(We have not qualified that statement, but it sure does seem like it.)
But seriously…The Daily Progress does some good investigatitive journalism on the whole meaning behind the alleged “sexist placement” of Sacagawea in the Lewis & Clark statue. What did they find?
An article in Natural History magazine from 1919, the same year the statue was erected on West Main Street, says the artist represented Sacagawea “Bending forward, intent on the vast expanse of the ocean.”
Ok, so it looks like the whole sexism thing is moot. Add the fact that Sacagawea was an after-thought addition to the statue and what do we have? People are complaining over nothing.
Go help starving babies instead of complaining over a statue… or am I missing something here? Why is this such a big deal?
[via DP]
Popularity: 37% [?]
Tagged as: clark, complaints, lewis, Questions, sexist, statue
I think you are indeed missing something here. The problem of sexism (and racism) is not overcome by looking at the artist’s statement about his alleged intentions. A statue of this kind is first and foremost a symbol that is trying to convey a certain meaning. The artist has no control over what meaning people will inscribe to his or her piece. Normaly I would say that the disconnect between the artist, the artifact and the spectator is what makes art so exciting. But statues like this go beyond what art normaly does. Statues like this are invested with functionality. They are supposed to commemorate a certain person, that person’s values, story and history, they are symbols for how a society identifies itself. And whether this was intended by the artist or not, the meaning communicated here does not agree with how contemporary society would like to see itself right now. Two white men towering over a native american woman, their bodies communicate bravery, they are offering protecion. Sacagawea on the other hand is hidden away, in an almost animal like fashion by their feet. This is my personal reading and very one sided to make my point here. This statue is supposed to remind us of a narrative that shapes the idea of what it means to be American and it twists it in a way that perverts the very idea. And that is precisely why it is such a big deal. You are right, there are more pressing issues at hand, but a vital and dynamic society needs to alter the symbols it identifies itself with in order to stay vital and dynamic.
I know.. let’s remove Saca from the statue and call it the win.
I really do get a kick every time I hear another explanation of this thing. And I will continue to until someone presents an argument that isn’t destroyed by responding “Yeah… but have you *looked* at it?”
Not sure I get your point.
You are right, there are more pressing issues at hand, but a vital and dynamic society needs to alter the symbols it identifies itself with in order to stay vital and dynamic.
So say we all. *claps*
The problem of sexism (and racism) is not overcome by looking at the artist’s statement
Nor are they overcome by wringing one’s hands over a statue that is nearly 100 years old.
they are symbols for how a society identifies itself
And I would venture that this statue does precisely that. How do you think “society” viewed women and native americans in 1919?
the meaning communicated here does not agree with how contemporary society would like to see itself right now
And so we should what? Revise every piece of art that has an anachronistic social moray? Those who forget (or in this case erase, or “alter”) history are doomed to repeat it and all that…
but a vital and dynamic society needs to alter the symbols it identifies itself with in order to stay vital and dynamic
By looking to the future, NOT by erasing the past. I mean hell, its obviously a statue celebrating the white male bubble, but if gets sand in your Georgia O Keeffe painting to look at it, use that ‘fired up’ energy to make things better now. Point to it as a big brass erection of how obvious the problems WERE. Parlay that to parallels NOW. Its an awesome bad example… let it serve as such.
Wisely spoken. I guess I should have made that clear: I don’t think we should remove the statue. But Thor was asking what the big deal was and if we should not simply move on, and all I said a piece like that needs discourse. Exactly as you say, talking about it for 100 years makes the difference. I should not have said “alter,” I should have said “keep arguing about.”
This isn’t a case of liberal hand-wringing. I think there’s a very good point to be made by revisiting the connotations of art like this. State-sanctioned public art shouldn’t be merely accepted if society’s collective mores are no longer reflected therein– this is not a case of only aesthetics, it’s a goverment’s propagandist & self-laudatory statement, and we should be careful about how we approach these things.
Just “looking to the future” (whatever that means) and assuming that folks will know it’s a bad example is insufficient. One needs a continuing discourse about these things to ensure that we understand what the bad example is.
