He is serving a life sentence in the federal prison at Terre Haute.

Jonathan Pollard was a Navy intelligence analyst who sold or tried to sell secrets to several foreign governments. He served 30 years in federal prison before being paroled in 2015.

Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent, spied for Russian intelligence over 22 years. He's serving 15 consecutive life sentences in a federal supermax prison.

Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the United States Army to become a Confederate general leading the Army of Northern Virginia, an army that killed thousands of Union troops.

All these men were traitors. All these men did irreparable harm to our country. Lee is the only one we find on monuments, however. To understand why some of us view Confederate monuments as an affront to humanity since they glorify rebellion, traitorous actions, hatred, and slavery, you need only consider raising monuments to Ames, Pollard, and Hanssen. If that thought is repugnant, if the idea of glorifying men who harmed our nation is one that elicits a visceral reaction in your gut, you begin to understand your fellow countrymen who clamor for the removal of Confederate monuments.

Wasn't Hanssen the subject of the movie "Breach" with Chris Cooper playing Hanssen?

[patric]

Aldrich Ames, a Russian mole within the CIA, was responsible for the deaths of numerous agents. He is serving a life sentence in the federal prison at Terre Haute.

Jonathan Pollard was a Navy intelligence analyst who sold or tried to sell secrets to several foreign governments. He served 30 years in federal prison before being paroled in 2015.

Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent, spied for Russian intelligence over 22 years. He's serving 15 consecutive life sentences in a federal supermax prison.

Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the United States Army to become a Confederate general leading the Army of Northern Virginia, an army that killed thousands of Union troops.

All these men were traitors. All these men did irreparable harm to our country. Lee is the only one we find on monuments, however. To understand why some of us view Confederate monuments as an affront to humanity since they glorify rebellion, traitorous actions, hatred, and slavery, you need only consider raising monuments to Ames, Pollard, and Hanssen. If that thought is repugnant, if the idea of glorifying men who harmed our nation is one that elicits a visceral reaction in your gut, you begin to understand your fellow countrymen who clamor for the removal of Confederate monuments.

Unless the Soviet Union has statues of American spies in Red Square, this comparison makes no sense.

Maybe another approach...

Here's two flags white supremacists use.
One represented a nation of slavery for four years.
One represented a nation of slavery for a century prior to that.
Which one should we ban?

[heironymouspasparagus]

Aldrich Ames, a Russian mole within the CIA, was responsible for the deaths of numerous agents. He is serving a life sentence in the federal prison at Terre Haute.

Jonathan Pollard was a Navy intelligence analyst who sold or tried to sell secrets to several foreign governments. He served 30 years in federal prison before being paroled in 2015.

Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent, spied for Russian intelligence over 22 years. He's serving 15 consecutive life sentences in a federal supermax prison.

Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the United States Army to become a Confederate general leading the Army of Northern Virginia, an army that killed thousands of Union troops.

All these men were traitors. All these men did irreparable harm to our country. Lee is the only one we find on monuments, however. To understand why some of us view Confederate monuments as an affront to humanity since they glorify rebellion, traitorous actions, hatred, and slavery, you need only consider raising monuments to Ames, Pollard, and Hanssen. If that thought is repugnant, if the idea of glorifying men who harmed our nation is one that elicits a visceral reaction in your gut, you begin to understand your fellow countrymen who clamor for the removal of Confederate monuments.

Guess it depends on who "wins".  The Natives lost, so the same actions perpetrated against them are still celebrated.

Still crimes against humanity, no matter how one rationalizes it.

[Ed W]

Wasn't Hanssen the subject of the movie "Breach" with Chris Cooper playing Hanssen?

I haven't seen that one. It's on the list now.

[patric]

http://www.tulsaworld.com/homepagelatest/opinion-blog-the-hidden-danger-of-purging-the-nation-of/article_910adc35-2f4b-5ccf-b0b2-e97fdc5ac920.html

[cannon_fodder]

Maybe another approach...

Here's two flags white supremacists use.
One represented a nation of slavery for four years.
One represented a nation of slavery for a century prior to that.
Which one should we ban?

One only represented a nation of slavery as well as a nation that rebelled against the United States.

One represents a nation with a complicated history that endeavors to improve itself.

One represents a nation that fought and died to free slaves.

One represents the longest living representative government on the planet.

One represents a nation that fought Nazis and fascists. 

One represents a nation that perfected the light bulb, created vaccines, and took the liberty of inventing the internet.

One is flown by millions in the belief that it serves as a symbol of hope, freedom, and success.

One is flown by thousands who want it to be seen as a symbol of hatred and intimidation.

Ye' ole' stars and stripes isn't perfect.  We have done and continue to do sketchy things.  But the stars and bars isn't complicated either, it existed primary to support the institute of chattel slavery. While the nuance of the American flag is certainly lost on some (we're perfect #1 always etc.), there is little nuance to the stars and bars.