http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/25/1396611/-In-One-Image-Clemson-University-Captures-White-Tone-Deafness-And-Just-How-Deep-White-Supremacy-Runs?detail=email
Let's say for a minute that you're Clemson University. Let's also say that over the last year, your campus has been engaged in a debate on what to do with your most famous building, which remains named after Ben Tillman, a man who once said:
As to his “rights”—I will not discuss them now. We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be equal to the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him. I would to God the last one of them was in Africa and that none of them had ever been brought to our shores.
Let's also assume that after a group of students - mostly black, but some white - asked for the school to re-name the building, the chairman of the Board of Trustees said something similar to:
Every great institution is built by imperfect craftsmen. Stone by stone they add to the foundation so that over many, many generations, we get a variety of stones. And so it is with Clemson. Some of our historical stones are rough and even unpleasant to look at. But they are ours and denying them as part of our history does not make them any less so. For that reason, we will not change the name of our historical buildings. Part of knowledge is to know and understand history so you learn from it. Clemson is a strong, diverse university in which all of us can be proud. That is today and tomorrow's reality and that is where all our energy is focused.
Tone-deaf doesn't even begin to describe what Clemson's done here, and really, it's just a reflection of how deep white supremacy runs in these United States of America, and particularly in South Carolina. To frame a memorial to nine victims of racial terrorism in front of a building honoring a man who once said that he would "willingly lead a mob in lynching a Negro who had committed an assault on a white woman" would be particularly egregious in any circumstance. It's especially egregious in light of the fact that Dylann Roof, the killer in question, accused the black population he targeted of "raping our women."
IMO this is a thinly veiled dog whistle of sorts to those who continue to oppose that those murdered are no more than a victory of the racist ideology fostered by the person the building named after represented. along with the rhetoric of denying a name change it's clear that they don't want to give up their head of the table status that inevitably is going to change this my friends is part of the kicking and screaming we will see as that time gets closer, census bureau predicts 2043, tick tock. will the politics of societal changing influence them to get in step or will they hold on to the past where they were kings???
