Pete Buttigieg wants Thomas Jefferson events renamed: 'Racism isn't some curiosity out of the past'

[Soph0571]

Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg has said events named after US founding father Thomas Jefferson should be renamed because he was a slave owner.

The 2020 candidate said changing the title of his party’s annual dinner events – designated in honour of presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson – was “the right thing to do”.

Speaking on a nationally syndicated radio show, Mr Buttigieg was asked whether the Democrats’ Jefferson-Jackson dinners be renamed across the US because both were holders of slaves.

“Yeah, we’re doing that in Indiana. I think it’s the right thing to do,” Mr Buttigieg told The Hugh Hewitt Show, referring to his home state.

“Over time, you develop and evolve on the things you choose to honour,” he said, before saying he thought Jefferson’s legacy was particularly “problematic”.

[link:https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/pete-buttigieg-thomas-jefferson-racism-slavery-2020-election-democrats-a8920616.html|

Words matter

[CatMor]

1. I agree with him on this ...

Jefferson writings are beautiful yet he didn't live by his words. I can't think of a kind word to write about Jackson.

[murielm99]

2. We have renamed ours

the JFK dinner.

[True Dough]

3. Words matter, naming buildings and bridges matters, putting up statues matters

We shouldn't continue to glorify historical figures who have committed grave injustices against minorities.

[Drunken Irishman]

5. It's a tricky proposition - where do you draw the line?

Our own party has largely done it. I wonder how many liberals would be okay with removing any significant honoring of, say, FDR, who has a shit-ton of things named after him? I mean, after all, he sent minorities, Japanese-Americans, to live in camps during World War II. It's a horrific mark on his legacy.

Yet he's...

On the US dime. Has his own memorial in DC. A room named after him in the White House. A military vessel. A good amount of schools. A bridge in New York. The list goes on.

FDR was probably our third greatest president behind Washington and Lincoln ... yet no modern president can even remotely come to the level of the civil liberty abuses of putting your own citizens in camps. So, where's that line?

[True Dough]

8. The line isn't clearly defined

It's not with a lot of issues. It doesn't mean the topic should be taboo. It's worth having open and honest discussions.

[Politicub]

9. Slave owners and mass murderers would be where I would draw a line

It's not so difficult.

[Drunken Irishman]

11. So, what's a mass murderer?

See - it is difficult.

FDR possibly even committed a war crime with his bombing of Dresden in WWII. About 25,000 people were killed there. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote about Dresden:

The Dresden atrocity, tremendously expensive and meticulously planned, was so meaningless, finally, that only one person on the entire planet got any benefit from it. I am that person. I wrote this book, which earned a lot of money for me and made my reputation, such as it is. One way or another, I got two or three dollars for every person killed. Some business I'm in.

He was talking about his book Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death.

Now, we can debate the merits of calling Dresden a situation of mass murdering but it hammers home the point: what's the line?

Also, maybe the line for you is slave owners - but for many Japanese-Americans, to them, that line might be their ancestors being placed into camps ... again, the single-largest violation of civil liberties on American soil by a president of the last 100 years. There've been equally bad claims (civil rights for one) but nothing, in the last 100 years, entirely orchestrated by the President of the United States.

[Bradshaw3]

4. Then you have to include Andrew Jackson too

Responsible for the genocide of Native Americans. So no Jefferson-Jackson dinners. Who's next?

[Blues Heron]

6. I would say Nixon, Reagan,both Bushes

pretty much all pukes except Lincoln

[peggysue2]

7. Sorry, don't agree with this

If we erase Thomas Jefferson, we need to erase the Founding Fathers complete. Yes, they were slave owners. We need to own that and mark our history stained and tainted with that reality, not pretend that the repercussions of that history can be removed by censoring the Founding Fathers' names. We start using a purity yardstick of today as a measure of our history we'll have no history left. The Founding Fathers' were flawed human beings like the rest of us. But . . . they left us a template to grow and evolve as a society. Btw, Abraham Lincoln was not pure when it came to race attitudes. Will he be next for the chopping block?

This simply plays into GOP hands. Buttigieg said this on Hugh Hewitt's Show? Dumb, really dumb. Watch Republicans run with these comments.

We need to play smart or we'll all be sent home. And another 4 years of Trumpism is not an option.

[Politicub]

10. The founding fathers weren't gods; they have turned into pure mythology at this point.

It's akin to an article of faith to rely so heavily on their opinions from more than 200 years ago. It gets old.

And if we're going to continue to venerate them, then we owe ourselves to know the whole, complicated history.

[peggysue2]

12. I agree.

We need to accept the entire history. And no, the Founding Fathers were not gods, nor were they perfect human beings. But erasing their names from events or buildings will not expand our understanding of who and what they were.

Worse yet, giving ammunition to the likes of Hugh Hewitt is a very dumb move as we head into 2020.

[Politicub]

13. I understand your position. I guess the benefit of having names attached to monument and the like is

that it can lead to talking about complicated history. However, this becomes murky when it comes to confederate monuments that were installed in the wake of civil rights legislation. I want to see those taken down.

But, the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner is not art nor is it a monument. It's time for the name of the dinner to change. Changing the name will be a non-issue after this election cycle, anyway.

And, fuck Hugh Hewitt. Anyone who listens to him isn't going to vote for a dem anyway. He and other right wing talking heads are going to lie, twist and obfuscate no matter what democrats say.

[BlueTsunami2018]

14. This is the sort of thing that makes people hate us.

This isn’t even an issue and it’s a highly divisive stance. What’s next? Calling for the closure of the Jefferson memorial? The removal of the Washington monument? The renaming of the capital itself? Attacking the founding fathers and the author of the Declaration of Independence may play well to a certain core group of people but it does not play well in the majority of places where we need to harvest votes.

We’re facing a straight up fascist, authoritarian power grab, the likes of which the country has never seen, and we’re doing this?

I don’t get it. There’s no upside.