OT - Renaming Austin, Tx .... Looking for suggestions

JohnInCarolina

WesJohnson said:

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JohnInCarolina said:

ALLCAPS OUT

Would you shaddup? You're like that yappy dog in Looney Tunes that follows the big dog around tryin' to stroke his ego for approval. Let @nolaegghead handle himself, he's doing just fine without your commentary. If your posts were clever or witty I wouldn't care, but they're not. 

Well now I'm really hurt.  

jeffwit

I think it would be fun to set up some kind of vote to see who thinks what troll account belongs to whom. Probably best done on a Friday. 
Edit: maybe more revealing than fun. But still fun. 

WesJohnson

Hey Spike! You wanna play ball, huh you wanna play ball? Hey Spike! You want me to dig up some bones for ya? Chase cars? Does that sound like fun? Anything you say Spike! 

JohnInCarolina

TEXASBGE2018 said:

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nolaegghead said:

@ALLCAPSGUY

Please read this as a starting point before you contact me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Education_Agency#Curriculum_controversies

And then follow up on it through some news searches, look at the references, etc. 

Dude I have a spouse who works In education here currently in administrative roles and spent my entire life inside the texas school system. I went to the University of Texas. My mother worked in the school systems here for 30 years. It’s not conservative. You cite a couple articles that support your narrative and you assume that’s it. I’m done have a nice night fellas.

Which UT did you attend?  Austin?  Because I can definitely see going there and coming out believing that public schools in Texas aren't all that conservative.  Great school, by the way.  

Legume

I have no Texas education system bonafides other than family and friends that are teachers here or work in some other school or district level capacity.

I remember some of the hubbub around revisionist history makng it’s way into the curriculum via textbooks.  Some good, long threads here about that a few years ago, how Texas with its purchasing power indirectly influences smaller states that don’t drive development of their own textbooks and end up buying an edition that was developed to a larger states preferences.  Basically what you posted in that link @nolaegghead

This has never been about the teachers or the schools districts, this is the politicization of state level curriculum development at the highest levels, not even the TEA folks that do the heavy lifting in curriculum development.

nolaegghead

Pretty much the convention is, "University of Texas' means Austin.  But there are many others that you would qualify, so you would say "University of Texas at Arlington" or UTSA, etc.

SWMBO graduated from UT Arlington (after LSU).  I went to TA&M and SWTS, (now known as Texas University). 

Biggreenpharmacist

dmchicago said:

Jenny's sister?

Such an underrated post. 

nolaegghead

Biggreenpharmacist said:

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dmchicago said:

Jenny's sister?

Such an underrated post. 

  no.  Jenny is 8675309

nolaegghead

nolaegghead said:

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Biggreenpharmacist said:

dmchicago said:

Jenny's sister?

Such an underrated post. 

  no.  Jenny is 8675309

ohhh...sister.  gotchya

Ozzie_Isaac

billt01

GoldenQ

I am not about keeping or changing names or where statues are kept and do not care about it but I do get very PO'd at people who want to tell history differently such as not admitting KKK and jim Crow were Democrat organizations and that the slaves were mostly brought here and sold by northerners or not telling the rest of our history and what really caused wars or how great the USA is compared to many places.  If we can not honestly and truthfully discuss our country history then we will definitely make worse mistakes in the future. The past is the past and we should be able to discuss it fully and learn from it.

DMW

GoldenQ said:

I am not about keeping or changing names or where statues are kept and do not care about it but I do get very PO'd at people who want to tell history differently such as not admitting KKK and jim Crow were Democrat organizations and that the slaves were mostly brought here and sold by northerners or not telling the rest of our history and what really caused wars or how great the USA is compared to many places.  If we can not honestly and truthfully discuss our country history then we will definitely make worse mistakes in the future. The past is the past and we should be able to discuss it fully and learn from it.

And don't leave out the part about the space ships.

jeffwit

DMW said:

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GoldenQ said:

I am not about keeping or changing names or where statues are kept and do not care about it but I do get very PO'd at people who want to tell history differently such as not admitting KKK and jim Crow were Democrat organizations and that the slaves were mostly brought here and sold by northerners or not telling the rest of our history and what really caused wars or how great the USA is compared to many places.  If we can not honestly and truthfully discuss our country history then we will definitely make worse mistakes in the future. The past is the past and we should be able to discuss it fully and learn from it.

And don't leave out the part about the space ships.

