Rehabbed Harvard residence will no longer showcase portrait of racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic namesake

And yea, it is hard. Some people want to remove the name Washington because he owned slaves. Just changing every Washington there is in the country? Kinda silly if you ask me.

As for the Lowell name here? You could probably change the name of the house I guess, but there are also people who think that by leaving the name there the conversation stays alive.

Hell, I bet some day some judge is going to rule that Boston Latin is racist because tests are racist, and everyone who went there didn't deserve to get a separate education from all the minorities who didn't get that same chance. So every Headmaster who ever went there is a bad person and needs their name erased and legacy tarnished. Silly? Of course, but we will probably draw the line somewhere. But I would bet anything that Latin will eliminate testing or some judge will rule that entire school illegal because of the practice of letting some kids in and others out (for a public school) Not saying I agree with it, but something like that will happen.

As a member of the gay community who studied American Constitutional History in college I do have a keen sense for parsing out anti gay sentiment in American history, especially in major institutions. You may be shocked to hear that sadly that practice and those implications were widespread. I actually think Mad Men handled it with Sal pretty accurately.

I was also involved in political circles at a very young age dating back to the late 1990's and was that proverbial fly on the wall in many situations where I heard people talking about gay people. Only to see and hear those same people in 2013 run around with rainbow flags over their heads...

He did not seem to be a man I want to emulate or celebrate but he also does not seem much worse than many others with their names etches in sandstone either.

The Turks actually did retain the Byzantine name for almost 500 years. The Ottomans never renamed their capital. The name was finally officially changed to Istanbul ('the city'), which had long been in widespread use, in 1930. by the Republic of Turkey.

I don't claim that this is a definitive argument for any particular position. It's a reminder, though, that names can remain perfectly serviceable long after they have lost their original association.

It had been Istanbul informally for so long that it's not clear whether the name comes from "eis ten polis" (Greek: "to the city") or is merely a contraction of "Constantinopolis".

As for Czechia, it's not the same country as Czechoslovakia, which was a union between the former kingdom of Bohemia ("Czechy"), ruled by Austria, and the Slovak lands of the former Hungarian kingdom (the king of Bohemia, the king of Hungary, and the emperor of Austria were all the same person). Slovakia seceded from Czechoslovakia in 1993, leaving just the Czech Republic/Czechia.

If I know Harvard, as soon as a sufficiently large donation is received, Lowell House will become Google House or Amazon House.

Did he talk to himself?

Yankee Stadium is in the Bronx.

Imagine a conversation like this-

Student A- Boy, I love attending a school like Harvard. It is so progressive. So open.
Student B- Really?
A- Yup.
B- Well, you know about President Lowell, right?
A- Who?
B- The guy who Lowell House is named after. He was in charge of Harvard in the early 20th Century.
A- I don't really know much about him.
B- Lowell was a real piece of shit. He tried to keep black people and gays out, and he instituted a quota for Jews.
A- I guess Harvard isn't the paradise I thought it was.

While it would be great if Harvard was the open, progressive place people think it is, it is good to have the unfortunate side of history. Erase Lowell and you erase a manifestation that Harvard did those things. I feel the same way about Confederate statutes, or as I call them, loser statutes. They exist as a memory of the time that the South decided to fight a war about slavery- and lost! If they want the constant reminder of how their ancestors fucked up, so be it.

The process is known as REBRANDING.

Just change it to a value neutral, greekish or latinish or ubuntish sounding not real word and disseminate and promote it.

Heck, just use a pinyin character representing truth. That will work.

1. You don't get to say what I think, and...
2. ...it's lbb, you dimbulb.

Also, damn but you're whiny.

There will be mixing as there is now but future division could be based on differences that we don't even pay attention to now. Look at the stark differences and rivalries among the people of India which everybody here pretty much ignores and is like "ummm, they're like Asian or something."

Maybe a better example is the Visigoths of Germany who were at war with everyone, even their distant relatives. The point is that people with a lot in common will find differences and divide up accordingly, jockeying for power until someone comes along to dominate.

Now if you can get these groups to join up to overthrow an existing power or fight off a foreign one, that can work.

The thing you're describing is a form of American exceptionalism, whether you mean to use that term or not.

The mixing of cultures and peoples with origins from all over the globe, depends entirely on the continued, deliberate, and conscious repression of the tribal instinct. It is something only possible in settler societies where the settlers outnumber the natives and no one ethnic group has enough numbers to revert to its old-world ways of old-world grievances and generations-long blood feuds.

America in the colonial days was like that. To modern eyes it was bunch of white guys, but back then, it was a patchwork of Catholics, various warring shades of Protestants, Germans, Swedes, Dutch, English, Scots, Irish, Welsh, all the sorts of distinctions that many of us here are blind to, but that mattered a whole hell of a lot back then. Still do now, just over there, not over here. That's why they've got national borders separating Dutch from Germans and Irish from English.

The secular system of government, and the principles of rule of law, equality under law, and viewpoint-neutral law itself, that came out of that, came out of necessity. Better to spread out, pretend to like each other, and structure your system of government around everyone leaving everyone else the fuck alone than to try to fight the same battles that had, and continue, to tear the old world into pieces.

Civilization is a fragile thing, and what we've had going here was and is pretty special. Best not to try to burn it all down in a fit of solipsism and race-baiting and grievance mongering. What comes out of the ashes might not be to anyone's liking.

Put another way:
Repress the urge to take offense at the deeds of dead men. Our country depends on it.

Rich people enjoy it when the proles fight - draws attention away from their looting of productivity and society.