Also “sand in my Georgia O Keeffe” makes me think of very painful intimate moments at the beach…
@6 yep, I guess I should refresh before I post.
So I guess art is one more thing we should slap big warning labels on for our society to not get bent out of shape over.
“WARNING: This art contains images that might offend those who have no capacity to comprehend the history nor meaning of the piece itself. If you are someone who has no knowledge of the history of this work or incapable of understanding how art functions within society, please look away. Thank you - So called liberal management of Charlottesville”
Seriously, are people really going to get THIS upset over something made in, what everyone could agree, a period where this statue was accepted at face value at the very least? Not like bitching about it now is progressing society forward, simply stifling our ability to accept where we came from and erasing the past so we can hide the reality from our children, which, works WONDERS for future generations when you rewrite history to make it look like war, bigotry, and scrupulous behavior never existed.
Hurray for idiots.
i have gotta say, b’yo completely nailed it on this one. history ceases to become history anymore when everyone runs in and alters or removes it. if i have learned anything about studying history it’s that CONTEXT is everything. of course the statue is sexist, but dammit, our society was sexist in 1919. our nation’s history will disappear if we spend all of our time worrying about “updating” or “modernizing” it. if your opinion is that the statue is sexist, then you can explain to your kids when they see it that the statue was built in a time where women had a lower status in society than men. turn it into a teachable moment!
i apologize for essentially reiterating b’yo’s main points but they were just so damn spot on. what’s next, tearing down all of the Confederate memorials in Charlottesville as well?
@12
So I guess everyone is agrees. A lot of people in C’ville need to get a life.
I don’t think people are “THIS” upset about anything, for the most part it’s been an intelligent debate with the least amount of panty wringing possible. We’re not “bitching” about the statue, we’re urging a continued dialogue rather than just writing the statue off with a shrug. Straw men are not welcome.
I think it’s very important to remember that history is absolutely nothing more than the conglomerated additions and subtractions of men to a story of man. There is no such thing as the actual story; continuing discussion about what these things means to society does not violate the discourse, rather it strengthens it.
This isn’t a case of liberal hand-wringing.
Oh for cryin out loud, yes it is. Look, more often than not, Im as left as they come, but it is precisely tilting at these sorts of windmills that give more legitimate progressive causes a bad name and thus less of a chance of becoming reality.
State-sanctioned public art… …it’s a goverment’s propagandist & self-laudatory statement
And you expect what? The cloven hoofed bouffant encrusted thought police in the government aint ever gonna give you some sort of monument that reflects your particular political viewpoint. That’s up to you. Take art back. Got something to say? Say it. Say it publicly. Rip it up!
Just “looking to the future” (whatever that means)
It means YOU, in this time (not 1919), making YOUR voice heard.
_____
anachronistic social moray
Outmoded talking eels? I need more coffee.
Straw men are not welcome.
Well screw you too.
Gosh, we are so smart on here, I don’t know what to think.
I do think that this issue is like beating a dead horse and the whole in context thing is a little over the top. Should we go back and protest every piece of art prior to the end of sexism.. oh wait? Yes, it’s something that will always bug us all, but at the end of the day it will always be there and awareness is important, but protesting it is so meaningless it makes me angry.
@15– oh, I don’t expect that the government will make any other art than self-serving, don’t get me wrong; that’s just how it is. It’s our job to keep talking about it, really, so that we’re actually sure that these values (or lack thereof) are not swallowed at face value.
I’m not really sure that I’ve been tilting at any windmills, I think I have a pretty mild point– that we just need to keep the discourse open. I haven’t suggested pulling it down, or painting her face, or putting something humorous on her head, or ripping it up, or protesting with sandwich boards. Just keep talking, is all.
@17– exactly. Protest is ridiculous, and I’ve never suggested it. The discourse about, and discovery of the past & present cultural surroundings of, the statue is not– that’s what should be preserved.
No one’s ripping on you char… we’re just chatting.
But seriously… what’s next?
