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Post by drunkandstoopidbeav on Jul 25, 2017 13:35:26 GMT -8
There are 12 Presidents who owned slaves. Perhaps everything named after them should be removed or renamed: streets, buildings, cities, counties, universities, images on currency, this nation's capital, the state directly to our north, etc. The PC movement is a bit carried away at times. It is a real slippery slope to judge people of the past on the standards of today. It is unethical and disingenuous. That is not making excuses of slave ownership, which I feel even in the time, most people didn't think it was all that great of a thing... But more in terms of what was considered socially acceptable 100 years ago, 200 years ago is not what is considered okay today. 100/200 years ago not socially accepted now? My guess is that no matter how funny someone was, if they went on TV today and repeated any of Rodney Dangerfield's fat/ugly wife/girlfriend jokes there's a fair chance they'd be labeled a menace to society.
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Post by TheGlove on Jul 25, 2017 15:20:09 GMT -8
I'm not going to click on the O-live link. Can someone summarize the "push to rename?" Let's see... complete and utter BS from a far too PC group who has no effing life or better things to do!!! I'm sure none of the initiators have any skeletons in their closets. But, perfectly typically of the type of article the "rag" will highlight. I think that's about it. Questions? 😁 The article was written by 2 high school students.
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Post by TheGlove on Jul 25, 2017 15:22:11 GMT -8
African-American is a slippery phrase, too, though. Charlize Theron and Candice Swanepoel are true African-Americans. And, if general human evolutionary theories are correct, so is everyone else, really. What about this guy? Oh Canada
Canada is in America, no?
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Post by ag87 on Jul 25, 2017 18:37:21 GMT -8
As a wild guess, a $50,000,000 donation will get the building renamed however you would like. hmmmm, Gill Plaza in front of AG'87 Coliseum (with Miller Court).
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Post by fumblerooski on Jul 26, 2017 18:00:02 GMT -8
There is no evidence that he refused to bring in blacks, and he brought in one walk-on from the track team. As AD, he allowed Valenti to recruit blacks. There is no record of him uttering a single racist word. I know this is a huge reach here . . . but maybe he didn't see much profit in being a 60-year white guy trying to recruit blacks to a lily-white farm town two hours from the nearest significant black community. It was a different era then. Recruiting wasn't national, there wasn't video and AAU showcases, and Gill's recruiting budget wouldn't cover what Louisville spends on strippers in a weekend. bennyskid - A day removed and re-reading my response to your post, I realize it didn't come across the way I had intended. While I still don't agree with the words used, I would like to apologize for my response as it wasn't helpful towards the conversation. I had no intention of legislating speech, I had no intention of coming across as holier than thou and I had no intention of labeling anyone as racist. My intention was to make sure that OSU fandom, specifically Benny's House, remain a welcoming place for people of all kind. My wife, who is black but would be offended at being called "a black", did not attend OSU or grow up a beaver fan like I did. She is a beaver fan because I am. My kids, who are just as likely to attend Howard as they are to attend OSU, have no choice but to grow up as beaver fans. My hope is that they fall in love with OSU and the community of amazing people that surround it like I did. And I only wanted to make sure they feel welcome in a place like this. That said, my response wasn't appropriate and I do apologize. I've been called a lot of things but not one person that knows me would say I'm an SJW or thin skinned. Clearly I do have a soft spot when it comes to race but I hope you can all understand where I'm coming from.
