This is mostly unrelated but Audubon was really a terrific artist. I was introduced to his art via a recent movie, American Animals, which is also excellent.
It would be nice to see a broader acknowledgement of the racism in the early 20th century progressive movement. It’s not just that “everyone was racist back then,” but rather that new progressive ideas led to new racist ideas. Scientific racism, eugenics, population control. Some of these people, like Woodrow Wilson, were exceptionally racist even for their time. The growing state also created new vehicles for implementing racism: https://reason.com/2006/05/05/when-bigots-become-reformers-2. Redlining, one of the racist programs with the most lasting effects, was a bureaucratic measure of the New Deal Federal Housing Administration.
There is no "back then". We still do slavery in the USA. Not only that, but the 13th amendment expressly provides an allowance for slavery to continue:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Removing the "get 12 angry white men to say guilty to enslave a human" would be a good start to reversing the historical wrongs this country continues to propagate.
And before the "Wellakshuallys": chattel slavery is illegal. Now it's just gatekept by a jury. And with extreme police harassment towards black people, along with black communities significantly in worse poverty, means that they are the primary target towards prison-slavery. And it's effectively the same result as chattel, but with a legal nod.
>”John James Audubon, a prominent 19th-century artist, naturalist and slave owner whose detailed, colourful paintings in the book The Birds of America set the gold standard for generations of ornithologists.”
I had no idea, and truth be told “Audubon” simply existed as a term in my mind. I never gave a second thought as to what it actually stood for. For me, “Audubon” just means birds, and nothing more. And it still does after this because the organization never showed any hints of the ideology they want to distance themselves from.
Additionally, this article mentions chapters of the Audubon society dropping the name. The organization as a whole has not dropped the name, yet, at least.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 25.3 ms ] threadI look forward to the day we regard all cultures, including African and Arab, with the same disdain for slave owning.
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Removing the "get 12 angry white men to say guilty to enslave a human" would be a good start to reversing the historical wrongs this country continues to propagate.
And before the "Wellakshuallys": chattel slavery is illegal. Now it's just gatekept by a jury. And with extreme police harassment towards black people, along with black communities significantly in worse poverty, means that they are the primary target towards prison-slavery. And it's effectively the same result as chattel, but with a legal nod.
Edit: And here comes the -1's for citing facts.
I had no idea, and truth be told “Audubon” simply existed as a term in my mind. I never gave a second thought as to what it actually stood for. For me, “Audubon” just means birds, and nothing more. And it still does after this because the organization never showed any hints of the ideology they want to distance themselves from.
Additionally, this article mentions chapters of the Audubon society dropping the name. The organization as a whole has not dropped the name, yet, at least.