[dohboi]

T. Roosevelt on Blacks: “as a race and in the mass they are altogether inferior to whites”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political ... _Roosevelt

And I assume you are talking about the decision of the Museum of Natural History in NYC. A museum can decide to place whatever of it's statues and exhibits wherever it likes for whatever reason. This was not 'those people' who 'didn't know their history' going after a TR statue with jackhammers! I have a vague notion that the folks at the freakin' Museum of Natural HISTORY know just a smidgen more about history than all of us put together!

Sometime you guys really are ridiculous!!

And by the way, the statue in question "explicitly depicts black and indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior"

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -roosevelt

Some people seem to be more exercised about statues than about actual people and their rights. Just sayin'.

[Outcast_Searcher]

A lot of people seeing Trump decline in the polls will not risk demonstrating now with Covid as they prefer to just wait him out. This pulling statues down is getting out of hand with statues of Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt being targeted. The vandals are not students of history. If they were they would know that TR got into political trouble for having Booker T. Washington (a black man) come to a White house dinner in 1901. The uproar kept that from happening again for thirty years.

So Jefferson owning slaves isn't relevant in the current "Black Lives Matter" movement? Or that Teddy Roosevelt was clearly a racist?

You're ON the internet for crissakes. It's not hard to check on such things.

But pretending to be a "student of history" instead of knowing what you're talking about shows, what? A bluff?

[Ibon]

T. Roosevelt on Blacks: “as a race and in the mass they are altogether inferior to whites”

.

If humans were only so easy to put in either good or evil boxes. You have a historical figure, a product of his times, who is an amalgam of the sacred and profane and we choose to eliminate him. Tearing down a statue of T. Roosevelt reminds me of those ISIS fighters blowing up those Buddha statues.

I do agree with your comments Dohboi in some cases to move these statues in museums and make an interpretive display putting their lives in the context of the times they lived and highlighting their racism and achievements.

There are some figures however like T. Roosevelt who in his life represents an amalgam of progressive and regressive positions. Maybe a plaque that gives some explanations to this would be in order but to tear down his statue?

This seems not only counter productive but actually a display of weakness.

[vtsnowedin]

A lot of people seeing Trump decline in the polls will not risk demonstrating now with Covid as they prefer to just wait him out. This pulling statues down is getting out of hand with statues of Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt being targeted. The vandals are not students of history. If they were they would know that TR got into political trouble for having Booker T. Washington (a black man) come to a White house dinner in 1901. The uproar kept that from happening again for thirty years.

So Jefferson owning slaves isn't relevant in the current "Black Lives Matter" movement? Or that Teddy Roosevelt was clearly a racist?

You're ON the internet for crissakes. It's not hard to check on such things.

But pretending to be a "student of history" instead of knowing what you're talking about shows, what? A bluff?

Actually I don't think you have any evidence that T.R. was a raciest.
He like Washington and Jefferson before him were men of their times and could not cure all evils at a stroke of the pen. Washington and Jefferson were born into a world where slavery had been the norm throughout all previous history. That Jefferson wrote "All men are created equal" was a challenge to the established order and you have to wonder why no other politically powerful figure did not insist that it be edited to say "all White men are created equal" . Let us leave off on the question of Women's equality.
They ,each in their time, and faced with the realities of that time ,moved the country ahead far more then could be expected. That they could not end all injustice all at once is too much to ask for.

[dohboi]

To be clear, we are primarily talking about a particular statue, not a man.

Did you even look at this particular statue that you seem to be so protective of?

[vtsnowedin]

To be clear, we are primarily talking about a particular statue, not a man.

Did you even look at this particular statue that you seem to be so protective of?

The statue has Roosevelt mounted on horseback which as a Rough-rider he was known for and is flanked by a black man on one side and a native American on the other. They are not behind him or being oppressed by him and the Native American recalls his time as a rancher in North Dakota and his work creating Yellowstone and other parks and refuges and the Black man recalls his trip to Africa where he gathered hundreds of specimens for the museum.
As a piece of art it tells a lot of TR's story and to remove it serves no one that has the countries interest at heart.

[dohboi]

Well, that's your subjective opinion.

Here's another one, by an actual Roosevelt family member:

'I think it gives the wrong message'

https://6abc.com/society/roosevelts-fam ... l/6260380/

And here's a bit more info, for all you self professed champions of history out there!

https://6abc.com/society/roosevelts-fam ... l/6260380/

Roosevelt developed an attitude toward Native Americans that can fairly be described as genocidal. In an 1886 speech in New York, he declared:

I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indian is the dead Indian, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian. Take three hundred low families of New York and New Jersey, support them, for fifty years, in vicious idleness, and you will have some idea of what the Indians are. Reckless, revengeful, fiendishly cruel.

That same year Roosevelt published a book in which he wrote that “the so-called Chivington or Sandy [sic] Creek Massacre, in spite of certain most objectionable details, was on the whole as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier.”

The Sand Creek massacre had occurred 22 years previously in the Colorado Territory, wiping out a village of over 100 Cheyenne and Arapaho people. It was in every way comparable to the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. Nelson A. Miles, an officer who eventually became the Army’s top general, wrote in his memoirs that it was “perhaps the foulest and most unjustifiable crime in the annals of America.”