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Post by bennyskid on Jul 27, 2017 7:54:22 GMT -8
fumblerooski Thank you for your refreshing second take. I grew up in a part of Oregon where African-Americans were almost non-existent. The first black person I ever had three words with was the guy across the hall in my freshman dorm at OSU. I remember having a couple conversations with him and others in which I surely played the part of the yokel. But "racial justice" wasn't a hot-button issue back then. My new friends just rolled their eyes a little bit and "educated" me with a grin - or at worst, a slight sigh of exasperation. Today Oregon is much more integrated, but I imagine that there are still a lot of kids that will have a similar experience when they come to OSU. I just hope that our young yokels will meet first with black youths with the same patience and good humor as the young men I met. It's hard to be a racist when the people of other races that you know are all relatable. But it's easy to be racist when harmless ignorance is met with confrontation and insult. And that's what concerns me about this Slats Gill situation. Slats doesn't seem to have been racist . . . he just was regrettably behind the pack - which shouldn't be surprising in a backwater cow-town like Corvallis was. Taking his name down is the sort of confrontation that I fear creates more racism than it cures. It tells white people, "It doesn't matter what other good things you've done. It doesn't matter that you've been a good coach and helped develop hundreds of boys into good men. It doesn't matter what else you've done for the community, the school, and your students. And it doesn't matter that you had no racial animus or mean to do any harm. You didn't do enough for *us*. The sum of your net worth is simply "What have you done for black America." That's a lousy way to convince a young white from rural Oregon to make friends with his black dorm-mates. But I do think that there should be a discussion of how OSU made it through the Civil Rights era. There are stories that should be told - from Dee Andros learning to accept facial hair to how the Corvallis PD earned a reputation for prejudice. There isn't a lot for OSU to be proud of here. But we can have that conversation without lumping Slats Gill in with real villains.
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Post by Werebeaver on Jul 27, 2017 14:27:30 GMT -8
1. No Civil War traitors names on any OSU buildings period. The cause of preserving and expanding the legal right to own human beings as personal property deserves no honor whatever, only condemnation. 2. Not aware of any evidence that Gill was prejudiced as Coach or AD. As always willing to consider any factual evidence.
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Post by wilkyisdashiznit on Jul 27, 2017 17:35:39 GMT -8
1. No Civil War traitors names on any OSU buildings period. The cause of preserving and expanding the legal right to own human beings as personal property deserves no honor whatever, only condemnation. 2. Not aware of any evidence that Gill was prejudiced as Coach or AD. As always willing to consider any factual evidence. Pretty much everyone who fought or served for the Confederate States of America was pardoned. So, unless you are going to argue that a person's expunged record should be held against him or her indefinitely (from what I can judge, a very unpopular opinion around here), I must disagree with you. I agree that the Lost Cause contains no honor whatsoever, only condemnation. Arnold, though, only served a couple of months, attaining the rank of Captain. And no one seems to know why he was discharged after such a short period. Additionally, one should not get too uppity about slavery in relation to Oregon State University without remembering that the University was founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, i.e. the Methodist Episcopals that believed that slavery was a good thing. And they did not stop being involved with the university until 1892, the same year that President Arnold died. Personally, I may be willing to pardon a man for fighting for his state for three months. But then falling in with a white supremacist religion and then being a part of selecting a multiple school colors for potentially discriminatory reasons have me thinking that Arnold was not so great of a guy in total. But that seems to be based on a lot of hearsay and innuendo.
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Post by Werebeaver on Jul 27, 2017 18:40:08 GMT -8
1. No Civil War traitors names on any OSU buildings period. The cause of preserving and expanding the legal right to own human beings as personal property deserves no honor whatever, only condemnation. 2. Not aware of any evidence that Gill was prejudiced as Coach or AD. As always willing to consider any factual evidence. Pretty much everyone who fought or served for the Confederate States of America was pardoned. So, unless you are going to argue that a person's expunged record should be held against him or her indefinitely (from what I can judge, a very unpopular opinion around here), I must disagree with you. I agree that the Lost Cause contains no honor whatsoever, only condemnation. Arnold, though, only served a couple of months, attaining the rank of Captain. And no one seems to know why he was discharged after such a short period. Additionally, one should not get too uppity about slavery in relation to Oregon State University without remembering that the University was founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, i.e. the Methodist Episcopals that believed that slavery was a good thing. And they did not stop being involved with the university until 1892, the same year that President Arnold died. Personally, I may be willing to pardon a man for fighting for his state for three months. But then falling in with a white supremacist religion and then being a part of selecting a multiple school colors for potentially discriminatory reasons have me thinking that Arnold was not so great of a guy in total. But that seems to be based on a lot of hearsay and innuendo. The Supreme Court (Burdick v United States 1915) has ruled that acceptance of a pardon carries an imputation of guilt. So while the pardon may have foreclosed any legal culpability for the boys in gray and their leaders, it did not dismiss their moral culpability.
