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#Post#: 5614--------------------------------------------------
Re: Name decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: April 16, 2021, 11:10 pm
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JAM used to promote the following etymology:
HTML https://nz.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071213135331AAbthHF
[quote]The Scandinvian word "OMMERIKA" means the farthest away
place. Lumber found( in Iceland or Greenland) in an old ship can
be dated way before Columbus and Amerigo. Since it was 250 miles
to land in North America and way farther to Europe it can be
concluded that the wood came from the North American Continent.
SO, THE VIKINGS were here first and the sailors LINGO at the
time referred to a land they called 'OMMERIKA".[/quote]
While I hope we can ultimately get back to calling it Atlantis,
this is too esoteric for now. With short-medium term propaganda
in mind, I consider it crucial for leftists to own the name
"America".
#Post#: 5619--------------------------------------------------
Re: Name decolonization
By: rp Date: April 16, 2021, 11:24 pm
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"JAM used to promote the following etymology"
Is this true? Or is it simply for propaganda purposes?
#Post#: 5623--------------------------------------------------
Re: Name decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: April 17, 2021, 12:26 am
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I haven't researched it myself.
#Post#: 5933--------------------------------------------------
Re: Name decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: April 27, 2021, 11:29 pm
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HTML https://richmond.com/news/local/education/william-mary-renames-three-buildings-history-department-that-honored-confederate-supporters/article_7f81121e-8b13-5ec1-bcf4-e6829141892b.html
[quote]WILLIAMSBURG — The College of William & Mary has renamed
three buildings and a department that currently honor supporters
of the Confederacy, the school’s latest move in a yearslong
process to shed references to men who supported the Confederacy,
enslavement and racism.
...
But one member of the board and the university’s student
government president criticized the university for not removing
every name that honors an enslaver and not moving fast enough.
“I’m going to have a problem with racism on this campus until we
eliminate all of it, and I don’t think we’re eliminating all of
it,” Brian Woolfolk told his fellow board members.
Colleges across Virginia have made similar decisions removing
building names, plaques and statues that honor members of the
Confederacy and those who endorsed Jim Crow policies or
segregation. In the past year, Virginia Commonwealth University,
Virginia State University and James Madison University have
renamed buildings on their campuses.
...
So far, William & Mary has identified 51 former employees or
board members who were slave owners. Many of their names still
appear on university streets, awards, plaques and buildings,
said Anthony Joseph, the school’s student government president,
who is Black. The university opted not to change the name of
Ewell Hall, named for former university president and
Confederate officer Benjamin Ewell. Rowe called his story
complex and redemptive.
Joseph told the board of visitors on Friday that there was more
work to be done and that the university needed to “work faster.”
“Don’t allow the shadow of our past to continue to grow,” he
told the board.
Brian Woolfolk, a member of the board of visitors who is Black,
echoed those sentiments. He said there are portraits and
sculptures of slaveholders that haven’t been addressed, and he
questioned why the university wasn’t confronting the problem in
its entirety.[/quote]
This is the correct attitude.
#Post#: 5954--------------------------------------------------
Re: Name decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: April 29, 2021, 10:30 pm
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HTML https://www.economist.com/asia/2021/04/24/australias-colonial-names-are-being-replaced-by-aboriginal-ones
[quote]Ayers Rock, a monolith in the continent’s red centre, was
given a dual name, Uluru, in 1993. Few Australians now call it
by its European moniker. A Mount Nigger and seven Nigger’s
Creeks stained maps in Queensland until 2017. But recent
protests against racial discrimination have invigorated calls to
blot out offensive names. Some politicians are sympathetic.
The legacies of various colonial baddies are under scrutiny. The
King Leopold Ranges in Western Australia, named after a Belgian
ruler, have become the Wunaamin-Miliwundi mountains. The name of
John Batman, a founder of Melbourne who hunted and shot
Aboriginals, has been removed from a park (now Gumbri, meaning
“white dove”).
Benjamin Boyd, a Scottish settler who trafficked slaves from
Pacific islands, is next in line for a reckoning. An Aboriginal
group in New South Wales wants to scratch out Boydtown as well
as a national park named after him.[/quote]
About Boyd:
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Boyd
[quote]Benjamin Boyd (21 August 1801 – 15 October 1851)[1] was a
Scottish entrepreneur who became a major shipowner, banker,
grazier, politician and slaver, exploiting South Sea Islander
labour in the colony of New South Wales.[2]
Boyd became one of the largest landholders and graziers of the
Colony of New South Wales before suffering financial
difficulties and becoming bankrupt. Boyd briefly tried his luck
on the Californian goldfields before being purportedly murdered
on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.[2] Many of his business
ventures involved blackbirding, the practice of enslaving South
Sea Islanders.[3][/quote]
HTML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbirding
[quote]Blackbirding involves the coercion of people through
deception or kidnapping to work as slaves or poorly paid
labourers in countries distant to their native land. The term
has been most commonly applied to the large-scale taking of
people indigenous to the numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean
during the 19th and 20th centuries. These blackbirded people
were called Kanakas or South Sea Islanders. They were taken from
places such as the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Niue, Easter
Island, Gilbert Islands, Tuvalu and the islands of the Bismarck
Archipelago amongst others.
