Letter: (Racist UNC) Professors support (Racist) Real Silent Sam

DailyTarHeel.com ^ | 03/03/2015 | UNC Perfessers

[E. Pluribus Unum]

TO THE EDITOR:

We, the undersigned, are faculty in the Department of Anthropology at UNC-Chapel Hill who would like to voice our strong support for the efforts of the Real Silent Sam Coalition. This growing movement seeks to confront the racist histories of the memorials commemorating white supremacy on campus. We believe it is morally reprehensible that racist monuments and building names are currently taken for granted as an acceptable part of the infrastructure. 

Specifically, we support the Coalition’s demands to mark the statue of Silent Sam with a plaque explaining how it commemorates a history of white supremacy; to provide all incoming first-year students with educational material addressing the history of racialized violence on campus; and to rename Saunders Hall. As members of the academic discipline of Anthropology, which has a long and complex history of ignoring, justifying and challenging white privilege, we feel particularly committed to these efforts.

These efforts to address both ongoing and memorialized racial violence on campus give UNC-Chapel Hill an opportunity to lead the South, and universities across the nation, in the battle to shift how racial inequality is silently commemorated on college campuses and in public spaces. This movement, and the important discussions it is generating, is vital to creating a diverse and safe community here at Chapel Hill and in the academy at large.

Assistant prof. Jean Dennison on behalf of eight other professors in the anthropology department:

Florence Babb, Harrington Distinguished Professor

Jocelyn Chua, Assistant Professor

Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld, Chair and Professor

Jean Dennison, Assistant Professor

Arturo Escobar, Kenan Distinguished Professor

Glenn Hinson, Associate Professor

Towns Middleton, Assistant Professor

Michele Rivkin-Fish, Associate Professor

Margaret Wiener, Associate Professor JEH

[DoodleDawg]

As members of the academic discipline of Anthropology, which has a long and complex history of ignoring, justifying and challenging white privilege, we feel particularly committed to these efforts.

Huh?

[philman_36]

William L. Saunders (1835-1891) and Saunders Hallhttp://museum.unc.edu/exhibits/names/william-l-saunders-1835-1891-and-saunders-hall/ In 1922, the university named its new history department building for William L. Saunders to recognize his work as a compiler of historical documents. Saunders graduated from UNC in 1854 and then practiced law in Salisbury, North Carolina. During the Civil War, he served as a colonel and was wounded in two battles. In 1869-1870, he became known as the chief organizer of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina and Chapel Hill. When Democrats regained power in North Carolina, Saunders became Secretary of State and arranged for the publication of North Carolina’s colonial records in a series on which historians still rely. He served as a university trustee from 1874 until 1891.

Oh, my...what a dilema for Democrats.

[17th Miss Regt]

These are PhDs that are evidently educated well beyond their abilities to understand.

[Altura Ct.]

They will chip away at the history and culture of the whites man until none of it exist except as an example of evil.

Wake up white man.

[Neoliberalnot]

Here we go again: suporters of the Black Klan spit spit their venom. It is curious that blacks, the least educated 13% of the population, the least productive, most
criminal, and most dependent on governmental charity, should dominate national politics. Yet they do. Virtually everything revolves around what blacks want, demand, do, or can’t do. Their power seems without limit. Courses of
instruction in the schools, academic rigor, codes of dress, rules regarding unceasing obscenity, all must be set to suit them, as must be examinations for promotion in fire departments, the military, and police forces. Blacks must be
admitted to universities for which they are not remotely qualified, where departments of Black Studies must be established to please them. Corporate work forces, federal departments, and elite high-schools must be judged not on
whether they perform their functions but on whether they have the right number of blacks.

[SaraJohnson]

The job of cultural cleansing is never finished for the communist party.