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Post by wilkyisdashiznit on Jul 28, 2017 0:27:56 GMT -8
Pretty much everyone who fought or served for the Confederate States of America was pardoned. So, unless you are going to argue that a person's expunged record should be held against him or her indefinitely (from what I can judge, a very unpopular opinion around here), I must disagree with you. I agree that the Lost Cause contains no honor whatsoever, only condemnation. Arnold, though, only served a couple of months, attaining the rank of Captain. And no one seems to know why he was discharged after such a short period. Additionally, one should not get too uppity about slavery in relation to Oregon State University without remembering that the University was founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, i.e. the Methodist Episcopals that believed that slavery was a good thing. And they did not stop being involved with the university until 1892, the same year that President Arnold died. Personally, I may be willing to pardon a man for fighting for his state for three months. But then falling in with a white supremacist religion and then being a part of selecting a multiple school colors for potentially discriminatory reasons have me thinking that Arnold was not so great of a guy in total. But that seems to be based on a lot of hearsay and innuendo. The Supreme Court (Burdick v United States 1915) has ruled that acceptance of a pardon carries an imputation of guilt. So while the pardon may have foreclosed any legal culpability for the boys in gray and their leaders, it did not dismiss their moral culpability. Wow, Gerald Ford's interpretation of Burdick! I am loving this. Ford used his interpretation of Burdick to, first, pardon Nixon and, second, to attempt to sell it to the American people. (Hint: they strongly disagreed.) Pretty much everyone agrees that Burdick literally says what you say, but most believe that that part of Burdick is dicta and is not part of the Supreme Court's holding. Looking back at Confederate soldiers, they were granted legislative amnesty as a matter of course and some received a presidential pardon, as well. (It is important to note that several high-ranking Confederates did not receive either in their lifetime. Robert E. Lee died a traitor--mostly because he died so quickly. Jefferson Davis actually was not pardoned until Jimmy Carter did so.) The dicta in Burdick was trying to differentiate between legislative amnesty and a presidential pardon. Obviously, if soldiers received legislative amnesty, that would moot the point that Burdick is trying to make. If a soldier receives amnesty, there is no imputation of guilt, even if Ford's dicta was right. Unless Arnold did something that only made the pardon applicable and not amnesty, his service in the Confederate States of America never happened in the eyes of the law.
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bill82
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Post by bill82 on Jul 28, 2017 2:57:20 GMT -8
I'm living in Richmond, VA now. As the former capital of the confederacy we are in the spotlight after New Orleans took action to remove public monuments to Confederate war heroes. We have four very high profile monuments on a grand avenue to Jefferson Davis, General Lee and others. Monuments to reconciliation and the tragedy of slavery are present, but difficult to find. The pro-confederate monuments came about because wealthy and connected citizens cleared a path and raised funds for their installation. The black community at the time had no voice, power or wealth to raise objections. The monuments arose just as Jim Crow laws were being instituted. I'm in the camp that would like to see the confederate monuments moved to cemeteries or museum grounds. Counter-monuments, like the little girl facing the bull on Wall Street, don't seem appropriate here.
As for Oregon State, the effort seems forced to this point - a state trying to join a national movement in an area that was never really scarred like those in the South. But it could be the reporting of high school students working on a tight deadline and, like Danny Moran's, just was not up to telling the full story.
I'd have to see direct evidence by Gill of racism against prospective students to support removing his name. If the citizens of Benton County were given credit for raising funds for Benton Hall, I would not try and drag the namesake of the county into the discussion.
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Post by bennyskid on Jul 28, 2017 7:56:42 GMT -8
Agreed. Whatever Arnold did or thought, it has so little relevance to the black experience in Corvallis today that it seems like an imported problem. Ironically, although the Gill situation is nothing like the Arnold case, it's a thousand times more relevant to OSU today and therefore far more worthy of attention and discussion. Again, I don't think we take his name down, but I don't mind shining a light on events from that era.