The owners, captains and crew of the ships involved in the
acquisition of these labourers were termed blackbirders. The
demand for this kind of cheap labour principally came from
European colonists in New South Wales, Queensland, Samoa, New
Caledonia, Fiji, Tahiti and Hawaii, as well as plantations in
Peru, Mexico and Guatemala.
...
Examples of blackbirding outside the South Pacific include the
early days of the pearling industry in Western Australia at
Nickol Bay and Broome, where Aboriginal Australians were
blackbirded from the surrounding areas.[5][/quote]
Maybe we should start a separate topic on this phenomenon in the
Colonial Era forum?
#Post#: 6036--------------------------------------------------
Re: Name decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: May 2, 2021, 12:44 am
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HTML https://thelensnola.org/2021/04/23/opsb-approves-20-school-buildings-to-be-renamed-including-mcdonogh-35/
[quote]The Orleans Parish School Board approved a list of 20
school campuses to be renamed at its Thursday meeting — because
they were found to be named for a slave owner, separatist or
segregationist and must be renamed under a board policy passed
last year.
...
“These kids, white, black, whatever…DO NOT want the name of a
white supremacist BRANDED across their backs, their chests not
one more day,” Terrie wrote.
The same goes for teachers, Grant replied. “Some of which have
made clear that they are leaving the school because of this. Our
teachers should not have to walk through the doors or wear an ID
tag with the name of a white supremacist on it.”[/quote]
Exactly.
#Post#: 6707--------------------------------------------------
Re: Name decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: May 25, 2021, 10:09 pm
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Now we are building momentum!
HTML https://nypost.com/2021/05/22/columbus-haters-rename-street-for-murderous-haitian-emperor/
[quote]Some of the city’s biggest elected Christopher Columbus
haters spearheaded an effort in the City Council to rename a
Brooklyn street after Haitian emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines —
who is infamous for a brutal massacre of thousands of white
settlers in 1804.
In 2018, then-City Councilman Jumaane Williams and Councilwoman
Inez Barron celebrated the addition of Dessalines’ name to the
corner of Rogers and Newkirk avenues in Flatbush.
“Jean-Jacques Dessalines was a revolutionary who fought for his
people and overthrew an oppressive regime who brutally enslaved
and persecuted the Haitian people,” Williams, now the city’s
Public Advocate, said triumphantly at the time.
“This was not something that was done in the usual manner and
passed with ease. This was a fight and a struggle,” said Barron
amid the jubilation of Brooklyn’s local Haitian
community.[/quote]
Of course, renaming a street after a hero means nothing unless
people bother to actually model themselves after the hero.
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/firearms/
#Post#: 6958--------------------------------------------------
Re: Name decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: June 6, 2021, 9:52 pm
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HTML https://www.yahoo.com/news/hundreds-places-racist-names-dot-110006766.html
[quote]More than 1,000 towns, lakes, streams, creeks and
mountain peaks across the U.S. still bear racist names,
according to a federal board under the Department of the
Interior.
Why it matters: The legacies of sites with names such as Squaw
Lake, Minn., and Dead Negro Spring in Oklahoma endure, even amid
a national push to remove Confederate monuments and change
designations of public buildings named for racists.
...
By the numbers: The database maintained by the U.S. Board on
Geographic Names shows there are 799 sites that contain the word
"squaw" — a derogatory term for Native American women.
It also shows 621 places with the word "negro" in them,
including Big Negro Creek in Warren, Ill. — and Negro Foot, Va.,
an unincorporated community said to have been named in reference
to an enslaved person whose foot was amputated to prevent
escape.
Twenty-nine places contain the word "Chinaman" — an
offensive term describing Chinese American men. There's Chinaman
Hat in Wasco County, Ore., and Chinamans Canyon in Las Animas
County, Colo.
There are 82 places with the word "redman" (an offensive
term for Native Americans), seven places with the term "darkey"
(an offensive term for Black Americans), and 11 places with
"redskin."
New Mexico is home to a reservoir called Wetback Tank, while
there are 12 places around the country with the term "greaser."
Both are epithets used to describe Mexican Americans.
Five places are named "Anna," which once meant "Ain’t No
(N-words) Allowed" to Black travelers since some were sundown
towns — places Black people weren't allowed after dark.[/quote]
#Post#: 7005--------------------------------------------------
Re: Name decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: June 8, 2021, 10:11 pm
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HTML https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/education/2021/06/01/duval-school-board-votes-to-change-6-confederate-tied-schools-including-lee/7493301002/
[quote]“Keeping the names of Confederate generals in our
children's schools is a slap in the face to every African
American that attends these schools," Wells Todd of Take’Em Down
Jax said. "Those that oppose the names being changed are
acknowledging their support for the Confederacy and all that it
stood for."
...
