Modest Proposals

And other thoughts.

On the Renaming of Buildings

Recently, they changed the name of our local public high school from T.C. Williams High School to Alexandria City High School because T.C. Williams’ namesake was a person who espoused segregationist policies.  I support disassociating the school from that particular person, T.C. Williams.  But renaming the school is estimated to cost over $325,000.  Instead, might the school board have found another person named “T.C. Williams” and renamed the school after them?  I Googled some other “T.C. Williams” in the area.  There’s someone who works for the NAACP.  There’s someone who’s a partner at a law firm, who might even pay the school for the privilege of having it named after her.  The new namesake for “T.C. Williams” would have to meet some sort of background check, but if they seemed a decent person why not rename the school after them and save the $325,000?  And you could put some or all of that money you saved into a scholarship program.  (As a Red Sox fan, I only wish Ted Williams’ middle name was Charles instead of Samuel.)

Better than Rockefeller

Ron Chernow’s great biography of John D. Rockefeller, Titan, mentions how Rockefeller, at the time the richest man in the world, enjoyed great luxuries, including running water and bathrooms, and he even paid someone to read books to him while he was doing other things, like taking a shower.  At the time, I wasn’t reading a hard copy of Chernow’s biography of Rockefeller, but instead listening to it as an audiobook while taking a shower myself.  And the book was being read to me by a professional narrator at the reading speed of my choosing, broadcast from an Amazon Echo device I bought for less than $15 on eBay.  Living the life of Rockefeller on pennies a day in 2021.  God bless America.

Ben Franklin vs. Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ibram X. Kendi

Nikole Hannah Jones is the founder the The 1619 Project, a program that promotes a false narrative of American history in which we’re told anti-black oppression motivates everything in American history, even today.  When it was suggested that the riots following the death of George Floyd that swept the nation in the summer of 2020 could be called the 1619 riots, and which caused large-scale destruction, Hanna-Jones tweeted that “It would be an honor. Thank you.”

Contrast that to Ben Franklin, who didn’t support the Boston Tea Party, in which American colonists opposed to British taxes (including the tax on tea) boarded a British ship and threw the tea it was transporting into Boston Harbor in protest.  Here’s what Franklin said (emphasis mine) about the Boston Tea Party:

Gentlemen: I received the Honour of your Letter dated Decr. 21, containing a distinct Account of the Proceedings at Boston relative to the Tea imported there, and of the Circumstances that occasioned its Destruction … I am truly concern’d, as I believe all considerate Men are with you, that there should seem to any a Necessity for carrying Matters to such Extremity, as, in a Dispute about Publick Rights, to destroy private Property …

Franklin also had some advice for people like Ibram X. Kendi, who confidently asserts, without evidence, that “When I see racial disparities, I see racism” and “We have a hard time recognizing that racial discrimination is the sole cause of racial disparities in this country and in the world at large.”  Franklin would have frowned on such dogmatic statements.  In his book “Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America,” John Kasson writes “As Franklin learned to negotiate between the requirements of his ambition and the sensitivities of his audiences, he helped pioneer the strategies of etiquette that would be so widely disseminated in nineteenth-century America. With social equals as well as superiors, he curbed his considerable appetite for disputation …”  Kasson then quotes Franklin himself, who wrote in his autobiography that he acquired

the Habit of expressing myself in Terms of modest Diffidence, never using when I advance any thing that may possibly be disputed, the Words, Certainly, undoubtedly, or any others that give the Air of Positiveness to an Opinion; but rather say, I conceive, or I apprehend a Thing to be so or so, It appears to me, or I should think it is so or so for such and such Reasons, or I imagine it to be so, or it is so if I am not mistaken. This Habit I believe has been a great Advantage to me, when I have had occasion to inculcate my Opinions and persuade Men into Measures that I have been from time to time engag’d in promoting.

Franklin’s humility in assessing data led him to reject dogmatic claims being made in his time that blacks were inherently inferior, as did Franklin’s protégé, Benjamin Rush, a renowned American colonial physician.  As Eric Herschthal recounts in his book The Science of Abolition:

Rush argued that, whatever inferior traits enslaved Africans allegedly exhibited, slavery itself—not anything innate to Black people—could explain them … [Rush] began from the premises that “Human Nature is the same in all Ages and Countries” and that “all the difference we perceive ... may be accounted for from Climate, Country, Degrees of Civilization, form of Government, or other accidental causes.”

Since the time of Franklin and Rush, we’ve developed so many more analytical tools with which to explain the causes of different outcomes among people.  It’s time for modern academics like Hannah Jones and Kendi to use them.

The Thing About Announcing The Most Common Pronouns

Per the cartoon above, there’s that trend in which some people go around proactively announcing their “preferred pronouns,” even when their preferred pronoun is what you’d expect it to be, like “he” for guys and “she” for girls.  I understand of course a very small group of biological males prefer to be “she” and a very small group of biological females prefer to be called “he,” and to each their own.  But why would the vast majority of people who use the standard, expected pronouns feel obligated to proactively announce them?  I mean, most people aren’t allergic to peanuts, but I don’t notice most people going to restaurants and who aren’t allergic to peanuts proactively announcing to the wait staff “I’m not allergic to peanuts” every time they sit down.  If you’re allergic to peanuts, by all means let the wait staff know.  But no one expects everyone else to announce their common non-allergies.