Saturday, June 13, 2020

Ripples And Waves Of George Floyd's Murder

I read this in yesterday's Los Angeles Times:
"With its soaring arches, international flags and globe-topped tower, the Von KleinSmid Center for International and Public Affairs is one of the most prominent buildings at USC. Its namesake, the late Rufus B. von KleinSmid, has held a place of distinction as the university’s fifth president.
But on Thursday, USC announced it had stripped Von KleinSmid’s name from the building as the university at last reconciled with his disturbing leadership role in California’s eugenics movement.
The scholar, who is credited with expanding the university’s academic programs and international relations curriculum as president from 1921 to 1947, believed that people with “defects” had no ethical right to parenthood and should be sterilized. His “Human Betterment Foundation” was instrumental in supporting the 1909 California legislation that authorized the forced sterilization of those deemed “unfit” — essentially anyone nonwhite, said Alexandra Minna Stern, a University of Michigan history professor and expert on eugenics.
His active support of eugenics is “at direct odds” with the university’s multicultural community and mission of diversity and inclusion, President Carol L. Folt announced.
“This moment is our Call to Action, a call to confront anti-Blackness and systemic racism, and unite as a diverse, equal, and inclusive university,” Folt wrote. 'You have asked for actions, not rhetoric, and actions, now.'”
This name removal has special meaning to me because I spent seven years as a graduate student in this building.  I never spent much time thinking about who Von KleinSmid was and I certainly didn't know about his role in the eugenics movement in California.  

And it makes me think of my days as a UCLA undergraduate when I actually did think about the names that were put on buildings.  A new basketball arena was built on campus in the years the Bruins were first winning national championships.  Although the obvious name for that arena was Wooden Pavilion, it was named after an oil company owner who donated money.  That started me thinking about the names on all the buildings.  I didn't necessarily want to change them.  I just wanted to put up big plaques that detailed how the building's namesake had earned the money that he'd used to buy his rich man's name carved onto the building.  

The USC building name change is but one result of George Floyd's death.  The renaming of the Southern military bases has gotten much more attention along with the pulling down of statues of people of dubious honor.  I think my plaque idea still has merit.  By simply tearing down a statue or erasing a name, we lose the opportunity for a lasting history lesson about power and ideology and how eventually both of those change.  Von KleinSmid's name should no longer be honored on this building, but the history of how it got there and why it was removed should be prominently displayed on a plaque on the building.  So that people can start wondering who among the prominent people of the current day have pasts that their money is able to cover up.  

And that statues that are being torn down should be put into appropriate museums so the history of the wrongs done by the people they were originally supposed to honor can be told.  It's important for people to see how prominent people of one age are often prominent because those in power could hide their misdeeds.  

But I'd also like to point out a phrase that's been used too often in the media lately:  "...sparked by the death of George Floyd."  

George Floyd's death was the place where the fire was ignited this time.  But the firewood of racism, sexism, and injustice is littered across the country, around the world.  Police kill about 1000 people a year for the last five years.  Blacks make up a larger proportion of those deaths than they do of the population.  But more whites are killed, so this isn't just a black issue.  In any case, Floyd's death alone would not have gotten so many people out in the streets.  His was just the last straw.  A death among many, but one that was egregious and captured on video. And without the video taken by a 17 year old young woman, the reaction wouldn't have been the same.  And if we hadn't been in a pandemic with most people cooped up at home for the previous month, and laid off or otherwise free from work obligations, the mass protests surely wouldn't have had so many people, nor lasted so long.  These demonstrations are the result of hundreds of years of injustice and cruelty.  The successes of the MeToo movement showed people that the powerful can, sometimes, be overthrown.   There have been outbreaks of outrage before that have been put out.  This outbreak is simply the largest by far.

But will we get more substantive change than just the toppling of a few statues and the changing of names on buildings?  Will the institutional structures that have reinforced racism - the red lining, that kept blacks in poor neighborhoods and kept the value of their houses low;  the poor schooling in those neighborhoods that kept blacks less educated and less likely to get into and succeed in college;  the lack of jobs in those neighborhoods;  the lack of jobs for blacks outside those neighborhoods due to poor schooling and movie and television reinforced images of blacks and Hispanics as dangerous criminals; and racist police and judicial treatment of blacks for all those reasons?  Will these things change?  

Not all at once, but there's going to be a big shift.  

Blogger note:  I'd love to add a picture to this.  I'm sure somewhere I must have a picture of former  the Von KleinSmid Center hidden away among my slides.  It is definitely a distinctive architectural statement, though a bit odd.  If I can find one easily in my stuff, I'll add it later.