The school board voted to rename the following schools:
Joseph Finegan Elementary to Anchor Academy
Stonewall Jackson Elementary to Hidden Oaks Elementary
School
Jefferson Davis Middle to Charger Academy
Kirby-Smith Middle to Springfield Middle School
J.E.B. Stuart Middle to Westside Middle School
Robert E. Lee High to Riverside High School
...
“The School Board’s decision to rename six schools in
Jacksonville is a giant step forward in righting a racist
ideology. We don’t need schools named in honor of slave-holding
Generals,” he said. “That our children had to go to schools that
were named to honor a disgraceful past was an injustice. The
School Board’s vote tonight rejects those ideas and is a victory
for Jacksonville.”
[/quote]
The new names genuinely sound better too.
#Post#: 7084--------------------------------------------------
Re: Name decolonization
By: 90sRetroFan Date: June 11, 2021, 10:31 pm
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Let us not forget that we are still losing more often than we
win:
HTML https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/06/white-supremacy-washington-and-lee-robert.html
[quote]White Supremacy Was on Trial at Washington and Lee
University. It Won.
After the end of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee, the general who
commanded the army of the Confederacy, was never tried,
convicted, or sentenced for any crimes—not treason, not murder,
not torture. Instead, he became president of Washington College,
where he attracted students molded in his image, inspired by his
lost cause, and motivated to maintain racial hierarchy. Under
Lee’s leadership, his students would, among other things, form a
KKK chapter and harass and assault Black school children. The
board of trustees of Washington College honored this legacy when
it decided to rename its institution Washington and Lee
University.
Lee is the embodiment of white supremacy—he lived a life, as I
previously argued, committed to racial subjugation and terror.
He fought to enslave Black people—so the Confederate States of
America could continue to profit on Black labor and Black pain
while creating an anti-democratic state founded upon white
supremacy. For this reason many stakeholders asked the current
board of trustees of Washington and Lee University, where I am
an assistant professor of law at the law school, to remove Lee
as a namesake. After significant and critical national
attention, Lee was finally put on trial at the place where his
body is buried. Not guilty, the board of trustees announced on
Friday. The vote was not even close—a supermajority of trustees
(22 out of 28 trustees, or 78 percent) voted to retain Lee as a
namesake. That vote, however, did more. It signaled that
Washington and Lee University will continue to shine as a beacon
of racism, [s]hate,[/s] and privilege.
In response to the board’s decision, the university’s president
released a statement. He declared that Lee’s name does not
define the university or its stakeholders; rather, “we define
it.” But we cannot engage in historical revisionism to redefine
Lee’s name, nor should we. The board announced its commitment to
“repudiating racism, racial injustice, and Confederate
nostalgia.” But we cannot hope to make consequential change
until we accept the truth of what Lee’s name means.
The jury at Washington and Lee harkens back to Jim Crow
juries—white, male, privileged, and rigged. The jury, composed
of 28 trustee members, was mostly white (25 trustees) and mostly
male (23 trustees). Many of the witnesses supporting Lee were
white, as were many of the big donors who threatened to withhold
contributions if Lee’s name was removed. The outcome was never
in doubt.
White supremacy has been put on trial before throughout our
history. The outcomes in those trials was also predictable. The
“Indian Removal Act” ensured white officials could never be
found guilty of stealing Native land and committing genocide on
the Trail of Tears. White insurrectionists in Wilmington, North
Carolina, murdered Black residents, destroyed Black-owned
businesses, and then ousted Wilmington’s anti-segregation,
pro–equal rights government to insulate themselves against
accountability. The United States Supreme Court sanctioned
Japanese internment during World War II. An all-white, all-male
jury found Emmett Till’s murderers not guilty after 67 minutes
of deliberation. Los Angeles cops were acquitted of bludgeoning
Rodney King after the jury watched the tape more than 30 times.
When our racial ghosts are on trial, we know the outcome. When
truth and justice are on trial, we know the outcome. When our
country is asked to reject a revisionist tissue of historical
lies, we know the outcome. White supremacy wins. White supremacy
remains adaptable, persistent, violent, and nearly undefeated.
It inspires an insurrection. It introduces 389 restrictive
voting right bills in 48 states over the past six months. It
forbids schools to give a true accounting of our history—a
history of racial violence, from the Trail of Tears, to Black
Wall Street, to extrajudicial killings including those of Emmett
Till, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor. It allows Washington and
Lee University to keep Lee as a namesake because it is safer to
benefit from white supremacy than to summon the courage to even
appear anti-racist.
Historical revisionism shelters white supremacy. It entrenches
white supremacy. It emboldens white supremacy. We need truth and
reconciliation in America. We must face our past head-on and
acknowledge it for what it was: oppression and racial terror
fueled by white supremacy. Only then can we start to reimagine
our democratic institutions as more—more just, more fair, more
equal. Only then will we build the capacity, the resolve, and
the collective will to find white supremacy guilty.[/quote]
Better yet, we could reimagine our institutions as more just and
more fair via becoming non-democratic. Democracy is a Western
system:
HTML https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/western-democracy/
Democracy was what, as you yourself just described, delivered
victory to white supremacy. So why are you continuing to trust
it?
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