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Friday, February 10, 2012
What's in a name?
by Scott Holbrook, published on May 25, 2009 at 9:04 PM
Storyline: Politics and Opinions
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"Nobel Laureate William Shockley & Emma B Shockley Memorial Park". You may have read about it in the Sacramento Bee, or perhaps the Auburn Journal or somewhere else. What the park name does not mention is in addition to winning a Noble Prize for his work on developing the Transistor (Time Magazine listed Mr. Shockley in the 100 Most influention people of the Century too), Mr. Shockley was a big supporter of Eugenics. Now here is the story:
In a trust, the Shockleys provided for 28 acres of land they own to be given to the Auburn Park and Recreation District, the gift came with 2 conditions: 1) The land be used for "passive" use only, and 2) It be given the name mentioned above. The District Board voted 3-2 to accept this gift. Subsequent to the accepting of the land, the Auburn Journal discovered and reported the facts relating to Mr. Shockleys involvement and support of Eugenics, a subject that was never discussed during the decision to accept or deny the property. As some may know, I serve on the Auburn Rec District board, and embarassingly I had no idea of Mr. Shockley's racist past. I did object to the acceptance of the property, but it had nothing to do with the name.
Now that the news has come out, it has created quite a stir. I am writing today, to shed light on this issue and hopefully solicit some opinions from those not so closely attached to the subject. Here is a little more information, and choices as I see it, please note that at this time there is no mechanism to now "return" the gift.
1) Accept the terms of the gift and live with the conditions as listed.
2) Accept the terms, but come up with some additional verbage to the name, some have suggested the Nobel Laureate...... a park for enjoyment by all, dedicated in a year when America celebrated it's first African American President...
3) One suggested writing the name on a bottom of a rock, they placing the rock name side down.
4) I have received a legal opinion saying that gifts of "Real Property" can not have restrictions placed on the gift (this makes sense, what if they said we had to put up a statue of something or someone some would find offensive, or perhaps the restrictions stated it could only be used by certain people), we can proceed down this path and see if the restrictions are valid, and if not have them removed & proceed naming the park as we normally would (public notice, solition of suggestions & public debate & vote) - Of course this brings up ethical or moral questions about "gift giving".
5) Ignore the request, as there is no real threat of action, there is no "trust police" & no regulatory agency will likely object - again there are moral issues tied to this decision.
Everyone I know agrees Mr. Shockleys racist views are ignorant, ugly and should not be condoned. But at the same time many also note that people such as Darwin, Andrew Jackson or even Abraham Lincoln also had racist views or participated in actions or practices such as slave ownership which obviously are unacceptable, yet all have been memorialized to one extent or another. Is there a difference between Shockley and Goethe (whose name still appears on google maps)? Did Shockleys "good" outweigh his "bad"? Do we spend too much time and energy focusing on a name? I am sure one can come up with many questions.
This issue is not going away soon, it definetly sparks conversation and debate, I look forward to hearing some of Sacramento Press writers and readers comments - As always, Keep Smilin'!
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Abraham Lincoln is known to have liked jokes, including ones we might snear at as being sick, but he was kind to everyone and well thought of by those who came to know him. And, must I add, he emancipated the slaves. There is no basis for calling Lincoln a racist.
".......Yet, virtually none of the current discussions of Lincoln –in this hagiographic mood the country is in–seriously focuses on Lincoln’s extensive racist framing of U.S. society and what that has meant, then as now. Most historians dealing with Lincoln now touch on his racism, but only a few like Lerone Bennett, Jr., in his much debated but pathbreaking Forced into Glory, get to the heart of the matter. Even left historians seem to lack the conceptual tools to make sense out of Lincoln’s deep racism. Their discussion usually focuses a few of Lincoln’s views and actions, with an argument he got less racist over time–and not centrally on the much bigger picture of racial oppression being the foundation of the nation, then as now, and on the white racial frame that was essential to rationalizing that foundation, then as now. And not centrally on how the war and Lincoln, and the war’s aftermath, were shaped by and shaped that systemic racism and its rationalizing frame. And what it meant that Lincoln stayed very racist in his views to the end.
Lincoln was a willing servant of that foundational racism. Several years before he became president, in his famous debate with Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln demonstrated that he operated out of a strong version of the white racist frame. For example, he argued in that debate that the physical difference between the “races” was insuperable:......