And Taylor Swift’s jet. 

fishlessman

titty twister, texas sounds fitting for austin

northGAcock

fishlessman said:

titty twister, texas sounds fitting for austin

...and would go well as “titty twister city limits” as well for the show.

HeavyG

GoldenQ said:

I am not about keeping or changing names or where statues are kept and do not care about it but I do get very PO'd at people who want to tell history differently such as not admitting KKK and jim Crow were Democrat organizations and that the slaves were mostly brought here and sold by northerners or not telling the rest of our history and what really caused wars or how great the USA is compared to many places.  If we can not honestly and truthfully discuss our country history then we will definitely make worse mistakes in the future. The past is the past and we should be able to discuss it fully and learn from it.

I'm guessing that David Barton is your kind of "historian".

GoldenQ

Don't know him but if he tells it like it was he would be

JohnH12

nolaegghead said:

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JohnH12 said:

They can change the name as soon as they add Washington, Jefferson, and several others to the forbidden names list.
Same reasons, right?

Hola, scared person.  I think they might be a bit carried away by changing the name of a city in this case, but I admire your fear mongering....  Same argument I hear all the time until I want to hang myself, but not once in the history of this country has a name been banned.  Just public symbols of what proper names represented.  And those people that were by the very definition not American Patriots, who had roads named after them, and schools.  Seems pretty reasonable to rename those as it is offensive to the oppressed. 

Take the Jews in Germany.  Or the Jews all over the world (not many were left in Germany and Poland after WWII).  If you were one of them, how would you feel going to Adolf Hitler High School?  In your case, probably wouldn't give a crap. 

Post WWII surveys of occupied Germany:

Surveys

The U.S. conducted opinion surveys in the American zone of occupied Germany.[79] Tony Judt, in his book Postwar: a History of Europe since 1945, extracted and used some of them.[80]

• A majority in the years 1945–49 stated National Socialism to have been a good idea but badly applied.[79]
• In 1946, 6% of Germans said the Nuremberg trials had been unfair.[79]
• In 1946, 37% in the US occupation zone said about the Holocaust that "the extermination of the Jews and Poles and other non-Aryans was necessary for the security of Germans".[79]
• In 1946, 1 in 3 in the US occupation zone said that Jews should not have the same rights as those belonging to the Aryan race.[79]
• In 1950, 1 in 3 said the Nuremberg trials had been unfair.[79]
• In 1952, 37% said Germany was better off without the Jews on its territory.[79]
• In 1952, 25% had a good opinion of Hitler.[79]

PS - who's the snowflake?!

By no means do I mean to act as a fearmonger.
Just how much money has been spent to rename roads and schools because some found the name offensive.
Cities are simply the next logical choice for those offended folks.

SonVolt

Not sure I'm buying the comparison between Stephen Austin and Hitler. 100% of every Jew over the age of 5 knows who Adolf Hitler is; that, in and of itself, is a legitimate concern.  I'd wager none of you knew who Stephen Austin was 2 weeks ago.  This is simply a solution to problem that doesn't exist.  It's social justice click-bait. 

JohnInCarolina

SonVolt said:

Not sure I'm buying the comparison between Stephen Austin and Hitler. 100% of every Jew over the age of 5 knows who Adolf Hitler is; that, in and of itself, is a legitimate concern.  I'd wager none of you knew who Stephen Austin was 2 weeks ago.  This is simply a solution to problem that doesn't exist.  It's social justice click-bait. 

I agree with you, but I haven’t seen anyone in this thread actually advocate for Austin’s name being changed.  Like many threads here, the OP was just used as a launch point for discussion.  

jeffwit

The OP is a known troublemaker. I mean, he never clears his notifications. NEVER! I propose we change his name to @veganbicycle. 

jeffwit

And.....we’re sunk. 

nolaegghead

JohnInCarolina said:

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SonVolt said:

Not sure I'm buying the comparison between Stephen Austin and Hitler. 100% of every Jew over the age of 5 knows who Adolf Hitler is; that, in and of itself, is a legitimate concern.  I'd wager none of you knew who Stephen Austin was 2 weeks ago.  This is simply a solution to problem that doesn't exist.  It's social justice click-bait. 

I agree with you, but I haven’t seen anyone in this thread actually advocate for Austin’s name being changed.  Like many threads here, the OP was just used as a launch point for discussion.  

No one is advocating the name change.  The Equity Office of Austin was set up, among other reasons, to fix a perceived problem with equity and public names was on the "to do" list.  They mentioned it would be hard to do.  Personally, I think it's a ridiculous proposition.

