Confederate statue which was removed during BLM protests set to be reinstalled
The defaced statue depicts Albert Pike, a Confederate diplomat and general who worked closely with Native Americans from slave-owning tribes that sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War and fought to protect slavery as an institution. He was also a leader of the Freemasons — a secretive fraternal society that included many powerful politicians and elite figures in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was the only standing statue of a confederate general in the district.He was labelled as a racist and was a part of the Ku Klux Klan.OPPSOTION AGAINST REINSTALLATIONOpposing the restoration plan, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton stated that she would introduce a bill to remove the statue.NPS' decision to restore and reinstall the statue of Confederate Albert Pike is indefensible. Pike served dishonorably, misappropriated funds, and was ultimately imprisoned by his fellow troops.I'll reintroduce my bill to remove the statue.More: https://t.co/FL0GK9mcBh pic.twitter.com/fCujtes8uA— Eleanor #DCStatehood Holmes Norton (@EleanorNorton) August 4, 2025"The decision to honour Albert Pike by reinstalling the Pike statue is as odd and indefensible as it is morally objectionable," Norton said. "He resigned in disgrace after committing a war crime and dishonouring even his own Confederate military service. Even those who want Confederate statues to remain standing would have to justify awarding Pike any honour, considering his history."Increased tension and racial equality protests ignited by the death of George Floyd in Minnesota triggered the toppling down of the statue by the protesters.- EndsWith inputs from Reuters
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India Today
05-08-2025
- India Today
Confederate statue which was removed during BLM protests set to be reinstalled
The National Park Service is planning to restore and reinstall a statue of Albert Pike, a Confederate general and Freemason leader, that was toppled during the protests against racism in 2020.'The restoration aligns with federal responsibilities under historic preservation law as well as recent executive orders to beautify the nation's capital and re-instate pre-existing statues,' the National Park Service said in a statement, pointing to President Donald Trump's executive order on Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful and the executive order on Restoring Truth and Sanity to American National Mall and Memorial Parks, manged by the National Parks Service, took it to their social media platform X, to announce that the statue will return its stone base by this erected in 1901, the Albert Pike Memorial was damaged by vandals and removed in 2020. The bronze statue is being repaired and will be returned to its stone base this fall. Learn more at National Mall NPS (@NationalMallNPS) August 4, 2025ALL ABOUT THE STATUE The defaced statue depicts Albert Pike, a Confederate diplomat and general who worked closely with Native Americans from slave-owning tribes that sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War and fought to protect slavery as an institution. He was also a leader of the Freemasons — a secretive fraternal society that included many powerful politicians and elite figures in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was the only standing statue of a confederate general in the was labelled as a racist and was a part of the Ku Klux AGAINST REINSTALLATIONOpposing the restoration plan, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton stated that she would introduce a bill to remove the decision to restore and reinstall the statue of Confederate Albert Pike is indefensible. Pike served dishonorably, misappropriated funds, and was ultimately imprisoned by his fellow troops.I'll reintroduce my bill to remove the Eleanor #DCStatehood Holmes Norton (@EleanorNorton) August 4, 2025"The decision to honour Albert Pike by reinstalling the Pike statue is as odd and indefensible as it is morally objectionable," Norton said. "He resigned in disgrace after committing a war crime and dishonouring even his own Confederate military service. Even those who want Confederate statues to remain standing would have to justify awarding Pike any honour, considering his history."Increased tension and racial equality protests ignited by the death of George Floyd in Minnesota triggered the toppling down of the statue by the protesters.- EndsWith inputs from Reuters
Indian Express
05-08-2025
- Indian Express
Can't we say ‘good genes' anymore? The backlash to the Sydney Sweeney jeans ad explained
When clothing retailer American Eagle launched its new ad campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney, it was merely trying to revive its declining fortunes and appeal to its consumer base of predominantly young women. However, it found itself at the centre of the latest public debate surrounding an ad featuring the blonde-haired, blue-eyed actress. The offending ad drew concerns from critics for the language used, who claimed that it was a racial dog whistle, intentional or otherwise. 'Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality and even eye colour,' Sweeney says in the ad as the camera pans over her denim jeans and jacket. 'My jeans are blue.' And just as the company attempted to play down the controversy, the White House decided to weigh in with its full strength. Spokesperson Steven Cheung characterised the criticism as 'cancel culture run amok', Vice President JD Vance called Sweeney an 'All-American beautiful woman', and President Donald Trump on Monday (August 4) wrote, 'Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the HOTTEST ad out there.' Is it a bad thing to say someone has good genes? The phrase 'good genes' is used today often to compliment someone's physical attributes. However, it has a complicated history with direct ties to eugenics and white supremacist propaganda. Eugenics is a discredited scientific theory which argues for selective breeding, meaning intentional human reproduction to increase the presence of genetic traits viewed as 'desirable'. The term was coined in Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883) by Francis Galton, a British natural scientist who drew on Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. Darwin's theory suggests that as species evolve, individuals with traits that can adapt to their environmental requirements are more likely to survive and reproduce, thus passing these traits on to their offspring. Galton advocated for selective breeding to give 'the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable'. In the US, eugenics was introduced by Charles Davenport, who founded the Eugenics Record Office on Long Island, New York, in 1910 to 'improve the natural, physical, mental, and temperamental qualities of the human family', according to its brochure. What was initially an academic interest in identifying 'undesirable' traits, like dwarfism, mental ability, and criminality, extended into a larger social movement in the 1920s and '30s. This had political implications too, with states such as Indiana and California implementing sterilisation laws targeting the poor and disabled, as well as Native Americans, Latin Americans, and Black