Wow, I am a little bit disappointed at the turn this discussion has taken. How come people who encourage discourse are all of a sudden advocates of censorship? Again, all I was initially trying to do was to answer Thor’s question, why this statue seems to be a big deal and why it deserves attention. I think the heated discussion in this thread gives a better answer than my pre-wakeup statement above. I guess I wasn’t aware of the existing discourse and activism I was accidentally alining myself with.
Also I don’t think protests are ridiculous. Furthermore I don’t think questioning a public symbol equals re-writing the past.
when i visited here, before i moved here, (i did not grow up in the south)…
i thought the statue, as much of the town, er, i mean city’s pride and joy and novelties was pretty much a sort of bookmark placing of history.
as one who may or not be a woman, white or otherwise, i at the very least have been borne of one and have loved one or two in whatever personal ways, and i also have a preconceived notion that Sacagewea played a leadership/valuable role in the lewis and clark expedition. (but i come from elsewhere and a somewhat large part of my self-designed undergraduate study was in public art).
looking back, my friends pointed out the fact that she was behind them and not leading in the statue( it is called the “lewis & clark” staue in most people’s local vernacular…we shoud change that to ” the subjugation of sacagewa staute”, eh)?
so i’m just posting because i’m not sure what some of you would like to change about the statue.
should we take it down? (that would be a pretty ignorant thing and i believe belmont, yo already stated the bit about history repeating itself for what i like to call the “ostriches”…)
maybe we could modify it… use mirrors to make her look bigger, paint her glow in the dark and use mirrors to make the guys look smaller.
how about we put a few more history markers up around it? you know- those signs…they are all over the place. up just north of pantops there’s one that reads something like “within two miles of this marker merrweather Lewis was rumored to have been born”. (awe-inspiring, that-did you know his dad was 39 years older than his mom?!- more nteresting than anything on the very vague sign).
so by the statue (or within two miles of it) we could put up a marker declaring that we are a very PC society who no longer treats women, white or otherwise, with any sort of other standard then white men who are funded by the government. Through artistic extention, i am certain future generations shall look upon the plaque with awe and respect for the very nobility obviously achieved in 2008 in our fair city declared on said plaque (rather than our action/inactions).
(but what about the other men?)
i guess that plaque will have to wait for some other art.
I don’t think this is very heated. I certainly don’t feel very hot. I thought we we’re just, well, discoursing.
@21 who’s advocating censorship on here? i think people are just saying that they think protesting the statue is a waste of time. you are free to have your own opinion on the matter.
…what some of you would like to change about the statue.
As Sacagawea is on U.S. currency, and L&C are not, I propose building a reflecting pool around the base of the statue and having people fling Sacagawea dollars into the pool and wish for gender equality.
Its really the only sensible solution.
That, or weld breasts on to Clark. Its a toss up.
Discourse is great, but this whole thing has taken a rather melodramatic tone. Sacagawea is “hidden away” and “animal like.” I’ve heard some say she is obviously cowering behind the big brave explorers.
Mad props to all who protest and stand up for what they believe in. But I’d like to see local women turn away from that damned statue for a minute and simply become kinder to, and less judgmental of, each other. I’ve never heard the statue rip into women and tear them down. Pity I can’t say the same thing about some of my sisters in Cville.
No strawman argument intended here. I’d just like to see some action that really counts, something that doesn’t involve an inanimate object (though art goes beyond being merely inanimate). Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a statue… well, you know the rest.
@25:
hooray! this site IS good for something. let’s have a space party to raise the funds and get ‘er done!
/thanks for bringing up the topic, Thor!
Space party? Im thinking more of an “Explorer” party. All guys: Lewis or Clark (breasts optional) all women” Sacagaweas (Sacagaweai?). All the women get to sit at the front of the bar and become” intent on a vast ocean of cocktails”…
Yes Sacagawe Can!
/this course of discourse is coarse, of course.
Can anyone logically explain how this statue is causing negative things to happen or an alternative view point, because to this point I have heard a bunch of complaining without rational as to why the statue is sexist. Looks a lot more like she is setting them up for someone to push them.