That said, Hitler is frequently used as an asymptotic extreme in ridiculous arguments. It's click bait for both sides.

JohnInCarolina

GoldenQ said:

I am not about keeping or changing names or where statues are kept and do not care about it but I do get very PO'd at people who want to tell history differently such as not admitting KKK and jim Crow were Democrat organizations and that the slaves were mostly brought here and sold by northerners or not telling the rest of our history and what really caused wars or how great the USA is compared to many places.  If we can not honestly and truthfully discuss our country history then we will definitely make worse mistakes in the future. The past is the past and we should be able to discuss it fully and learn from it.

I've seen this sentiment expressed here many times before, and the irony is that while it is a call to remember our history, it is in fact rather ignorant of it.  At best it is citing events without important context.  Allow me to elaborate.

One often sees this brought up when discussion of racism and the Republican party comes up, mostly as a means to deflect the criticism.  You even see suggestions that the Democratic party of the south was too extreme for the Nazis in Germany.  This is the sort of faux-intellectual hackery the likes of Dinesh D'Souza and others trot out from time to time on Fox News, for example.  I'm not saying you're making that argument, just mentioning how much things have gotten confused.  

The actual history is much more complex.  But the facts are that you'll have a hard time finding a contemporary text on American history that fails to point out that Jim Crow came out of the Democratic south.  Nobody really disputes this.  It's a straw man argument at best.

The reality is that it was a lot more than just Jim Crow going on back then in both parties that was plenty racist, and which also drew the attention of the Nazis.  They weren't so much drawn to Jim Crow as they were our immigration policies (strangely topical for our current period).  What I'm talking about specifically was the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act that largely shut down immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe.  The law was overwhelmingly passed by a Republican House and Senate and signed by a Republican President. 

They were also quite keen on our anti-miscegenation laws, which in no way were restricted to Democratic states or the south.    Some of that stuff was pretty nasty, and dated back to the 17th century.  

My point in all of this is not that Democrats were really innocent and it was the Republicans who were racist, not at all.  It's just that projecting contemporary partisanship into the past is foolish and wrong and often uninformed at best.  There were both Democrats and Republicans who had a racist, radicalized world-view in the early 20th century.  Over decades, only one of those parties has really developed as the anti-white supremacy party.   I'll leave it to you to figure out which one it is.  

SonVolt

JohnInCarolina said:

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SonVolt said:

Not sure I'm buying the comparison between Stephen Austin and Hitler. 100% of every Jew over the age of 5 knows who Adolf Hitler is; that, in and of itself, is a legitimate concern.  I'd wager none of you knew who Stephen Austin was 2 weeks ago.  This is simply a solution to problem that doesn't exist.  It's social justice click-bait. 

I agree with you, but I haven’t seen anyone in this thread actually advocate for Austin’s name being changed.  Like many threads here, the OP was just used as a launch point for discussion.  

I don't believe anyone here explicitly said they want Austin Texas renamed, I'm only suggesting that hypothetical Hitler examples are poor analogies. 

HeavyG

Wondering if if those decrying PC/social justice run amok re Austin, Texas would feel the same way if there was an Obama, Texas whose townsfolk decided they wanted to change the name of their town to Trump, Texas.

SonVolt

That's an even worse hypothetical example. 

JohnInCarolina

SonVolt said:

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JohnInCarolina said:

SonVolt said:

Not sure I'm buying the comparison between Stephen Austin and Hitler. 100% of every Jew over the age of 5 knows who Adolf Hitler is; that, in and of itself, is a legitimate concern.  I'd wager none of you knew who Stephen Austin was 2 weeks ago.  This is simply a solution to problem that doesn't exist.  It's social justice click-bait. 

I agree with you, but I haven’t seen anyone in this thread actually advocate for Austin’s name being changed.  Like many threads here, the OP was just used as a launch point for discussion.  

I don't believe anyone here explicitly said they want Austin Texas renamed, I'm only suggesting that hypothetical Hitler examples are poor analogies. 

Fair enough.  To me it’s a separate issue.  Arguments either have merit on their own or ... they don’t.

fishlessman

HeavyG said:

Wondering if if those decrying PC/social justice run amok re Austin, Texas would feel the same way if there was an Obama, Texas whose townsfolk decided they wanted to change the name of their town to Trump, Texas.

obama texas....couldnt we just burn it down