And
@tigris115 as you believe no slaves were involved in building the pyramids... the Romans definitely had plenty ....so I hope these piss takes are ok
Of for sure, dw. If you really want to demolish anything related to racism and slavery, there would be nothing left, especially because like it or not, people in the past had different perspectives.
Take the
Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt for instance. Back in the mid-late 2010s, you had people calling for it to be removed on accounts of it displaying an African & Native American in a manner that glorified racial hierarchy.
The museum's response was actually pretty mature, they didn't remove the statue, but let it be and provided extra context for the artist's direction and the history of Theodore Roosevelt and the museum's race relations in a new exhibition and on
the AMNH website which you can access here. They're really open about the racial views of both Theodore Roosevelt, the country at the time, especially our romanticized view of the Native Americans whom we bought low, and the AMNH(Hell, they had a literal eugenics exhibition).
Now the reason I bring up this specific statue was that while shooting the shit with some amigos on Discord, one of them shared a tweet of some absolute clown (not gonna share it here, I consider that bad behavior) saying that we should replace that statue with one of ANMH 5027, the museum's flagship Tyrannosaurus specimen. We all thought it was dumb as hell since, despite the statue being a display of antiquated philosophies, the man was, among other things...
1. The founding father of America's National Parks, designating over 230 million acres of American land as protected areas.
2. One of the founding fathers of the modern conservation movement. Founder of both the Boone and Crocket Club and the New York Zoological Society (now the WCS).
3. One of the great figureheads of the AMNH (His father was on the committee that founded the damned thing)
4. A totally unapologetic progressive who put the American people first and stood up to big business because he knew it was right
5. One of (not 100% sure if THE first) American Presidents to
invite a black man to the White House to dine with him as an equal.
6. A pretty major supporter of women's suffrage in the 1910s.
Honestly, if the NYC Parks Department really had to or wanted to replace the statue, I'd move the current one inside to be the centerpiece of that new hall they made and put a new statue that looks like this \/.
I'm very happy with the AMNH not just trying to appease the uneducated clowns of Twitter and I applaud them for not just trying to sweep everything under the rug. It requires hella stones to be this open about who you are and I wish more institutions would do this as, even if it was likely mandated, it feels genuine.
Also, on a side note,
considering the T. rex in their new exhibition, if they had a T. rex statue at the same place, it would look Godawful by all standards. I'm sorry but I know at least 10 randos online who could make a better dinosaur in their sleep than whoever birthed this abomination.