Senate The Rhodes Scholar - can you justify taking money from an Apartheid forefather?

I have an issue with the idol worship of historical figures (particularly those who had power such as government officials, military officers, and businesspeople) generally so I would be in favor of, say, wiping the Presidents' faces from a rock we stole from Native Americans. I realize that this is not the typical view, however.

 

On a serious note, I'm not sure how to feel about the scholarship. As the son of someone who benefited greatly from an international scholarship (she was able to get out of Pakistan, study in the US, and get citizenship), I can see how the scholarship is has benefited people and I'm not going to be the one to tell them to give it up. The name of the scholarship does show some prestige, and I don't really see how sacrificing the hard work of those who got the scholarship really helps anyone in Africa.

On the other hand, evil people really shouldn't be presented in a positive light whatsoever, even if they did do a couple of good things. Perhaps there's a way to keep the name but associate it with something else called Rhodes? Before you laugh off this idea, let's take into consideration the average person doesn't really know much about Cecil Rhodes and might not even think of him when think of the Rhodes Scholarship. We might be able to use that to our advantage.

 

For the longest time, I thought the award was named in homage of [Greek] Rhodes.

 

And the money would come from where?

 

It seems, I don't know, a bit strange to take his endowment financially but reject the name. I feel like in spite of his racist policies the endowment has come to represent a greater good and to highlight, almost in a cautionary sense, the dangers of who we were before. That is to say; "this is how bad we were. Let's not go back to that. Let's instead celebrate that all non-British students can apply for a scholarship to the most prestigious university as equals."

 

Just like King County (Washington state) was named for an obscure, slave owning, long dead and forgotten vice president. Voters renamed it to King County (Martin Luther King, Jr.).

 

OK, but the scholarship was named after Rhodes and his endowment (and he is hardly "obscure" - as Iello said, he had a colony named after him, which was only recently (in modern terms) renamed Zimbabwe.

But re: the scholarship - he put up money for it. And I'm not comfortable with rewriting the past to pretend men like this didn't exist. We need to know where we came from so we know how far we've come and how much further we've to go.

Would renaming it undo the harm he caused? No.

Would reminding a black student of Africa's tortured past be hurtful? Undoubtedly. Would it spur them on to shape Africa's future? I would say definitely. Especially given the corrupt wasteland that South Africa has become - people didn't struggle against the likes of Rhodes to see Africa handed to ANC cronies under Zuma.

I really encourage people to read this: http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...nement-for-the-past-not-censorship-of-history

Also, I think there's a danger of false equivocation in comparing the American and Southern African experiences. They are wholly different and do not translate to one another well.

 

Stalinber isn't a real month, Jay.

I think it's just critical we don't (pardon the phrase) white wash the past. In the Guardian article everyone is avoiding with commendable diligence reference is made to 17th Century Dutch art in the Rijksmuseum, which is having words like "hottentot" and "negro" evolved.

In modern times, of course this would not fly. Are we so ashamed of our racist past that we seek to remove all reference to it entirely? Germany has gone the opposite, and continues to hold shame for the Holocaust at the centre of public life. I do not like the approach Even et al take. The past happened. Wringing ones hands will not change this; but instead of finding common ground and consensus for a way forward we wish to tear down a statue. The man whose statue it is, I might add, gave generously to Oxford so that, ironically enough, people whose lives he sought to destroy can now have the most prestigious scholarship of all time open to them.

History has a sense of irony after all.

 

The thing about compromise, Ender, is that usually you end up with a solution nobody loves, but most can live with. That's what I'm trying to do here.

 

By calling it a Roads Scholarship?

 

No, that was a joke lampooning myself for thinking it was called that when I was a kid.

My solution was to identify the Rhodes Scholarship with something more palatable that's also called Rhodes. That way the name doesn't change, the prestige in most people's minds doesn't change, and at the same time it glorify a terrible person. Is it going to leave anyone feeling particularly happy? No. But can everyone live with it? That's the question.

 

It doesn't address though that we're trying to bury the past. I'm glad Cecil Rhodes did what he did. That way, a young black woman from Kenya or Nigeria, when going to the most prestigious university on Earth, can feel like they achieved something more than just that scholarship. And that they, and we all, can reflect on the progress made from the past to right now, and as a marker for how much farther we have to go.

I mean, when advocating Keynsian economics to "fix" the GFC, we didn't insist on renaming it because John Maynard Keynes was a eugenicist in youth, do we?

 

Only weaklings take scholarships. I worked up to 3 jobs a semester to pay for my college.

 

You also didn't go to Oxford. So it wouldn't matter if it were free. It's not worth considering.

 

I'm not saying we should forget he existed, just that we don't associate a scholarship with him. It's not perfect, but it's something people might be able to agree on.

Also, just having bad views isn't enough here. Plenty of people have had misguided or terrible views. It's bad actions that count.

 

What sort of warped sentiment is this? I think I understand what you're trying to do. But it's unworthy, and doesn't really make sense. If this is what you have to stoop in order to salvage the name of the scholarship, it's not worth saving.

 

I mean Wocky, if we're reminded how terrible we've been in the past, especially when someone who sought to deny a person access to education at his alma mater is now funding it, then it's a good thing?

We shouldn't whitewash history because the sins of back then are uncomfortable now.

 

Who proposed white washing history?

You seem to propose that the only way we can remember historical wrongs is to retain this program which was clearly intended to put him in a positive light. That's demonstrably false. We can remember things that are wrong, by teaching and attending to their wrongness directly. To go back to Evne's original post, that's what is done in every Holocaust museum around the world. Why is it such an unthinkable option for Cecil Rhodes?

 

Sigh. Fourth time lucky.

http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...nement-for-the-past-not-censorship-of-history

 

That article is not nearly so profound as you think it is, Ender. It doesn't even make a particularly good point. None of us have argued that imperialism wasn't a broader phenomenon. Nor has any argued that we shouldn't consider historical context. It's not clear who is being addressed with the request for "unobstructed access to facts." There's a huge gulf between not erecting honorary statues and censoring biographical information. It also leans hard on a false dichotomy between correcting present wrongs and acknowledging past ones. Instead, why not acknowledge that, in fact there is an intrinsic link between the two? The same cultural/historical blindness that allows one to readily overlook the faults of the past allow people to overlook current injustices. Or even if you reject this, the urgency of correcting one isn't an argument for failing to address the other.

Finally, too, it is unfathomably arrogant to suppose, as this article does, that the only way colonized countries could achieve some important institutions is to have inherited them from imposed colonial governance. Did the Igbo, for instance, already radically decentralized and ruled by consensus, really need the British to clue them in on the idea of letting all citizens have a voice in governance? If they could have come to these traditions independently, why be thankful to someone that brought it coincidentally, while causing untold suffering and ruin in countless other ways?