[Ibon]

Well, that's your subjective opinion.

Here's another one, by an actual Roosevelt family member:

'I think it gives the wrong message'

https://6abc.com/society/roosevelts-fam ... l/6260380/

And here's a bit more info, for all you self professed champions of history out there!

https://6abc.com/society/roosevelts-fam ... l/6260380/

Roosevelt developed an attitude toward Native Americans that can fairly be described as genocidal. In an 1886 speech in New York, he declared:

I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indian is the dead Indian, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian. Take three hundred low families of New York and New Jersey, support them, for fifty years, in vicious idleness, and you will have some idea of what the Indians are. Reckless, revengeful, fiendishly cruel.

That same year Roosevelt published a book in which he wrote that “the so-called Chivington or Sandy [sic] Creek Massacre, in spite of certain most objectionable details, was on the whole as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier.”

The Sand Creek massacre had occurred 22 years previously in the Colorado Territory, wiping out a village of over 100 Cheyenne and Arapaho people. It was in every way comparable to the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. Nelson A. Miles, an officer who eventually became the Army’s top general, wrote in his memoirs that it was “perhaps the foulest and most unjustifiable crime in the annals of America.”

Being a conservationist and understanding the history of the conservation movement, my knowledge of T. Roosevelt where his progressive vision on that front. Also his love of wilderness and adventures out west and even his misadventures in the Amazon after he was president is all interesting. I was not aware of his position on race which adds another dimension to his story. Yes, part of this is being a product of his time.

More importantly, is that folks today understand this legacy of racism and how it has weakened our society far worse than Covid19. haha

Anyway, I have learned something here. I would think that statue in question needs to be in a museum with the full story of T. Roosevelt or if it is returned to where it is then more interpretive information on the great and flawed important leader of our past.

[Outcast_Searcher]

A lot of people seeing Trump decline in the polls will not risk demonstrating now with Covid as they prefer to just wait him out. This pulling statues down is getting out of hand with statues of Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt being targeted. The vandals are not students of history. If they were they would know that TR got into political trouble for having Booker T. Washington (a black man) come to a White house dinner in 1901. The uproar kept that from happening again for thirty years.

So Jefferson owning slaves isn't relevant in the current "Black Lives Matter" movement? Or that Teddy Roosevelt was clearly a racist?

You're ON the internet for crissakes. It's not hard to check on such things.

But pretending to be a "student of history" instead of knowing what you're talking about shows, what? A bluff?

Actually I don't think you have any evidence that T.R. was a raciest.

So don't actually CHECK on anything racist Teddy Roosevelt said, or make any counterclaim based on fact or anything. Just state you don't "think" I have any evidence.

Well, here's an example:

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/03 ... -100-years

Theodore Roosevelt was an environmentalist and progressive social reformer who laid the groundwork for the modern Democratic party. But he was also an advocate for white nationalism and eugenics.

Roosevelt's views were racist, says Gary Gerstle (@glgerstle), a professor of American history at the University of Cambridge. But he was very much "a man of his time."

“Well, he had very well-developed and racist views towards both Indians and blacks. He regarded Indians as savages. He respected them because they were ardent warriors. But he expected that they would be eliminated, exterminated from America in contest with the white men who were settling the continent, to the people who he hailed as backwoodsmen. And he required the Indians to be there to be the strenuous opponent through which Americans could prove their valor. But he was very clear that in a modern America that he was building, he expected they would be exterminated either through battle or through simply the inability to adjust to modern life.

“It's easy for us today to say Obama is the great civic nationalist, and Trump is the great racial nationalist, and that's a true statement. But for much of American history, these two nationalist traditions have been mixed up in the minds of the same individuals. And once we understand that both civic aspirations and racist aspirations are present in so many Americans, it helps us to understand the difficulty America has had in terms of eradicating racial nationalism from American soil.

Now, if you want to say that was FINE being a racist because he was a white nationalist, as many other Americans were back then that's fine. But that doesn't mean he wasn't a racist.

[careinke]

A lot of people seeing Trump decline in the polls will not risk demonstrating now with Covid as they prefer to just wait him out. This pulling statues down is getting out of hand with statues of Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt being targeted. The vandals are not students of history. If they were they would know that TR got into political trouble for having Booker T. Washington (a black man) come to a White house dinner in 1901. The uproar kept that from happening again for thirty years.

So Jefferson owning slaves isn't relevant in the current "Black Lives Matter" movement? Or that Teddy Roosevelt was clearly a racist?

You're ON the internet for crissakes. It's not hard to check on such things.

But pretending to be a "student of history" instead of knowing what you're talking about shows, what? A bluff?

If you carry this logic through, we should be tearing down the most racist political party ever, the Democratic Party, home of the Klan Bake, by far the largest slave holders, and rampant racism. So the Democrats being rampant racists isn't relevant in the current "Black Lives Matter" movement?

Your on the internet for crissakes. It's not hard to check such things.