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Post by wilkyisdashiznit on Jul 28, 2017 12:55:43 GMT -8
Agreed. Whatever Arnold did or thought, it has so little relevance to the black experience in Corvallis today that it seems like an imported problem. Ironically, although the Gill situation is nothing like the Arnold case, it's a thousand times more relevant to OSU today and therefore far more worthy of attention and discussion. Again, I don't think we take his name down, but I don't mind shining a light on events from that era. Oregon is known throughout the nation, historically, as the most racist state outside of the Deep South. The territory evicted all African-Americans in 1844. The state had a statute on the books that did not permit any "free negro or mulatto" from 1857 (when Oregon was still a territory and went all the way to the Rockies) until 1922. Oregon did not sign the 15th Amendment, giving African-Americans the right to vote until 1959, and did not sign the 14th Amendment, granting citizenship to former slaves, for good until 1973. (The 14th Amendment became Federal law on July 26, 1868, and Oregon, symbolically voted it down on October 16, 1868. The 15th Amendment became law on March 30, 1870.) Oregon was the 47th state to ratify the 14th Amendment and 45th state to ratify the 15th Amendment. In the early part of the 20th Century, Oregon had the largest Ku Klux Klan of any state west of the Mississippi. Walter Pierce, an open member of the Ku Klux Klan, was elected governor in 1922 and later served five terms in the United States House of Representatives. There are reasons that Oregon is so homogeneous and has a disproportionately small number of Catholic schools.
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Post by ag87 on Jul 28, 2017 14:30:12 GMT -8
Agreed. Whatever Arnold did or thought, it has so little relevance to the black experience in Corvallis today that it seems like an imported problem. Ironically, although the Gill situation is nothing like the Arnold case, it's a thousand times more relevant to OSU today and therefore far more worthy of attention and discussion. Again, I don't think we take his name down, but I don't mind shining a light on events from that era. Oregon is known throughout the nation, historically, as the most racist state outside of the Deep South. The territory evicted all African-Americans in 1844. The state had a statute on the books that did not permit any "free negro or mulatto" from 1857 (when Oregon was still a territory and went all the way to the Rockies) until 1922. Oregon did not sign the 15th Amendment, giving African-Americans the right to vote until 1959, and did not sign the 14th Amendment, granting citizenship to former slaves, for good until 1973. (The 14th Amendment became Federal law on July 26, 1868, and Oregon, symbolically voted it down on October 16, 1868. The 15th Amendment became law on March 30, 1870.) Oregon was the 47th state to ratify the 14th Amendment and 45th state to ratify the 15th Amendment. In the early part of the 20th Century, Oregon had the largest Ku Klux Klan of any state west of the Mississippi. Walter Pierce, an open member of the Ku Klux Klan, was elected governor in 1922 and later served five terms in the United States House of Representatives. There are reasons that Oregon is so homogeneous and has a disproportionately small number of Catholic schools. As a proud graduate of Roseburg High School, I know full well that many of the small cities outside of the metropolitan area are very "deep-south-like." My class had 527 graduates. There were no kids of African-American descent in my class, nor in the one before or the one after. I can think of two classmates of Asian descent. Their parents owned the two Chinese restaurants in town. There were a handful of latino names. I can think of two kids who were either Jewish or would be considered Jewish in more diverse areas. It probably was my senior year or the year after when I figured that out. The exchange student program was strong and I got to know a guy from Brazil and another from Japan (besides the western Europeans). I'm thinking out loud but the guy from Brazil's surname was Von Zuben, so he was likely a recent immigrant. I know the federal employers (Veteran's Hospital, BLM, Forest Service) were bringing in employees from outside the area. I'm sure it's no picnic now, but it has to be better now than it was 35, 40 years ago.
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Post by bennyskid on Jul 28, 2017 14:59:03 GMT -8
I can add to that list of sins - and my examples aren't buried in the distant past.
Most folks know about the abandonment of Vanport. After that came the preferential destruction of black neighborhoods to build the Portland freeways and the Lutheran hospital. That attitude continues to show in PDX's unconscionable neglect of its black and immigrant neighborhoods. Billions are spent on trolleys and rail cars to take rich white people from their condos to downtown entertainments, while bus service to get the working class folks to their industrial and commercial jobs are cut and road maintenance is neglected. Schools in largely black and immigrant neighborhoods are neglected as well, as are playgrounds and parks.
Portland is the whitest big city in America but it's not white enough for the locals . . . for obvious reasons there is a net outmigration of African-Americans from the city.
Closer to home, we've lost football players because of harassment and/or false arrests by the Corvallis PD, and I have never heard of the PD being held to account for it. Black students account for 1.4% of the OSU population, while the state as a whole sits at about 2%. Maybe those atrocious PDX schools are enough to explain that discrepancy, but it deserves some scrutiny.
There isn't much to be proud of here . . .
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