Posted on 05/11/2023 6:48:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The city of Berkeley has long been associated with leftism. Famed San Francisco columnist Herb Caen nicknamed the city Berserkeley as an homage to its radical politics. The extremism infects both the town and its famous campus, the University of California, Berkeley. Although most other college campuses have caught up with UC Berkeley, it’s still the grande dame of leftist extremism. That’s what makes it so lovely that Berkeley is wrestling with a bitter historic truth: The name “Berkeley” is an homage to a one-time Rhode Island-based slaveholder who was unimpressed by Native Americans.
From the Bay Area News Group:
The problematic pasts of historical figures have forced the renaming of hundreds of buildings and the removal of dozens of statues from public squares across the U.S. But what happens when the name of an entire community is tainted by racial injustice?
It’s perhaps ironic that Berkeley is the latest place to face this question. The city’s reputation for anti-imperialism has only grown since becoming the nation’s first city to swap Columbus Day for “Indigenous Peoples Day” in 1992 and installing city-limit signs that declare “Welcome to the City of Berkeley — Ohlone Territory” in 2019. Last year, the City Council agreed to begin its meetings with a land acknowledgment, recognizing Berkeley as stolen land from its first inhabitants, the Ohlone people.
But now, historians at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, have renewed scrutiny of records indicating that the city’s namesake — Bishop George Berkeley, an 18th-century Irish philosopher and influential scholar — purchased enslaved people to toil at a Rhode Island plantation he briefly operated until 1732.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Ireland’s largest university took a stand on Berkeley last month, voting to expunge his name from its central library. The college’s researchers advocated for the decision, citing public documents showing that Berkeley openly advocated for owning, evangelizing and educating Native Americans, whom he characterized as inhumane, barbarous and savage.
Of course, Bishop Berkeley, immured in his early-Enlightenment Ivory tower, was unaware that his forebearers were no better. Indeed, Europe was still in the very slow process of temporarily emerging from its own barbarism. (WWII plunged it right back in.) It just had a head start over the Native Americans, so Europeans could convince themselves that they were culturally superior.
But back to that point that we were all once Stone Age people. That means that no society was free of the stain of slavery and prejudice. Moreover, leftists would do well to understand that what ended slavery wasn’t just a giant leap in morality; it was fossil fuel, which meant that the physical labor of animals and humans was no longer an integral part of a society moving beyond subsistence level survival.
Are idiots Wokesters giving up all cotton clothes yet?
One could probably very easily screw with the crazy Berkeley leftists - come out in another 3 months and tell them his wife was named "Trump." Then come out in another 3 months and tell them Berkeley owned coal mines, etc....
Watch them go crazy
And maybe YALE UNIVERITY has to change its name too.
Elihu Yale ( its original patron ), as governor and president of the East India Company’s settlement in Madras, oversaw an operation that traded in products of many kinds, and also in human slaves.
That is a most EXCELLENT post, S & F. Your connection to fossil fuels eliminating the need for slave labor is hardly ever made. I would add to that the great benefits of fossil fuels we have enjoyed would not have been possible without a thousand years of advancement in mathematics, science, physics, metallurgy, thermodynamics, and engineering. Most of these great achievements were made possible by Western thought and Christianity.
Living in North America in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was a logical conclusion by the immigrants and native colonists that the native were “inhumane, barbarous, and savage.” How could you conclude otherwise?
Thanks for the recommendation for Pinker’s book, too.
Ha-ha.
They should rename Berkeley as Durant. Rev. Henry Durant was the minister who founded the University of California in 1855 (Berkeley was the first campus). Durant founded UC as a Christian institution under “the pervading influence and spirit of the Christian religion.” Durant even picked the university’s motto, “Let There Be Light” from the Bible, Gen. 1:3.
Mohammed was a slave owner. Just sayin’....
University of California at Durant? I like the sound of that :)
They really need to change the name of Berkeley.
Well, I say the Ohlone were interlopers to the ones here before them and owe restitution to some long forgotten tribe of savages. See how this works? Why do people continue to acquiesce to this nonsense? Does it somehow make them feel better about themselves to constantly apologize for their existence or for the behavior of some ancient ancestor? For the very life of me I don’t understand the self-loathing affluent liberal.
Oh good God.
I actually like this Schadenfreude in many ways. Including the Yankee-philes here.
Again, someone from the “NORTH” had slaves. Didn’t know Yankees allowed slavery, eh?
But onto the issue here. An Irish (the first of the aggrieved groups) man comes over and gets “enslaved people” (asinine word shell games from communists, again) and disparages people who were, indeed, largely inhumane.
Too bad.
Get over it. Too late now. Even your liberal ancestors (and yes, there WAS ancestry in our current thinking) saw fit to use this man. That should count for something, much as Yankee “Union” types saw fit to allow rebel “Confederate” monuments and naming.
Exactly.
Perhaps it is the “we’re getting bad press so maybe we can fool people by changing the name” and “this way we have an excuse”.
How about changing Berkeley’ name to Stalingrad?
Looks like we need a mass “mostly peaceful” demonstration at UC Berkeley to include some mostly peaceful knocking down some liberal sacred cows.
Eventually, this will hit Cincinnati, OH, Cicero, IL, and other places named after slave holders.
Yup. They’re using pleather.
openly advocated for owning, evangelizing and educating Native Americans, whom he characterized as inhumane, barbarous and savage.
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Sounds like what the teachers unions, the FBI and many universities say about white Christians.
“They really need to change the name of Berkeley.”
I hear the name Fort Hood is available now.
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