"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.
