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Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew was planning to put Tubman on $20
BlindPsychic
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/treasurys-lew-to-announce-hamilton-to-stay-on-10-bill-222204
Hamilton saved by the musical apparently. They're planning a big new series of bills from what it sounds like
Hamilton saved by the musical apparently. They're planning a big new series of bills from what it sounds like
BlindPsychic on
+17
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Jackson is a complex and difficult person to balance the scales on because there are some good things he did... but I feel like the genocide probably disqualifies you from being on our most used note.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
RIP sweet, genocidal prince.
It's a good thing for a mature country to re-evaluate past heroes. We don't get all misty when Austria clears up the last "AdolphHitlerStrasse."
But this is better, because ya...that dude was racist.
"There was this garbage guy hanging around, so we got rid of him" isn't exactly whitewashing. Kids are still going to find out that Jackson was pretty garbo in history class, we just don't have to explain to them why he's plastered all over one of our most frequently used currencies.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
The 20, on average, lasts less than 8 years.
I am sure there are outliers, like people with money in a safe that doesn't get used, that lasts much longer... but common in circulation will be over and done with in 10-15 years.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I disagree. As a species and a society we continually learn, grow and change. It does us no good to judge the past by today's standards, it just allows us to feel extra special about ourselves and how great we are while divorcing the long dead from any real context.
At a certain point we just accept that judging the past with the morality of the present is a fruitless exercise.
Again, though, not a huge thing. Having her on a 20 will probably mean a lot to many, so though I don't like the method I'm not rly broken up about it.
What's the good context for genocide?
What's the good context for slavery? I doubt there is one, but I'm not ready to toss 6000 years of figures/history because of it.
The world has been a brutal place that's rapidly gotten more civilized in the last century.
And anyway, removing the dude from the 20 doesn't erase him any more than having Harriet Tubman not on our 20 until now has erased her. Plenty of people are remembered even though their faces aren't on money. Plus, on a more subjective note, Tubman was a badass and having her on our money is neat.
I work for a university that changed the name of one of its main buildings because the name was for a white supremacist governor who was behind a campaign of murder and insurrection. The university where I work is about 60 percent minority.
That meant that I worked for a place that charged black students tens of thousands of dollars a year while forcing them to attend classes in a building that memorializes someone who would and did gladly order the deaths and wished for the re-enslavement of people like them. When they complained, should the school have just said some version of the "How can we judge? Now pay your bill."
That's pretty fucked up. That's not a historical issue. That's a modern one.
Evaluate and use it, sure. But the past was a brutal place. Most movers and shakers of note have blood on their hands.
It's hardly fair to take someone from the 1200s, the 1700s, hell from Roman times even, and evaluate THEM based on how we see the world TODAY.
People, just like art, are generally a product of the time in which they lived.
True, but we also rapidly advanced on many fronts. I think it's inaccurate to say people from the 1900s are remotely representative of us as a society now. This century was full of pain but also growth and massive change.
I disagree with that too, tbh. Most early presidents and American heroes were unabashed slaveowners. Do we also tear down thier monuments and rename their buildings. What shall we rename Washington DC or Washington state, named for a man who by modern standards would be roundly reviled?
It seems like a deep and pointless rabithole.
In this case Jackson was such a giant tool that kicking him off is no loss-besides losing the sort of eternal grave dance/middle finger that is having the President who hated central banking being on the most circulated bill.
But If I am stack ranking 'people on US currency' on their importance and achievements....
TOP
Washington
Lincoln
Hamilton
Jefferson
Franklin
Grant
Tubman
I mean I could see a swap here or there but I feel like she is pretty solidly last.
If you were to make a list of racist presidents Jackson would clear most other founding presidents by a mile. It is not even really debatable.
There are so many people in america's history that deserve recognition. It should change out like, every two years imo.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
To you.
The students here were in tears in gratitude that their concerns were heard. The alumni were able to talk about how that building's name had ALWAYS been a sore point, and that it finally seemed like they had a voice in how the institution they supported was run.
Jackson's actions were abhorent in his day. The whitewash is pretending that what he did was accepted by everyone in his day and only now do we look back and say "Oh no!"
Not that I think being on currency is really a great way to foster cultural understanding of a person's life and actions.