@ 24 Noone is advocating censorship. But I feel that those who question the ideological implications of the statue are accused of wanting to turn Charlottesville into a bastion of fascism.
@30:
i never said a thing about censorship. speak for yourself, Byard.
@ 22 maybe I fail to see your point because I did not take undergrad studies in public art. But apparently these studies do not help you to see mine either. Or perhaps you were not even responding to my point, in which case I apologize. All I am saying, again and again, is that art like this, that takes a clear ideological stance, needs to be embeded in a discourse. I am not sure how I can make my point any more clearly. The statue should stay as a reminder of the sexist and racist attitudes of the 1920ies but cannot be mistaken as a symbol for how we would like to treat women and native americans today. Now the point was made earlier that nobody in his or her right mind would read it the latter way, but that so many people post here who explicitly state that they cannot see what is wrong with the image tells me that they do take it at face value.
@32:
take your third sentence and repeat if necessary.
Maybe we should just remove her from the statue all together, and finish this once and for all.
@ 33
Please take the subclause of my third sentence and repeat if necessary.
Wow, people are touchy this Monday morning.
While we’re at it, let’s address the horrendous sexism of giving so much attention to Sacagawea, but totally dissing George Drouillard, a true unsung hero. There is no social justice without a Drouillard Memorial.
Help! I’m embedded in discourse!
/did drouillard really look like a cree fabio?
@ 36/ 37 I agree, that’s exactly my point, the statue tells only one side of the story. And I guess so does our contribution to the discourse here. So how about that fundraiser party now?
Unquestionably! And if you look at that bookcover, you see that even there he’s pictured as kneeling, while the others are standing. He can’t get a break (dignity) even on the cover of the book in which he’s the central character! Clearly, sexism is rampant in the publishing industry.
POOP
Or maybe think about the Vinegar Hill community that the city destroyed in the 1960s with urban renewal. The very same area the statue overlooks. I’m not sure how many people know about it but it is incredible and kind of hard to fathom for me, a young fella of 31 - having only seen the area before anything was built on it. When I moved here in 1981 it was a sandbox.
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/schwartz/vhill/vhill.html
@40
My sentiments exactly.
@41
Nice info!
So the statue was created in 1919 & in the 1970s era photo I don’t see it in its current location. Indeed Ridge/McIntire doesn’t exist yet. This means that sometime in the last 40 years someone thought it was a good idea to move this statue into its current location. Where was it before and why can’t it go back there; I even think there has been discussion of moving onto the mall somewhere near the Omni.
Subliminal Man is not just an SNL skit. If these are the images we surround ourselves with, then this is the concept we encourage. I like history & think it’s important, but no additional signage about context is going to counteract the visual impact of this huge thing we drive by. The statue shouldn’t be altered, but it should be located in a place where information about its context can be absorbed at the same rate the statue itself would be absorbed.
In 1919 both of my grandmothers were married women, but neither could vote. It’s a scant few years (something like two or three) since the commonwealth of Virginia has legally acknowledged that a married woman can be raped by her husband. Women make 75-ish% of what men do for the same job. As noted above: at the very least, we all have mothers. At some point that 33% increase in earnings that they never realized will financially haunt us. Sexism is terribly alive and terribly well and it impacts 100% of the population. It amazes me that we’re still so interested in minimizing and/or denying that, rather than saying: jeez this bloody ism is expensive: FIX IT!
C-ville wrote about the history of the statue in October.
http://tinyurl.com/55r37j
@44 you are under arrest, and will most likely be sued for your outrageous use of lower case letters in reference to our fine publication.
Thor, why don’t you go help starving babies instead of complaining over people standing up for what they believe in? Yes you are missing something - not very suprising considering you named yourself after an anglo-saxon God. This is totally one of those, if you have to ask, you’ll never know issues.
It’s there in 1960:
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/schwartz/credit/aerial1cr.html
You too could feed a starving child for just 40¢ a day…
wait, Thor has an opinion instead of being just an objective blog babysitter? ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK.
I think we should replace it with a Starbucks.
