Question to those who support/oppose removal of Confederate monuments.

Jan 25, 2011
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I'm sure I don't need to detail either side of the debate about Confederate monuments recently. What I am curious on is people's opinion on the New York City Council's decision to designate a section of Rogers Avenue in Brooklyn as Jean-Jacques Dessalines boulevard.

For those unfamiliar with Dessalines he was the emperor of Haiti after they won their independence from France. One of the things he did was to order the murder of every remaining white man, woman and child on the island which resulted in the deaths of 3-5 thousand people.

New York has removed the few Confederate monuments they had after Gov. Cuomo ordered it.

Me. Put me down as against this. Curious what others think given that many who supported this view the 1804 Massacre as a legitimate response to the oppression suffered under the French.


https://www.city-journal.org/html/dessalines-boulevard-16086.html
 

Sonikku

Lifer
Jun 23, 2005
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No amount of oppression justifies murdering innocents. Taxation without representation meant America rebelled. Doesn't mean we needlessly kill children just to dish out as much suffering as possible to those that had wronged us. Such an act would scarcely be celebrated.
 
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[DHT]Osiris

Lifer
Dec 15, 2015
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Taxation without representation meant America rebelled. Doesn't mean we needlessly kill children just to dish out as much suffering as possible to those that had wronged us.
Nah we had already gotten that past us by that point w/the natives. Got bored with the bloodlust, it was time for litigation!
 

Commodus

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Oct 9, 2004
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There are definitely better candidates for black leaders than this. Especially in a place like New York City.
 
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Homerboy

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Why are they naming the street after Dessalines? Does not seem like the best choice to celebrate. But I admit I literally only know what you just taught me.

To me the removal of the Confederate statues/flag is about removing monuments of those that openly rebelled against what was, and is, the United State of America. The leaders of the Confederate States were in open rebellion against our country and should not be honored. They should not be "wiped from history" as many try to play this off as - they should be remembered and taught in history books for sure.
 
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K1052

Elite Member
Aug 21, 2003
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Yeah...how about nope. They keep trying to take a legit murdering fascist's name off a street here but a small group of influential Italians have stymied it for years.
 

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
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I can't agree with murdering children. With adult slave owners, there really is no other option. People who believe they have the right to own other people should be exterminated.

Anyway, I don't agree with renaming the street after the guy.
 
Feb 4, 2009
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Needs context, they all obviously have historical value, they also need to be displayed in an appropriate setting.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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I'm sure I don't need to detail either side of the debate about Confederate monuments recently. What I am curious on is people's opinion on the New York City Council's decision to designate a section of Rogers Avenue in Brooklyn as Jean-Jacques Dessalines boulevard.

For those unfamiliar with Dessalines he was the emperor of Haiti after they won their independence from France. One of the things he did was to order the murder of every remaining white man, woman and child on the island which resulted in the deaths of 3-5 thousand people.

New York has removed the few Confederate monuments they had after Gov. Cuomo ordered it.

Me. Put me down as against this. Curious what others think given that many who supported this view the 1804 Massacre as a legitimate response to the oppression suffered under the French.


https://www.city-journal.org/html/dessalines-boulevard-16086.html

My own answer to this comes from a fact stated in your post: " . . . The New York City Council's decision to designate" the street in Brooklyn by the name of Dessalines.

Most of these efforts to remove the statues to museum venues in the South arose from local preferences. Maybe one could argue that Cuomo's decision at the state level originated with citizens in a state that historically had no interest or preference for those particular statues to begin with, since New York was part of the Union.

My view on this issue has evolved over the last several years. It was also influenced by recently-acquired information about my own family during the Civil War, arising from the genealogical research of my mother. My father's family debarked at Corpus Christi in 1850 from a region in southwestern Poland which also included what would later be the most infamous historical site of Europe in the 20th century. They were conscripted into the Confederacy, but they had come to America with solidly anti-slavery beliefs. So they deserted near Union lines, shedding their gray jackets for blue. There is a wider history of these conflicts within Texas describing anti-secessionist "German-Texans," but my people were known as the "Polish Grays."

It takes effort to look at this issue from the point of view of African-Americans who daily live under the shadow of these statutes, and many of us were unaware of the intentions and history behind the erection of those monuments. So I have come around to the view that the statues only glorified a bunch of traitors, to which my ancestors were vehemently opposed to begin with.