As far as Darwin, most people do not realize the full title of his writings - he believed in "Favoured Races" - from what I understand a foundation for Eugenics
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published 24 November 1859, is a seminal work of scientific literature considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. - (from Wikipedia)
Here is a cut from the University of Hawaii website by a Mr. Lienhard -
"Did an older and wiser Darwin leave this youthful racism? He did not. In fact, he was sexist as well as racist. He said we'd be in trouble without the law of equal transmission of characteristics to both sexes. Without it man would've grown so superior to woman as to be a different species.
Darwin shares a birthday with another great man who held equally racist ideas. That was Abraham Lincoln. Like Lincoln and the rest of the white race in the 1800s, Darwin never doubted the superiority of his kind. Like Lincoln, Darwin became a hero in the cause of human rights despite himself." Did an older and wiser Darwin leave this youthful racism? He did not. In fact, he was sexist as well as racist. He said we'd be in trouble without the law of equal transmission of characteristics to both sexes. Without it man would've grown so superior to woman as to be a different species.
Darwin shares a birthday with another great man who held equally racist ideas. That was Abraham Lincoln. Like Lincoln and the rest of the white race in the 1800s, Darwin never doubted the superiority of his kind. Like Lincoln, Darwin became a hero in the cause of human rights despite himself. http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi617.htm
I suppose I could have phrased my comments differently, but overall I stand by my comments - They did hold views that many would consider racist. This of course was in a different time, and knowledge available was not the same as it was today. I do not want to "smear" any of the people noted in my comments, as all had a major impact on all of us and where we are today.
Scott Holbrook - sorry I did not log in
I stand by the comments made within the content
"Although Shockley was concerned about both black and white dysgenic effects, he found the situation among blacks more disastrous. While unskilled whites had 3.7 children on average versus an average of 2.3 children for skilled whites, Shockley found from the 1970 Census Bureau reports that unskilled blacks had 5.4 children versus 1.9 for the skilled blacks. Shockley reasoned that because intelligence (like most traits) is inherited, the black population would, over time, become much less intelligent countering all the gains that had been made by the Civil Rights movement. Shockley's published writings and lectures to scientific organizations on this topic, such as the National Academy of Sciences, were partly based on the research of Berkeley psychologist Arthur Jensen, Cyril Burt and H. J. Eysenck. Shockley also proposed that individuals with IQs below 100 be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization."
Shockley donated substantial quantities of his own sperm to a sperm bank with the hope of brightening the prospects for future generations. This is not racist but a mis-placed belief, spawned in the social turmoil of the 1960s & only after he had been in a very severe auto accident, that somhow a world of high-IQ persons of all races & both genders would miraculously yield a BETTER result overall than mere random reproduction among lower-IQ, lower-skilled contributors to the human species.
Perhaps you can leave the name of the park as it is & just write Shockley off as an eccentric old coot who survived a nasty traffic collision in the days BEFORE seat belts even existed...
From a fairly recent Washington Post article:
Henry Louis Gates Jr.: If a man used the N word, liked blackface minstrel shows, loved telling darky jokes, referred to at least one black man as "boy," and called Sojourner Truth "auntie," how would you describe him? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. However, this was the early Lincoln, He changed under the pressures of the presidency and he grew in terms of race relations, eventually beginning to embrace the idea that some -- only 200,000 out of 2.2 million -- black men should be allowed to vote, in the final speech that he delivered, 3 days before he was assassinated. In fact it was this very speech, overheard by John Wilkes Booth, which led to Booth's decision to assassinate him. But Lincoln was a "recovering racist," making his commitment to abolish slavery and his enormous affection for and loyalty to his "black warriors," as he called them, even more impressive.
While you are certainly more right than me on this topic, I think that Lincoln cannot have been the "hater" than conferring a moniker of Racist on him implies.
Re Darwin, this from wikipedia:
Darwin did not share the racism common at that time: a point examined by the philosopher Antony Flew, who is at pains to distance Darwin's attitudes from those later attributed to him. Darwin was strongly against slavery, against "ranking the so-called races of man as distinct species", and against ill-treatment of native people. Darwin's views on social and political issues reflected his time and social position. He valued European civilisation and saw colonisation as spreading its benefits, with the sad but inevitable effect of extermination of savage peoples who did not become civilised. Darwin's theories saw this as natural, and were used to promote policies which went against his humanitarian principles.