Erasers and Names

[cahwyguy]

This morning, while in the shower, I was musing about a post I had read on FB about 15 minutes earlier. Of course, I can’t find it again, but the post was about DOD schools in Europe removing posters and textbooks about the accomplishments of blacks, women, and minorities. This was being done in response to the DEI Executive Order. We’ve seen similar things happening over the last two weeks. Posters of women cryptographers being covered at the National Cryptological Museum. Pages on the Tuskegee Airman being removed from DOD site. Numerous examples of the accomplishments of minorities being scrubbed from the collective consciousness.

So my mind went to the question of  why this is being done. And the answer that I came up with is the erasure of history: the eventual end goal is to celebrate only the accomplishments of European White Men, probably Christian. This allows the narrative to be promoted that minorities have not contributed anything, and are therefore worthless. We all know what we can do with worthless things. Yup, they are planning to go there.

The train of thought then went to a different station. It was then thinking about all the names we have out there celebrating these folks. Names on buildings. Names on highways. Names on streets. There was a brief muse on how Trump and the new DOD Secretary want to return Confederate names to DOD bases. Why? Do you have to ask at this point?

But it then returned to all these minority names on schools and buildings. These are much harder to remove, and each name will prompt some to ask the question: “Who was ______?”. The answer to that, my friends, is good danger and good trouble, for we can show the value of minorities.

So we must now intensify our naming efforts. Name those schools. Name those highways. Get the names carved in stone. Make them hard to erase. Work your hardest to prevent the erasure of history.

Oh, and why *this* userpic. If you know TGOV, if it about two women cross-dressing to get around society’s conventional restriction on men.

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along the Road as Erasers and Names by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link to the left. You can sign in with your LJ, DW, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. Note: Subsequent changes made to the post on the blog are not propagated by the SNAP Crossposter; please visit the original post to see the latest version. P.S.: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.