Since it had been a local issue that grew into a point of contention nationally, I'm just fine with it. And I'm just fine with proudly tying the Stars and Bars to the bumper of my car, and letting it drag on the pavement in an openly defiant display. I carry a baseball bat in the back seat.
 

hal2kilo

Lifer
Feb 24, 2009
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Well, I guess we should start pulling down statues of French Revolutionaries that helped our cause during the revolutionary war. They killed all kinds of aristocrats in their revolution. Probably mostly Caucasian.

Edit: and some Haitian history..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution
 
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pauldun170

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Sep 26, 2011
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Streets get co-named all the time.
Next year it could be co-named after Elton Johns third boyfriend.
The year after that it will be co-named after whatever officer \veteran died.
The year after that it will be named in honor of Howard Stern who will be killed in a horrific plane crash after a bird strike.

Do you live in Brooklyn?
Why do you give a shit about a Roger Ave being co-named?

Why do you think the co-naming of streets rises to the level of confederate monuments?
 
Jan 25, 2011
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Streets get co-named all the time.
Next year it could be co-named after Elton Johns third boyfriend.
The year after that it will be co-named after whatever officer \veteran died.
The year after that it will be named in honor of Howard Stern who will be killed in a horrific plane crash after a bird strike.

Do you live in Brooklyn?
Why do you give a shit about a Roger Ave being co-named?

Why do you think the co-naming of streets rises to the level of confederate monuments?
You might want to look at how many streets have been renamed that were originally named after Confederate Generals in the last two years and the demands to have them renamed.

Wasn't aware that in order to have an opinion on something you had to live in that immediate area.

oh and

 

Amused

Elite Member
Apr 14, 2001
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I ask myself this:

Were I myself, and everyone I know of my skin color, enslaved, tortured and dehumanized in ways worse than farm animals. How would I regard the people who did it to me?

I do know this: Were I oppressed, the blood of my oppressors would flow until I was free, or dead. And that brutality and base hatred for my oppressors in me would be very hard to stop once started.

This is a touchy subject. Because no one can gauge the suffering or mindset of a people who were, for generations, in chattel slavery and treated as animals.

Name a street after him? I don't know. But I know one thing for sure. I have no fucking right to judge the sheer hatred an oppressed man has for his oppressors. Nor do I feel much sorry for the oppressors themselves.
 

pauldun170

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Sep 26, 2011
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You might want to look at how many streets have been renamed that were originally named after Confederate Generals in the last two years and the demands to have them renamed.

Wasn't aware that in order to have an opinion on something you had to live in that immediate area.

oh and



You are clutching the pearls over co-naming 2 miles of some street in Brooklyn where they are co-naming it after the guy who led the Haitian revolution.
To some people in Brooklyn, the history of Haiti is a big deal.

If I recall correctly, Haiti didn't try destroy the United states of America nor did Haitians kill 620,000 Americans who wanted to keep that whole "USA thing going." If that were the case, then I could see the argument you are trying to make.
 
Jan 25, 2011
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You are clutching the pearls over co-naming 2 miles of some street in Brooklyn where they are co-naming it after the guy who led the Haitian revolution.
To some people in Brooklyn, the history of Haiti is a big deal.

If I recall correctly, Haiti didn't try destroy the United states of America nor did Haitians kill 620,000 Americans who wanted to keep that whole "USA thing going." If that were the case, then I could see the argument you are trying to make.
So asking for people's thoughts on a subject is pearl clutching now? How delicate of a snowflake are you that you equate that to pearl clutching?
 
Mar 11, 2004
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I'm not sure where this came from (the push to name it after this guy), but it seems ill-conceived. No idea why the OP is mentioning the Confederate stuff seeing as how that actually would somewhat give some rationale behind this (since the guy fought to throw off the established pro-slavery rule), but in light of the massacre and him being a tyrannical ruler himself, yeah not a great one to use. But him not having like any real connection with the US (based on the reading up on him I did) makes naming something after him in New York, especially baffling.

It does highlight the sling back though, where you can kinda understand why people that have been forced to deal with idolizing people that were horrible against people like them, that they might want to force people to have to deal with some of that themselves. And actually that's what led to the massacre, that it was payback for the treatment they had been experiencing.

As for the guy himself, well he highlights just how f'ed history is. History is full of brutality. It shows a lot though. Like how they were doing it basically as revenge for having supported the tyrannical French oppression, but it shows so much. Like how they let white people that higher ups in the government/military live, and some others. And the thing is, even Haitians viewed him pretty negatively until enough time had passed that they forgot about his rule and were more intent on celebrating him liberating them from the French as form of nationalistic pride (and one reason I hate nationalism, even when its not to the insane level, its often uncomfortably weird and often quickly goes into some fucked up places).

