Monday, July 06, 2015

Hold on folks, these guys are going for ALL the money!-----To rename or not? Institutions reconsider honors for racists

My Way News - To rename or not? Institutions reconsider honors for racists:
"HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The massacre at a predominantly black South Carolina church has institutions from Alaska to Connecticut evaluating whether they should continue enshrining the names of historical figures linked to slavery and the Confederacy.
...A petition is calling for Yale University in Connecticut to change the name of its residential Calhoun College, which honors 1804 alumnus John C. Calhoun, a prominent advocate of the slave plantation system who became a vice president and U.S. senator from South Carolina.
The petition says the name, in place since the 1930s, represents "an indifference to centuries of pain and suffering among the black population."
...Other campaigns around the country include efforts to change the names of Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis and New York City's General Lee Avenue in Brooklyn, named after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
In Helena, Montana, officials will meet Wednesday to discuss whether anything should be done with a downtown memorial to fallen Confederate soldiers.
The foundation was built in 1916 by the Daughters of the Confederacy.
...Temple University professor Christopher Rabb, a black 1992 Yale graduate who lived in Calhoun College when it still had a stained glass window depicting Calhoun standing over an enslaved black man, said he would rather see a deeper reckoning with issues of race and the role of white supremacists in building American institutions, such as Yale and other schools.
"Removing a name, removing a symbol is easy and we can say, 'problem solved,'" Rabb said.
"But we're dealing with a symbol and we're not dealing with the root cause. 
And the root cause is systemic racism...."

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