people. Between 1907 and the 1970s, more than 60,000 people across 32 states were forcibly sterilised for being 'mentally deficient'. In 2003, then-California Governor Gray Davis apologised for the state's role after it was revealed that the state's forced sterilisation campaign had inspired Nazi Germany's efforts at ethnic cleansing of its minorities, predominantly Jews, ethnic communities like the Sinti and Roma, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities. And the Nazis most infamously presented the archetype of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white person as having 'pure blood' and therefore, aspirational. Eugenics as an idea lost popularity in the 1940s after the actions of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler came to be reviled. However, subtler practices, such as involuntary sterilisation, forced institutionalisation and social ostracisation, have continued in the decades post-WWII. Such policies disproportionately targeted women and people of colour. Writing in The Conversation in 2020, academic Alexandra Minna Stern noted that Black women were sterilised over three times the rate of white women and over 12 times the rate of white men between 1950 and 1966. Federal programs like Medicaid funded forced sterilisation between the 1960s and 1970s, impacting over 100,000 Black, Latino and Indigenous women, Stern wrote. According to critics, the wordplay in the ad is malicious when viewed with the composite actions of the Trump administration, including its unprecedented crackdown on immigration. Since January, the president has imposed a national emergency at the country's shared border with Mexico, denied entry to asylum-seekers, authorised nationwide immigration raids, aggressively pushed for self-deportations, and has stepped up the ante on third-country deportations, despite legal challenges. This, coupled with other actions by the administration, such as the repeal of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, has caused concern that the administration has stepped beyond serving its primarily white, conservative, MAGA voter base. The president has been at the forefront of such messaging, telling a rally of his supporters that they had 'good genes'. Last October, he said that illegal immigrants who commit murder have 'bad genes.' Along the campaign trail, the president also claimed that illegal immigrants were 'poisoning the blood of our country', using language that directly echoed Adolf Hitler's 1925 autobiography, Mein Kampf. Such language has been endorsed by two-thirds of Republican voters across the country, according to an October 2024 poll by the University of Massachusetts. In recent years, conservative commentators, ranging from TV host Tucker Carlson to billionaire CEO Elon Musk, have also leaned into the controversial Great Replacement Theory, coined by French writer Renaud Camus in 2010. According to the theory, white Americans face the threat of becoming a minority and losing their jobs to non-white immigrants. The Republican Party leaned into such messaging in the run-up to the 2024 election, claiming that the Democratic Party was importing immigrants to win the election.
Indian Express
27-07-2025
- Indian Express
Trump says new stadium deal depends on NFL team reverting to old, offensive name
US President Donald Trump has said he may block a stadium deal for the Washington Commanders unless the NFL team returns to its previous name, the Redskins a term many Native Americans have long said is offensive. In a message posted on Truth Social, Trump said there was a 'big clamouring' for the team to go back to its old name. 'If they don't change the name back to the original Washington Redskins and get rid of the ridiculous moniker Washington Commanders, I won't make a deal for them to build a stadium in Washington,' he wrote, according to the BBC. He added that the team 'would be much more valuable' if it reverted to the name it used until 2020. The Commanders dropped the Redskins name following years of pressure from Native American groups and a broader conversation around racism in sport. For the 2020 season, they were called the Washington Football Team before rebranding as the Commanders in 2022. In April, a £3 billion plan was announced to build a new 65,000-seat stadium on the site of RFK Stadium, the team's former home. The BBC reported that local politicians were being urged to fast-track the approval process. Trump has made similar demands of other sports teams. He said Major League Baseball's Cleveland Guardians should return to their former name, the Cleveland Indians. 'Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen,' he claimed. 'Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them.' But Native American leaders and researchers strongly disagree. Mark Macarro, president of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), told the Associated Press (AP) that Trump's comments ignore research showing the harm caused by Native-themed mascots. 'We have our studies, we have our receipts, and we can demonstrate that this causes real harm,' he said. Macarro said the current administration's stance was 'a big reminder that we're going to take some backward steps.' According to experts cited by AP, Native mascots have been linked to higher rates of depression, self-harm and substance abuse among Native American children. The American Psychological Association has called for the removal of Native mascots since 2001. Dr Steph Cross, a psychology professor at the University of Oklahoma and a citizen of the Comanche Nation, said the issue is not just about people being offended. 'That's a symptom,' she said. 'The bigger problem is how these mascots shape bias even among those who work with Native children.' Stephanie Fryberg, a psychologist at Northwestern University and a member of the Tulalip Tribes, added: 'Honouring Native peoples means ending dehumanisation in both imagery and policy.' While some teams have changed their names, others have resisted. The NFL's Kansas City Chiefs and the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks continue to use Native references, though the Chiefs have banned fans from wearing headdresses and face paint at games. They have not stopped the 'tomahawk chop,' a chant critics say is disrespectful. However, BBC also reported that more than 1,500 schools across the US still use Native-themed mascots. Some states such as New York, Oregon, and Washington have passed laws banning them, but efforts to do so in other places, including Illinois, have stalled. The US Department of Education recently opened an investigation into a school district in New York that is retiring its Native-themed mascot. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said, 'It is neither legal nor right to prohibit Native American mascots while celebrating European and other cultural imagery in schools.' Experts also point to how Native Americans are taught in schools. Sarah Shear, a professor at the University of Washington, said that most US students only learn about Native people in a historical context, before 1900. 'I'm not surprised that Trump and others keep saying these mascots are tributes, when the curriculum never challenges those ideas,' she told AP. The Washington Commanders have not yet commented, BBC Sport reported.
