Colleges and universities across the country are victims of revenge politics, usually instigated by white left-wing activists waging war against dead white males supposedly on behalf of blacks. Across the South, their tactics include pressuring schools to erase the name of well-known former leaders from campus buildings. The heroes of the past are now judged as racist based on today’s politically correct, revisionist opinions.
The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel region of North Carolina – called the Research Triangle – is home to three nationally prominent universities. Only North Carolina State University in Raleigh has retained its traditional credibility, at least in comparison to nearby UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University in Durham.
UNC has a long tradition of progressive/liberal attitudes, while Duke was a national leader in radical campus politics in the 1980s. Duke rid itself of Stanley Fish, the Typhoid Mary of revisionist and multicultural doctrines, in the 1980s. Sadly, UNC has continued in its deconstructive path. The formerly venerated public university is now imploding as a result of the spread of radicalism from the professoriate to the administration.
Naturally, both UNC and Duke are in the thick of the revisionist history fad. Carolina’s Saunders Hall is named for a state leader of great accomplishment who, influenced by the post-Civil War era he lived in, was a founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Duke has already rubbed out the name of Charles B Aycock, known in North Carolina as the “education governor” for his dedication to providing schooling to all citizens – albeit in the atmosphere of “separate but equal”.
Of course, the local mass media, led by the News & Observer in Raleigh, have ventured beyond reporting to participating in the biased attacks on well known public figures. An editorial column by Jim Jenkins in the News & Observer is one example. My reply is a succinct summary of how the issue is endangering the foundations of America:
Dear Mr. Jenkins:
I was taken aback that you support erasing Charles Brantley Aycock, North Carolina’s “education governor,” from recorded history based on his white supremacist racial attitudes during his life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. First of all, Josephus Daniels, founder of the Raleigh News & Observer, was a noted white supremacist during Aycock’s lifetime – and beyond, when he served as secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. Educated readers are aware of the historical racism embodied in the paper’s founder. However, they realize that imposing moral equivalence, defined by today’s attitudes, on the heads of people who lived in another era is unfair. Are you or other anti-Aycock activists calling for the Daniels name to be removed from schools (Daniels Middle School in Raleigh comes to mind) or from the auditorium at North Carolina’ s Museum of History? Or demand the expunging of the quote by Josephus Daniels that serves as the mission statement of the News & Observer?
You also overlooked the bronze statue of Aycock – one of two representing North Carolina in the United States Capitol. Are you calling for the removal of the sculpture in the name of politically correct opinions not known in his day? Where do you stop when you turn journalism into anarchy, as if we are living in a modern “reign of terror”? Are you sure the movement to “airbrush” history today is not an heir of Stalin’s well known penchant to “disappear” colleagues who didn’t slavishly adhere to the party line?