If these are the images we surround ourselves with, then this is the concept we encourage. I like history & think it’s important, but no additional signage about context is going to counteract the visual impact of this huge thing we drive by.
I didn’t used to be sexist, but I think about my 37th trip past that intersection, I had the overwhelming urge to repeal the 19th amendment and call my female coworkers “cupcake”. Freaky.
but it should be located in a place where information about its context can be absorbed at the same rate the statue itself would be absorbed.
Like an “ism” museum? A muse-ism? We could corral all the icky reminders of our history like colored lawn jockeys, sexist statuary, Brer Rabbit, Huck Finn… all of it, all in one place. It would be an awesome weekend family destination. Hey kids! Lets go be ashamed of ourselves in an appropriate context!
Sexism is terribly alive and terribly well and it impacts 100% of the population. It amazes me that we’re still so interested in minimizing and/or denying that
I don’t think anyone is doing that. I think what some folks are arguing is that there are much more productive ways of going about finding a solution than moving a ginormous statue.
Now excuse me, I have to go play battleship.
/its on loan from the Muse-ism of Shame
I would think that seeing a statue like that would remind you how far women have come and how much better off they have it now. And also, not to go camping alone with two dudes.
And also, not to go camping alone with two dudes.
Such a prude.
Ooof. After battleship, i always need a cigarette.
To remind us of our benighted ancestors’ sexism — which runs amuck today — another statue from that era.
I know, those are all so old!
Its a good thing there is no blatant sexism in modern advertising, right?
/will stop now as I have totally lost the plot.
But you gotta have comfortable shoes on when you’re giving BJ’s on the street. Duhhh.
Is that a cougar wearing Pumas? Animal kink.
@55: Worst photo of the Statue of Liberty EVAR
@55: It’s Monday, so I’m a little slow. If that wasn’t meant as a joke, I miss the sexism.
Back then the world was grainy and out of focus, and they didn’t even see in color.
@60, you missed the irony, too.
@60: (meant that in a light way, since this is such a dopey thread)
@63: No worries
@3 i am too bored by this discussion to read it, but i just want to answer marshall’s question: no, i have never looked at the sacagawea statue. i don’t know where it is. i know where the big whale tail is, & i know where the ugly bicycle is, but who looks at old bronzey statues?
the reason the statue sucks is because it is an untruth. L&C did not lead the expedition Saca did, without her they would never have made it. So, yeah SHE should be the one in the front.
The statue of Jackson on the horse near the corner (across from Red Roof Inn/HoJo’s) holds a beer can perfectly in his hand. I mean, I haven’t done that, but I heard it was true.
/Not recommending putting a beer in the statues hand, just sayin’
the big whale tale is so misogynistic
My favorite statue is the Arthur Ashe Memorial on Monument in Richmond, where it looks like Arthur Ashe is trying to brain small children with a tennis racket, all while holding books high over their grabby little hands, where they can’t reach them.
/Seriously, is any of this a surprise? We’re living in a state that once “celebrated” Lee-Jackson-King Day.
@67
Sac was used to stabilize the statue, like a boulder is sometimes used by the sculptor. The only thing to recommend that statue is that it correctly depicts a certain view of women’s role, supporting two louts. She should be in front, but you try to find a sculptor that can do that and you end up with some charlatan like the guy who designed the Arthur Ashe statue on Monument Avenue in Richmond or the Chairman Mao version of MLK about to go up in D.C. Good sculptors must just not play the grant game these days.
As a stopgap, putting the baby on her back like on the dollar coin would make the statue more intriguing.
Moby Dick is misogynistic?
@68 FYI we still celebrate Lee-Jackson Day here in Virginia, it’s just now on a separate day from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
It is interesting to note that Virginia originally had two separate holidays for King and Lee-Jackson. After Reagan mandated MLK Day to be a federal holiday, however, Virginia lumped it together with Lee-Jackson Day.
