Petition Demands Removal of Walt Whitman Statue at Rutgers University-Camden
“Rutgers-Camden has been making efforts recently to remove symbols around our campus which continue to perpetuate a racist past”
We’ve gotten to the point where it seems like people are just doing this because they think they can.
The College Fix reports:
Petition demands statue of poet Walt Whitman be removed from Rutgers University-Camden
A statue of Walt Whitman, one of America’s most famous and influential poets, has come under fire at Rutgers University-Camden, where a petition demands his statue be removed.
The statue, featured prominently in the center of campus, pays homage to the author of the seminal work “Leaves of Grass,” as the poet lived in Camden upon his death in 1892 at age 72.
But the artist, sometimes called the “Bard of Democracy” whose poetry praised the American experiment, also held racist notions about African Americans, and for that some want the statue removed.
The petition states that “Rutgers-Camden has been making efforts recently to remove symbols around our campus which continue to perpetuate a racist past,” adding “the statue of Walt Whitman glorifies a man who we should not hold such a place of honor on our campus.”
“Our school encourages inclusion, diversity, and equity while Whitman stood for none of those things. He instead stood for white supremacy and racism against Black and Indigenous Americans,” states the petition, which has garnered 3,724 signatures as of July 22.
An update posted by the author of the petition states that the Office of the Chancellor of Rutgers-Camden has seen the petition and is creating a committee to address social justice issues on campus.
Now they're trying to remove a Walt Whitman statue. pic.twitter.com/265gVK2EW5
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) July 7, 2020
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Comments
Wasn’t Walt a homosexual? Cancel these homophobic students!
It’s been known for decades that the Democrat Leftist Progressives are sexist, racist, gay bashing-criminals.
It is widely documented in autobios of feminists and histories of their political leaders.
Demand demand demand demand demand…
Is it really the racism?
Or is it that they don’t want to be compared to someone who could actually write?
This attack on Walt Whitman is yet another manifestation of the tyrannical Cancel Culture and if Rutgers gives in, it will not stop here. The next demand will be that all Whitman’s books be removed from the library and all trace of him purged from the campus. Then of course, the cancellers will move on to new targets who fail to meet their purity test.
Well, you might ask, why not get rid of Whitman if he was a racist? I don’t know if Whitman said the racist things attributed to him but, for the sake of argument, let’s say that he did.
The Cancel Culture theory is that if a person does an evil thing, all of the good things that they have done should be obliterated. It doesn’t matter how much good they have done because any evil action makes them and everything that they have ever done totally anathema. So, “Leaves of Grass”, must obviously go to the trash heap.
I don’t buy this and no one else should either. If Whitman said things that were racist, that should be known and acknowledged as evil. But he was not totally evil, he was a great person and great author. He should not be made an un-person and his statue and books should remain on the Rutgers Camden Campus.
” . . . it will not stop here.” Agreed.
I’d bet on this, as well: No stopping by the aggrieved demanders until the complete transformation of America occurs — a nebulous and arbitrary goal if there ever was one.
In the end, this is clearly a conflict between differing, competing, and mutually exclusive visions of what the US will be.
To stop somewhere — even if mentioned rhetorically, as I sense you do — might, just for argument’s sake, presuppose a mutual pursuit of common, shared ground on which the competing sides can reconcile their differences for the good of the whole.
My money’s on no such thing felt or wanted by both sides, only one — ours. On this understanding, you and I might then further agree: the likelihood of Civil War 2.0 is increasing with each passing day.
If Slim Whitman has a statue up somewhere that needs to come down, too.
If we have to cancel everyone who has ever done a bad thing in their life, then we all might as well stay at home and stare at blank walls–no one and nothing in this world is without some kind of problem.
If we have to cancel everyone who has ever done a bad thing in their life
Merely being a man of your era is never a bad thing.