12 comments:

  1. Interesting
    https://www.change.org/p/petition-the-municipality-of-anchorage-to-replace-the-statue-in-downtown-anchorage-change-the-captain-cook-statue-in-downtown-anchorage-to-elizabeth-peratrovich

    Oliver

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    1. Oliver, thanks for this link to a proposal to take down the Captain Cook statue in Anchorage and replace it with one of Elizabeth Peratrovich. I'm thinking about where we draw the lines between who to take down and who to keep up. Clearly people who intentionally hurt other people as a major part of their lives should not be celebrated with statues, though they shouldn't be erased from history either. Tell me more about Captain Cook's evil deeds. As I look him up, the worst I've seen so far is that his explorations led others to follow and that some of his sailors killed some Maoris in New Zealand. What else have you got on him?

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    2. I don't have anything on him Steve, I think its kind of silly. Is Elizabeth Peratrovich Inlet next.

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    3. Look like someone had something on him

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  2. I've been asking where the outrage is since November 2016!

    I was offended when Nimbus was removed from the courthouse plaza in front of our Capitol, and even more offended when a monument to the ultimate American imperialist, Mr. Manifest Destiny, William Henry Seward. I objected to its erection, and I will be "decorating" it on First Americans Day in October.

    Come stopover here in Your Fair Capital City some time on your trips up and down the coast.

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  3. Thanks Nunya Bidness. This all raises questions about how we weigh history, the balance of good and bad in people's lives, intentional harm and unintentional harm people caused, and how we judge people in the past with modern day value systems. Will people in the future dismiss everyone who drove a car in the 20th Century because they contributed to Climate Change? Lots to think about. How do we judge a man like Seward who lived 150 years ago. Does the purchase of Alaska negate his strong Abolitionist actions? The idea that the US could buy something from Russia that really belonged to the people living on the land is outrageous today, but Americans still have troops in many, many countries around the world and few people seem to care. What would Alaska be like today if the US hadn't bought Alaska? An independent indigenous country? That wasn't Hawaii's fate and I doubt it would have been Alaska's. Would it still be part of Russia? Would England have bought it? I'm just playing devil's advocate here. When the MeToo movement said to believe every woman, they seem not to have meant Tara Reade. And I suspect there will be statues toppled that people will want to rethink when the dust settles.
    And I have very fond memories of our time in Juneau. It is such a beautiful location and a livable, walkable size. Even the legislature can't spoil that. But I don't see any travel while Corona is on the loose and I expect that will continue into next year. And if it weren't for grandchildren, I'd be content to stick around home and keep my carbon footprint as low as possible. Again, thanks for your thoughts and help me sort through these issues further.

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  4. Steve. Sorry about posting and deleting, but when I re-read my marks I often pause afterwards: 'I don't live there. I don't know how it feels now.' Then I delte my words.

    I know many of us believe we know a country having lived there some length of time, by visiting it, even a second visit (as we could have gone elsewhere), but I see one can and does lose the personal, gut-level feel of a place with time too long away.

    As living in a place & time differs from reading its history, I don't face current events with friends & foes in my birth country now, I can only read disembodied tweets, texts and blogs.

    Maybe it's a turning point in leaving 'home'. I know that Alaska I knew, I cared for an America I once loved -- but it's no longer where I lay my head at night. I must remember that. I am a guest to your conversation.

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    1. I thought your comments added to the discussion and I'm sorry you took it down. Particularly the idea of GB wanting Alaska for Canada. I appreciate your modesty, but I think as a very long time Alaskan who now sees us from across the North Pole, your comments give us perspective that's useful.

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    2. Thank you. There ARE things I could comment on from over here -- yes, GB's interests in Alaska were multiple.

      But here and now is today's headlines about Lloyds of London looking to make reparations for its profitting from the Atlantic slave trade. Other companies are following and we shall see. Even Footies (soccer players) are taking a knee (maybe one of the few good American exports!).

      In the discussion of history made in today’s papers, it was noted when GB abolished slavery in its empire in 1833, our country paid compensation to slave-owners for their ‘lost property’ -- but NOTHING to the slaves themselves. It was just 'how it was back then'.

      Only this week, Oriel College's board (a school within Oxford University) voted to REMOVE Cecil Rhodes' statue from its campus -- a decades-long objective of student-activists in the UK. Standing in the way before was the threat of major donors to Oxford to withhold donations if Rhodes' statue were removed. This vote happened in light of changing sentiment. The moral ground is shifting.

      I note historical shifts are not only of the Trumpward kind. Much more to say from across the Pole, but enough for now.

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    3. And Steve, thanks for that little comment, "...from across the North Pole". That really does sum it all up. I grew up seeing the USA from Alaska and I still do today: the Northlands.

      I really appreciate your touching insight. Thank you, very much.

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