I feel like people misconstrue it to appear as if Virginia was thumbing its nose at MLK by doing this. Lee was born on Jan. 19, Jackson was born on Jan. 21, and MLK was born on Jan. 15. Their birthdays are all within one week of each other, IMHO it was not some master plan by Confederate sympathizers here in Virginia wishing to stick it to African-Americans. Sounds to me like the state didn’t feel like adding another day off on top of a federally mandated three-day weekend.
I can totally see how it might be viewed that way at first, though. In my mind, it was definitely a wise move by Virginia to re-separate them again to prevent any misconceptions.
L&C did not lead the expedition Saca did
But what very few people know is that they did it walking backwards, so technically…
@72 I don’t see how it’s anything other than — to use your words — the state thumbing its nose at MLK and all of his supporters by putting the holidays together in the first place. The state obviously had the power to separate them after it realized the “misconceptions,” so it had the power not to put them together in the first place. It’s still insensitivity even if the goal was simply to create one day off rather than two.
It’s all about priorities.
/not being contentious here. just sayin’.
Can we all just agree that Virginia is a somewhat less than progressive state, and some amount of pointy headedness is inevitable, both in terms of statuary and days off from work?
No? Oh well… flame on, then.
re: Lee-Jackson-King Day “was not some master plan by Confederate sympathizers here in Virginia wishing to stick it to African-Americans.”
I can assure you it was, and the news coverage at the time assumed it. Arizona was another hold-out state, as were Georgia and Mississippi in the parallel flag dispute. You can’t count the number of politicians back then who embraced the Confederate flag, including Va. Gov. George Allen, though to a disputed extent, along with the noose on his office ficus tree, back when he was on E. Jefferson & First. By the Gen. Lee statue.
If you go back twenty years, well before the MLK holiday dispute, there were plenty of civic officials in various places who objected to naming roads and such after MLK, or erecting statues. They considered him a criminal, which of course he was, in the best Gandhian, non-violent sense!
I know the past looks stylish sometimes but it was crap too.
Make that thirty years. And the Lee-Jackson-King Day was seen as racist foot-dragging, not a complete insult, in the respectable press. But no one, no one bought the line about too many holidays.
Colfer, my good man, we seriously need to get drunk in adjacent comfy chairs one day. Name the potion and the chair and I am there. I’m buying.
Well as long as we are so economically depressed that we can wax on wax off about how a Native American woman statue giving two guys a blow job merits a 79 response discussion. In a discourse kind of way. With champagne in hand. And tartare within easy reach.
It’s history. Great history. Our history. That’s it. Done. Ugh. Revisionist historians make me ill and the effete and the ones who don’t want little Johnny to lose out and not get his trophy. Sometimes you don’t win little skipper. Liberal hand wringing indeed. /chopping the nose off of granite Lincoln to spite his face. He’d be pissed and habeas corpus be damned. A moratorium on the suffering of the art crew and discourse. I’d put them all in shackles. Or 5 years in a Columbian jungle. Or some kind of reality. Not mine.
Oh my, Taliesin, that was beautiful. I only have, at best, a couple more years left on this planet. So much indignant poetic beauty rocking this site… lets all figure it out and bring the pain to reality. C’mon now… what do we have to lose? Comfy chairs all around… lets speak our minds freely in chaos. Loud. Freaks, I love you.
/doesn’t have the answers, just the desire to see what happens next.
It’s history. Great history. Our history. That’s it. Done. Ugh. Revisionist historians make me ill
It’s not revisionist to document what actually happened. Sure, a lot of great things have come about in and because of the USA. But it’s ignorant to tell it as a tale of puppies, ice cream, and apple pie, from 1492 through today. And that’s largely how history is taught in middle and high schools.
(Okay, nowadays with some nods to the shitty things we did along the way to women, blacks, gays, the infirm and mentally ill, and the natives who were living here when the Europeans showed up. But not nearly enough emphasis; at least, not enough to detract from the grand narrative of American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, and our precious shining city on a hill.)
There’s a reason it’s called America’s original sin. It’s our founding blemish, and acknowledging it is part of being a thorough and responsible historian—and citizen, in my view.