[vtsnowedin]

So don't actually CHECK on anything racist Teddy Roosevelt said, or make any counterclaim based on fact or anything. Just state you don't "think" I have any evidence.

Well, here's an example:

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/03 ... -100-years

Theodore Roosevelt was an environmentalist and progressive social reformer who laid the groundwork for the modern Democratic party. But he was also an advocate for white nationalism and eugenics.

Actually old chap I own and have read several books written by TR himself.( Not the ghost writers employed today).
I note you choose not to post this clip from the same article.

“I think his legacy was in constructing a modern liberalism that would come to full fruition in the presidency of his cousin [Franklin D. Roosevelt],” Gerstle tells Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson. “The idea that one could not allow private wealth to accumulate without regulation; that the government had a role to play in regulating the economy; that it had a role to play in evening the playing field between the rich and the poor.”

Doing a bit of cheery picking I see.
I might also note that TR actually lived and worked in North Dakota for a time and his opinions about native Americans came from first hand knowledge not the internet.

[dohboi]

I wonder if the mods might split off the whole statue issue as a separate thread.

Getting into details of TR's life get pretty far from current issues of police brutality (although, of course, nearly everything is connected in some way...but then why bother with separate threads at all?)

[Outcast_Searcher]

So don't actually CHECK on anything racist Teddy Roosevelt said, or make any counterclaim based on fact or anything. Just state you don't "think" I have any evidence.

Well, here's an example:

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/03 ... -100-years

Theodore Roosevelt was an environmentalist and progressive social reformer who laid the groundwork for the modern Democratic party. But he was also an advocate for white nationalism and eugenics.

Actually old chap I own and have read several books written by TR himself.( Not the ghost writers employed today).
I note you choose not to post this clip from the same article.

“I think his legacy was in constructing a modern liberalism that would come to full fruition in the presidency of his cousin [Franklin D. Roosevelt],” Gerstle tells Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson. “The idea that one could not allow private wealth to accumulate without regulation; that the government had a role to play in regulating the economy; that it had a role to play in evening the playing field between the rich and the poor.”

Doing a bit of cheery picking I see.
I might also note that TR actually lived and worked in North Dakota for a time and his opinions about native Americans came from first hand knowledge not the internet.

Speaking of cherry picking, make a spurious argument. Don't of course, acknowledge the clear racism.

So of course, you MUST be right.

Your signal to noise ratio is approaching zero. Perhaps time to add you to my ignore list.

[vtsnowedin]

Speaking of cherry picking, make a spurious argument. Don't of course, acknowledge the clear racism.

What you fail to understand is that every member of the Harvard class of 1880 was a racist. It was what they had been indoctrinated to believe was the "proper way to think". What other leader from that time had a black man to dinner?

[dohboi]

Not all who graduated from Harvard in the second half of the last century were whit supramicists.

The first black degree recipients were: Edwin C. J. Howard (Medicine), George L. Ruffin (Law), Robert T. Freeman (Dental) all in 1869. Ruffin and Freeman were the first blacks awarded their respective degrees in the country.

The first Harvard College A.B. was awarded to Richard T. Greener in 1870. He went on to become a philosophy professor, law school dean and foreign diplomat.

https://ask.library.harvard.edu/faq/82388

[dohboi]

But again, and again, and again...

What is being discussed here is statue more than a man.

vt has stated that he does not find it offensive. Presumably, vt would not find all sorts of racially charged language to be offensive. Does that mean that those terms should be deemed generally non-offensive?

Just as Black and American Indians find much language to be offensive, and what vt does or does not say about that is essentially irrelevant to the issue; so here, it matters not one wit whether vt finds the statue offensive.

Lost and lots of Blacks and Native Americans have. They have much, much more of a right to say what is offensive to them than vt and his ilk does.

Again, all this statue stuff should really be split off, but perhaps our wonderful mods are all visiting the land of the lotus eaters and cannot be bothered?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus-eaters

[vtsnowedin]

OK so in a few years I can take my granddaughter to MLK city (formally Washington D.C) and drive down Schumer avenue to Pelosi plaza and at the Uber parking lot I can tell her that a marble monument and some statues used to be there commemorating the people that wrested this country from the hands of the British monarchy and gave us a Republic which had stood for over two hundred years but now is in ruins controlled by the Chinese.

[dohboi]

Don't see why not. We have Ronald Reagan Airport, for f sake, naked after the guy who was mostly famous for 'sleepwalking through history.' (That might be a more fitting title for this thread, given the attitudes of some!)

But it sounds like you will then be able to take her inside museum to show where a statue was relocated to, where it will give the historical context both of why the statue was made and erected, and why judicious, thoughtful people decided to move it to an area where its history could be more fully explained and contextualized.

Who knows, your granddaughter might end up understanding history from this experience better than her old gramps appears to!

[vtsnowedin]

judicious, thoughtful people

[dissident]

Teddy Roosevelt and Stevie Ray Vaughan were not racists and were not associated with racism. But the D. Party was a bastion of pure racism into the 1960s. Roosevelt was perennially attacked by the D. Party for having a black man over for dinner at the White House.

But these Trotskyist BLM maggots are using the formula: white = racist. Thereby establishing their own racist credentials.