[conspire] anyone notice the activity on the postfix mailing list?

[Deirdre Saoirse Moen]

First, a semi-tangent. A friend and I were having a heated discussion over whether (or not) it was cool for racist statues to be toppled. (My view is a qualified: sometimes.)

The one I was amused by this morning was in Bristol, UK, so here's the story in a few tweet links:

Edward Colston, former slaver: https://twitter.com/boringdystopian/status/1269639110647521281
More dragging: https://twitter.com/boringdystopian/status/1269641819924713474
Man overboard: https://twitter.com/boringdystopian/status/1269643323532292096

I love the fellow family member thing: https://twitter.com/boringdystopian/status/1269697901208449024

Now the thing is, they had tried for YEARS to change the language through the usual slow process, meeting after freaking meeting. Two years ago, they'd finally agreed to put a sign on the statue noting his involvement in the slave trade. But no one would ever agree on language that would include ANY reference to him being a slaver.

https://twitter.com/KateWilliamsme/status/1269713381973516290

So, on that issue, I'll just say: it depends on the attempts in the process to get it dealt with through process, and how historical/unique the statue/person really was. I also want to point out that art is not just something that happened in the past. There is genuinely cool art happening right now.

On Sun, Jun 7, 2020, at 6:57 PM, alexkleider wrote:
> I'd be curious to know the origin of the term "blacklist" and a related 
> term "blackballing".  Are the origins racist or is it more 'white hat 
> vs black hat', good vs evil sort of thing?

When I was a kid, white hats most assuredly were the good guys and black hats bad guys in media portrayal and the latter were more likely to be people of color.

I haven't pulled the string backwards, nor have I read deeply on this personally, but I do know people who have.

Blackballing on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackballing links to a dictionary that says it's from the mid 1700s.

It's really hard to know, because so much of the usage of black and white as words was racist then it's hard to sort things out.

Like for example, there's a current furor going on in Mormonism, which has been quietly trying to pretend it's not racist for a long time, despite the names of its universities being after the most prominent racist in its history. There, literally "white and delightsome" referred to race.

But first, the stealth edits to their book: https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/gy37u0/wait_its_not_cool_to_call_them_dark_filthy_and/

For the 4-1/2 minute sarcastic-af explanation from Brother Jake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJS39vUlwbk

Here's an article from 2018 about the 40th anniversary of the "revelation" that permitted black men to attain priesthood. Before that, they could not. 

https://theconversation.com/mormons-confront-a-history-of-church-racism-95328

Of course the church positioned it as revelation, because why wouldn't they, but the fact is, they were ten YEARS behind the 1968 protests and so on. Now, one huge factor was that NCAA teams would not play them, specifically there were protests at Stanford and San Jose State. *beams local pride* That said, sportsball was not as big a thing at the BYU of then as the BYU of today.

https://mormonheretic.org/2015/02/16/remembering-black-protests-of-the-1960s-70s/

So when Mitt Romney walked with Christian evangelical protestors today, I thought that was pretty amazing, given the history. (George Romney, Mitt's dad, was actually pretty cool and marched with MLK.)

(FWIW, I'm not Mormon, I just happen to follow Mormonism as I'm one of a group who helps out ex-Mormons in crisis. Menlo Park is a stake center, so one of the places where missionaries can be posted.)

To get back to the subject originally raised:

I see their point. It doesn't bother me, but I can see why it might bother people who are not me.

Rick and I have traveled to dozens of countries where slavers brought slaves to grow sugar for cash crops. It's just horrifying. One of the places we were last winter, St. Kitts, they couldn't even have water during part of the day until the soda plant finally shut down a few years ago.

Because my mom didn't raise a fool, and because I have been to committee meetings through the years, have no desire to repeat the Bristol name experience on any mailing list on this issue. I am keeping my (remaining) sanity points for other issues, thank you very much.

Deirdre