YMMV, welcome to the internet, etc., etc.
let me be clear. i am a huge fan of Dr. King and personally feel his contribution to history was of greater importance that that of Lee & Jackson.
but you have to understand where some Virginians were coming from (in 1984, people, that was almost 25 years ago). Lee-Jackson Day had been celebrated in Virginia since 1889. since 1978, Virginia had chosen to celebrate King’s birthday on New Years Day. then you had a federal mandate come in that said the state had to celebrate MLK Day on this exact day every year. Virginia was double-booked at this point, and they didn’t want to take away the thunder of Lee & Jackson, a holiday with deep historical significance in the psyche of rural Virginia (which in 1984 carried a much greater political significance than urban Virginia). so they made a really dumb decision by combining the holidays, and pulled an ultimate fail.
i’m not denying the outright racist past of this state at ALL. I just see Lee-Jackson-King Day as a classic example of trying to please everyone at the same time. it’s possible to value the historical importance of Lee-Jackson Day to the state of Virginia without being some sort of bigot. no other state had the problem of a pre-existing holiday to deal with when the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Act was signed by Congress in 1984.
82: Odie’s comment reeks of what’s called intentional fallacy, that is, assuming that the intentions of the authors of the compromise are of utmost importance. They aren’t. They’re unknowable and not pertinent to determining whether the result was racist.
Now, we can argue about the result being racist or not. I submit that it was.
As far as I can tell from that Wikipedia entry, “intentional fallacy” is an idea reserved for literary analysis (poems, books) and not historical events. I could be wrong on that one, as the concept was admittedly new to me when you mentioned it.
Historians spend their entire lives analyzing the motives behind important historical events/documents. Otherwise, history books would consist of nothing but one giant time line.
Aaaaand 83 killed the thread. I should like to revise and extend my comment to include a note that I find Odie to be a fine commenter with lots of interesting things to say, and that any snark in 83 was the result of being surprised by this thread, not personally directed at Odie. Hey, it’s the internet. What can you do?
Stanley, you are a king amongst men, as always. Don’t worry…no snark taken!
84: Good point. Intentional Fallacy is logical fallacy most commonly found in lit crit, but it works in historical analysis, too. Basically, you can (and good historians do) look at peoples’ stated and perceived motivations, but that’s not sufficient to declare the outcomes to be X.
For instance, segregation was deployed with supposedly non-racist motivations. Indeed, we were going to have separate but equal everything so everyone could just get on with life. The outcome, as I think we’d all recognize, was still racist.
/look everyone, we’re having a healthy debate on the internet!
You’re all phalluses. That’s the problem.
@82 We’ll agree to disagree, I suppose. What you see as a classic example of trying to please everyone, I see as a classic example of making sure the White majority stays pleased while being forced to recognize something by the federal gov’t. When you talk about “deep historical significance in the psyche of rural Virginia,” you’re already talking about the history of one group of people.
Don’t get me wrong; I know what you’re talking about. For good and for bad, my family has been in Virginia for a long time. I may have gone to grade school way back in the 70s and 80s, but I can remember the overdose of “Virginia history” we received K-12, which, among its failings, did not remotely include a version of the civil rights movement I studied intensely much later in life. For every Captain John Smith and Robert E. Lee we learned about, I wish there had been an Ella Baker and a Len Holt chapter later on in the semester.
My point is simply that there are many kinds of racism, and some of it has become way too acceptable simply because it can be differentiated from the overt, classic displays that everyone can easily condemn. Virginia holds a certain version of its history in high regard. I wish it recognized the valuable inspiration and stories and lessons that come from the ugliness in its past, too.
And as as aside, I never saw this discussion as taking sides on the topic of MLK or civil rights, so no disclaimers necessary. It may be a radical idea, but I think everyone’s racist, to a certain degree. We’re all implicated.
26, you fucking rock the house. agree to disagree
@90: Are you guys having makeup sex right now?
@91 yeah and Lee, Jackson, and King are all watching us. it is kind of weird but still HOT.
@66 i love when pedestrian crossing sign-people hold martini glasses.