About a dozen famous US Presudents owned slaves in their day, and their names are on streets, buildings, monuments, parks, etc throughout the USA. Other notable people in history owned slaves as well. Where would the renaming end? Gosh, slaves were owned by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Should we eliminate all reference to Greece and Rome too?
You can’t erase the past. But, you can learn from it and try to shape a better future.
@MOMANDBOYSTWO There is a difference between people owning slaves during a period of history and people who were known bc they were ARDENT defenders of slavery whose works were foundational to the intellectual architecture of secession as Calhoun was (taken from Yale’s website http://calhoun.yalecollege.yale.edu/about-calhoun/history)
Calhoun is best remembered for his strong defense of slavery and for advancing the concept of minority rights in politics, which he did in the context of defending Southern values from perceived Northern threats.
He was most famous for being a white supremacist … its not as if he cured cancer and happened to own slaves
“about changing the name… at the time the building was named Blacks didn’t have a choice in the matter perhaps its time we re-evaluate and give them a voice -even if it only amounts to a protest…”
I think the best way to give the middle finger to Calhoun is simply to BE a black student rocking it at Yale (or similar school), participating fully in classes, extracurriculars, etc. Kind of the “living well is the best revenge” or “don’t get mad, get even.”
I heard tell that there’s a black graduate of Harvard Law who has done ok for himself in the political arena.
@Pizzagirl I completely disagree. Should Jewish students have to live in a building named after Adolf Hitler or any other top Nazi offical bc living well is their best revenge and they they should count themselves lucky to have this experience??
“some symbols may be silly to you but have quite a devastating and demeaning effect on those who have been oppressed.”
You know what is devastating and demeaning? Black people being shot during routine traffic stops.
It is self-absorbed to suggest that the existence of Calhoun Hall is notable outside the black people on Yale’s campus. It says “I already got myself to third base but it’s not perfect, so I’ll focus on polishing third base here and think that my efforts are going to be meaningful in helping the people who can’t get onto first.” I at least have more respect for elite college students who protest to increase financial aid or ensure the cafeteria workers were paid a living wage.
Just to provide some historical context:
So slavery was first outlawed about 15 years after Harvard was founded, about 50 years before Yale was founded, and over a hundred years before Brown was founded.
To borrow @pizzagirl terminology, this opens up the possibility that the “average relatively ignorant person” in Rhode Island may have been less ignorant of human rights than the “average relatively educated person” associated with an elite university…
This makes me less willing to grant these (or any other) institutions a “pass” based on the prevailing sentiment of the times…
The more recent history of elite academic institutions in the area of eugenics is another piece of history that is both highly disturbing and not widely known.
@Pizzagirl: I’m afraid I’m not really understanding your argument. I take well your point that there are worse things happening to black people in the US than the name of one of Yale’s buildings. What I’m not clear on is whether you think that the name is an issue at all. If you do agree that it is an issue, why does the existence of more serious issues invalidate it? If you don’t agree that it is an issue, is that because you personally do not find it troublesome or you think no one may reasonably do so?
Well, apparently not just that. Excerpts from Wikipedia:
See bottom of my post 164. I have repeatedly said that I think it’s about priorities and breadth of impact.
But his PLATFORM and rallying cries (so to speak) in his established political positions was a White supremacist viewpoint of the nation advocating for a PRO SLAVERY economic foundation for our country - leading into a war and succession to defend his ideology. … his idea of minority rights was the right of the minority south not to have to abide by the Northern laws of the US is abolishing slavery… his statesmanship was based upon advocating for slavery.
From History net re Calhoun
"Slavery was the foundation of the antebellum South. More than any other characteristic, it defined Southern social, political, and cultural life. It also unified the South as a section distinct from the rest of the nation. John C. Calhoun, the South’s recognized intellectual and political leader from the 1820s until his death in 1850, devoted much of his remarkable intellectual energy to defending slavery. He developed a two-point defense. One was a political theory that the rights of a minority section — in particular, the South — needed special protecting in the federal union. The second was an argument that presented slavery as an institution that benefited all involved.
Calhoun’s commitment to those two points and his efforts to develop them to the fullest would assign him a unique role in American history as the moral, political, and spiritual voice of Southern separatism"
The fact that he was chosen as one of the greatest senators shows just how racist our country still was in 1957 and IMO still is today due to the fact that he is honored still at Yale w his name on the building where black American students have to sleep and live…
They should put the faculty in reeducation camps in Alaska and declare all alumni “non-persons.”
“In western culture, swastikas mean only one thing–support for Nazism and persecution of “non-Aryan” people, particularly Jews (in eastern cultures, which had nothing to do with this persecution, the swastika is still used openly).”
@hebegebe – Actually, the swastika and the Indian symbol are not the same. Look it up.
Yale is no longer just the surname of a flawed historical figure whose reason and humanity does not stand the test of time. Instead, Yale is an historical institution of higher learning nearly unmatched in terms of its success and legacy and also a nearly unequaled brand name for educational excellence. Any effort to change such would be foolhardy and harmful to anyone who ever worked there or attended there… or aims to do so.
Personally, I have a highly negative impression of all of our nation’s founding fathers who were not themselves active abolitionists. But there were also very few of them who had the foresight and reason at the time to be so. The list is pretty short… Thomas Paine, Sam Adams, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and very few more.
Most, including Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Franklin, etc. were slave owners or at least unwilling to be vocal critics of slavery. We could thus attempt to rename the nation’s capitol and the state of Washington and otherwise endeavor to expunge all such surnames from the historical record or from anything named to honor their memory or accomplishments. But such efforts are also foolhardy undertakings.
There is simply no escaping the historical record or the flawed men and women who helped to define history. I wish that all of our forefathers had the wisdom and reason of Thomas Paine - the first openly vocal abolitionist, but that was not the case. In his own time, only 6 people even attended Paine’s funeral. John Adams said of Paine… “Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.” But, because Paine dared to call Washington and others hypocrites, he became ostracized. And even in our time, his name and legacy continues to fade. There will likely never be a Thomas Paine University or even a program anywhere named after him.
But there will always be Yale. Such is the way things are…
I’m not a religious person, but this line really seems to fit:
“Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”
The swastika (manja or 만자) is the symbol of Buddhism in Korea (where I’ve lived since 2002). It’s true that the manja usually points in the opposite direction, but I frequently see them in the same direction as the swastik.
/pedantic derail
^ Wow, thanks, That’s really good to know. It never ceases to amaze me the wealth of information CC people have.
Bill Clinton was a womanizer. Did that auomatically make him a bad President? Or was he, as many think, a good President with a character flaw? If future generations consider using women as sexual objects as bad as racism is today, are we going to start getting rid of anything named after Bill Clinton and Kennedy?
Even if Calhoun College is renamed, how can these sensitive souls live and sleep in Yale University, named after a slave trader?
@katliamom said:
They are close enough that no informed Buddhist or Hindu person in the USA would use it in public.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/swastika?s=t says that the word “swastika” is of Sanskrit (an Indian language) origin.
It was a common symbol in many cultures on many continents before the 1930s, and existed in both left hand and right hand versions (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika for various examples). The Nazis favored the right hand version (it was called “Hakenkreuz” in German).
It is one of the ironies of Hitler that the symbol for the “master race” came from India, and another that “Aryan” originally meant the Persians and north Indians.