This seems like a bare minimum step for not being shitbirds to certain groups of people. I'm totally cool with that.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
That's usually where these arguments land. For all the talk about Jefferson or Washington being at risk, the reality is that these moves are usually aimed at figures who were seen as despicable in their own time. There's a reason that figures like Andrew Jackson or Nathaniel Bedford Forrest are always at the center of these disputes.
That also ignores that, when you dig deeply, a lot of these monuments and names date back to the 50s and 60s. They were never historical monuments as much as "Fuck yous!" by regional bigots to the black and Indian civil rights movements.
Of course to me, it's called a difference of opinion.
It seems the issue here was more symbolic than anything else. I still think it's a silly thing, and leads down an unpleasant road, but good for them I guess. There's a large amount of pain and death in my family history due to racism and hate, but I can't imagine letting it dominate me to that extent. i feel that kind of worldview will leave a person massively dissatisfied with life and society on many fronts.
Was it?
Look I don't really care for Jackson and I'm glad this is happening, but, I'm fairly confident that owning slaves and performing duels was pretty common for wealthy white folk in the 17 & 1800s. Also yes he was kind of a dick when he was president to people who he didn't like, which, I guess if you are on his shit list, you might find him abhorrent.
"Who is Lew? Am I going to regret finding out if Tubman is related to... another Tub-person related thing from the earlier days of the internet?"
I'm glad it all worked out for the best.
^
A contemporary quote, not a modern opinion
Yes there were plenty of people who didn't give a fuck about the Indians and were greedy for this. Predictably there were also plenty who saw it for what it was. The idea that basic human decency is a recent invention is completely ridiculous.
Why does everyone always forget the Trail of Tears and blatant anti indian rhetoric (and actual killing) prior and during his presidency... Like every time.
It's not as though his treatment of the Indians was unpopular, though. This kind of bullshit had been, and continued to be, pretty common for pretty much up until the early 1990s. My tribe is probably one of the more famous tribes of the Iroquois because of the shit they did in the early 90s in Canada/NY.
It's not new, or recent, no, but it wasn't exactly causing riots as people were mostly indifferent to the indigenous people of the US. I'd say that this popular, vehement dislike of Jackson is fairly new, as all presidents will have people who dislike them.
That's partly because American public elementary schools are intensely averse to controversy. So we pick cuddly, nonthreatening representatives of black history (like George Washington Carver) or canonized ones who nobody dares criticize (like MLK) to teach to kids, leaving people to learn about Huey Newton or Nat Turner in college (if ever).
It's also partly because history education in US public schools is just kind of terrible in general. George Washington Carver wasn't just a guy who really loved peanuts, but that's the way it's taught to kids. Restoration-era arable land was widely devastated by the South's attempt to monopolize the cotton industry. Carver spread knowledge about crop rotation, and peanuts were an effective and cheap nitrogen fixer that could be rotated along with nitrogen-depleting cotton plants. Meanwhile malnutrition was rampant, especially niacin deficiency (pellagra). Promoting peanuts and peanut products as a staple foodstuff helped promote a market for the peanuts grown for nitrogen rotation, improving the income of poor farmers, and it gave them a reliable source of niacin to combat pellagra.
So here was a man born at a time when black literacy was rare, who spent his life improving the scientific knowledge, literacy, economic status, and health of poor black freemen.
But that absolutely did not come through in my public schooling, either. I also learned him as a guy who really loved peanuts. I did not get the economic or health or political context at all.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The American government made the decision in the 1950s to encourage the teaching of "consensus history" that emphasized the positives of the American system over communism while papering over any conflicts or bad actions by the society and government. It was blatant propaganda, and we are living with the effects. Our politics are what you'd expect out of several generations of propagandized citizens who cannot think outside a very narrow worldview.
My argument is not that the opinion of Jackson [hasn't] grown worse with time. It is that he was controversial in his own time (and he was, even cursory research will support this).
You know who else was controversial in their time, had a variety of terrible personal opinions, but arguably did important things during their presidency? Nixon.
Are you going to rush to stick him on a bank note? If not, then why have Jackson on one?
Dude was a fucking amazing person though.
This is an interesting revelation to me and I think I'm going to enjoy reading about it further.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.