People are complicated. Our leaders are every bit as complicated. I actually find the idolizing of individuals to be even more bizarre than the nationalism (but often go hand in hand).
 
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Amused

Elite Member
Apr 14, 2001
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And one thing is clear. This was the first black man to stand up to his oppressor in the new world and win freedom for his people and from centuries of enslavement and animalistic treatment.

What people do not realize is that up until the revolution, every black person on the island of Haiti was a slave. The revolution was led by slaves who had risen up, killed their masters and formed a rebellion against the state of their slave masters. And won!

And the white guys wanna cry boo hoo because they took revenge for centuries of rape, torture murder and enslavement?

I'm not feeling the outrage guys. I'm just not. No more than I would have judged the Jews harshly for slaughtering Nazis at the end of WWII.
 
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BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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Just as a minor footnote, I was discussing "the value of a college degree" with a friend, who was puzzled that another colleague's white-identity world-view seemed unbecoming to his education. So in the argument that it's "over-rated," I mentioned names like Charles Dickens, Eric Hoffer, Jack London, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. I was fact-checking our California literary icon -- Jack London -- who, by the way, could enter a conversation about contemporary resurgence of "socialism."

Wikipedia's entry for Jack London is much more extensive than Encyclopedia Britannica's, and we're all familiar with the cautions about Wiki reliability. My discoveries turned the myth on its head.

[Wiki]: "In 1996, after the City of Whitehorse, Yukon, renamed a street in honor of London, protests over London's alleged racism forced the city to change the name of "Jack London Boulevard"[not in citation given] back to "Two-mile Hill".[81] "

So it was a local decision. Was it "well-informed?" I argue "No -- not in context of the times." But it was more stunning that Britannica didn't mention London's influential foster-mother, Virginia Prentiss, also memorialized on an Oakland, CA "Wiki" site.

Which suggests that you can lead a horse to Friedrich Nietzsche, but you can't make him drink it all.

If they want to rename the street to Two-mile Hill -- that's fine. Will there be massive protests with torches? No. So why are we all aflutter about statues of men whose intellects were minor-league compared to London? Screw your "Confederate heritage."

:
 

Starbuck1975

Lifer
Jan 6, 2005
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Even the naming of things after historical figures has become partisan and tribal.

Let them name the street after a man who:

Murdered innocent women and children. I can understand putting enemy combatant and plantation owners to the sword, but not women and children.

Established a harsh autocratic regimen of forced plantation labor. From wikipedia:

“He enforced a harsh regimen of plantation labor, described by the historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot as caporalisme agraire (agrarian militarism). As had Toussaint Louverture, Dessalines demanded that all blacks work either as soldiers to protect the nation or as laborers on the plantations to generate crops and income to keep the nation going. His forces were strict in enforcing this, to the extent that some blacks felt as if they were again enslaved.”

It’s also worth noting that his own people assasinated him, and only decades later did they embrace him as a symbol.

But whatever, if Haitians want to name a street in America after him, so be it, if only so we can move past judging the character of other historical figures by contemporary measuring sticks.

The only exception to this should be the Confederate statues erected to make political statements.
 
Apr 27, 2012
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And one thing is clear. This was the first black man to stand up to his oppressor in the new world and win freedom for his people and from centuries of enslavement and animalistic treatment.

What people do not realize is that up until the revolution, every black person on the island of Haiti was a slave. The revolution was led by slaves who had risen up, killed their masters and formed a rebellion against the state of their slave masters. And won!

And the white guys wanna cry boo hoo because they took revenge for centuries of rape, torture murder and enslavement?

I'm not feeling the outrage guys. I'm just not. No more than I would have judged the Jews harshly for slaughtering Nazis at the end of WWII.

So you're saying it's alright to murder innocent women and children?
 

UglyCasanova

Lifer
Mar 25, 2001
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woolfe9998

Lifer
Apr 8, 2013
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I ask myself this:

Were I myself, and everyone I know of my skin color, enslaved, tortured and dehumanized in ways worse than farm animals. How would I regard the people who did it to me?

I do know this: Were I oppressed, the blood of my oppressors would flow until I was free, or dead. And that brutality and base hatred for my oppressors in me would be very hard to stop once started.

This is a touchy subject. Because no one can gauge the suffering or mindset of a people who were, for generations, in chattel slavery and treated as animals.

Name a street after him? I don't know. But I know one thing for sure. I have no fucking right to judge the sheer hatred an oppressed man has for his oppressors. Nor do I feel much sorry for the oppressors themselves.

The children they killed were not oppressors. I can't buy into any attempt to justify the slaughtering of children.