Witty Title
In the past I’ve seen some posts with an anti-Diego Hernandez slant to them…I figured I’d add to the flame with a message from Diego in today’s Emerald.
The best part about his letter is that it starts out with a point but quickly derails.
He doesn’t really make his point known until the very end and then, bam, he hits you with it. Change the name of Deady Hall and make the University spend money on MLK day.
With all this said, the University should take a look at itself and the injustices that exist within the institution. If Matthew Deady’s name sounded familiar to you, it is because our math department building is named after him. We should celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. by changing things within the institution to provide justice to what he stood for, starting with the renaming of the math department building.
That’s the second to last paragraph of his letter. The previous two-thirds are spent talking about racist history in Oregon, Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, racist actions against people in other states including the Jena 6, the penultimate case of racism in America.
All of that to inform you that the Univeristy is racist because Matthew Deady was racist. Well, now it all makes sense why I felt so empowered on this campus.
Well, in 1859 the point might’ve been to avoid getting dragged into the political conflict that resulted in the American Civil War.
In any case, I don’t think anyone here is defending exclusionist language in the Oregon Constitution. That being said, leaving Deady Hall as Deady Hall does not constitute an endorsement of racism and, despite what Diego Hernandez seems to believe, it does not constitute an “injustice” to anyone.
Kind of reminds me of the soldier at My Lai:
“It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Yea, it might have accomplished the effect, but… really, now …. whats the point?
While outlawing the presence African Americans is undeniably racist. One has to admit that it indirectly outlawed the practice of slavery in Oregon. The Oregon Constitution was written pre-emancipation proclamation.
Capitalism is ethnic cleansing and I think that is what the authors supporter is trying to tell us. Dont you get it that what we have done with a racial building is prevent those who have not been trained in math to not have a chance today? It means we have removed the peoples who need math now the most.
As a woman on campus though I think the author forgets to address the two different stair case issue that left my people subjugated longer than any others. Dont forget that my ankles were not allowed to be seen until we fought for power and had suffrage. I want the womens space to fight to rename deady hall HILLARY HALL.
To be fair, Hernandez never actually explicitly says that my old home-away-from-home of Deady should be renamed after MLK himself. Perhaps that was the intent – but it doesn’t really matter, though: the good old “do ludicrous thing X or else you’re a racist” strategy doesn’t require specifics.
“Xenophobic roundups, incarceration and deportation of immigrant families are happening daily, which reminds me of the exclusionary laws.”
As (I think) the only person here potentially subject to such xenophobic neo-exclusionary measures, allow me to be the one to quote this extraordinary statement.
Ah, good times. It seems like only yesterday they renamed Centennial Boulevard – speaking of streets that already commemorated very specific, and local, events. (As I said at the time, I’d rather have renamed fucking Broadway after MLK.)
Maybe Diego has a point: Everyone remembers MLK’s work with Euclidean geometry.
Diego really makes it easy to criticize and make fun of the whole MCC crowd. I wish the rest of the characters were that easy.
Oh, and Algebra was invented by the Arabs. But I guess they’re white for our purposes, or maybe for convenience.
And the math department is actually housed in Fenton.
Just take one drop of Divers-O-Wash and you can scrub away racism, scrub away history, scrub away anything that is caked on, baked on homogeneity.
You’ll never scrub that away. Some perpetually aggrieved loudmouth will always have new demands. If it’s necessary to re-name Deady Hall because the long-dead Matthew Deady held some unsavory racial views, then surely having our nation’s capital named after a slave-owner is an egregious affront to all ethnic minorities as well.
It bears noting that Deady’s views on race are hardly as cut-and-dried as Diego Hernandez would have us believe — surprise surprise. It seems, for instance, that he stood up for Chinese Americans.
Furthermore, while Hernandez is correct to point out the exclusionary language in the Oregon Constitution, he fails to link it to contemporary events — the debate over slavery was tearing the country apart in 1859 and the Civil War was only a couple of years away. It’s possible to interpret the Oregon Constitution’s exclusionist language as something of a political dodge. That is to say that Oregon did not wish to join the Southern states in legalizing slavery but it did not wish to antagonize the South by appearing to have sided with the North. The “solution”, such as it was, was to simply bar African Americans from living here and essentially avoid taking sides.
In retrospect, it was a heinous and somewhat unprincipled position. But it hardly resembles the simplistic caricature that Hernandez unsurprisingly presents it as.
But Asians rule derivatives.
What did I say in my last article in last year’s Hate ASUO piece? Diego’s rhetoric becomes less and less coherent as the year goes on.
2+2 = white power
You know what will happen if they rename Deady to MLK?
The windows will get boarded up, there will be stabbings and litter in the hallways and vagrant drunk laying all over the steps.
It’ll probably become a good place to score drugs.
Has anyone coined the term Diversity-Washing yet?
Just take one drop of Divers-O-Wash and you can scrub away racism, scrub away history, scrub away anything that is caked on, baked on homogeneity.
Dead white men got you down? Add a drop of Divers-O-Drops to your coffee and it will clean up all of that angst and leave nothing behind but a new you!
If you act now, you can get the Divers-O-Wash AND the Divers-O-Drops together for only $19.95!!
But wait…there is more! Tired of living in the middle of the big, bad white? For a small fee you and your friends can get your hands on the Divers-O-Nuke and just erase the society around you! That’s right, and once you’ve done this you’ll have one big clean, glass slate to work with! Manufacture your own reality, create a society in the image you want rather than what old, racist societies did by letting people move where they wanted. Those days can be long gone, but you have to act fast in order to start working toward a glowing Divers-O-Success!
You got trolled.
It should be renamed because math is a historically white subject, influenced by capitalism, which is racist.
Now this is just plain wrong. Only in the last 100 or so years have we seen an influx in British, Italian, and German (read: Caucasian) mathalogues publishing their theorems and papers. Lets not forget the history of mathematics, and how diverse its culture actually is: The number zero, which is arguably the most arguable number ever conceived, was first developed by the Incas, thousands of years before the Greek or Arabic mathematicians ever devised of such a concept. Lets also not forget that algebra was first practiced by Al-Kwharizmi, and is considered the father of algebraic thought (it is also where the word “algorithm” originates). And who could forget about all of the mathematical accomplishments of the Greeks: Pythagorean Theorem, Pi, Phi and the Golden Ratio, Fractions … Fractions! … and many others. The Renaissance also saw its fair share of mathematical contributions, but, many of the original authors are unknown.
And no company or industry ever financed mathematics. This was a primarily academic study, with petty rivalries among geniuses publishing papers from their ivory tower to see who was more “right”. Mathematics was hardly influenced by capitalism.
Just a bit of advice: I am a person of facts. I like to deal with things that I can understand and get a good understanding of. That’s why I liked computer science and math: there were no personal opinions or subjective understanding of them; there were facts, and I was good at dealing with that. That being said, you seem to state a lot of things that I don’t immediately understand. Like how does a study be “white”, first off, and if said study was hypothetically white, and likes money (and who doesn’t?), how does that make it racist? Ethnic studies is predominately , well, “ethnic”, and seems to make a lot of noise about the university and asuo giving them more money, so it sounds capitalistic. Does that mean ethnic studies is also racist? Or is said racism just a property of “whiteness”?
Instead of just repeating slogans and rallying the crowd, if you stated your claims in terms that I can understand, I would be more responsive.
Also: I judge you when you use poor grammar. Just using a spell checker “iznt enuff.”
So, having a building named after Deady supports racism on campus … Does that mean having a building named after MLK would support plagiarism on campus?
You guys just dont get it. I’m tired of explaining myself. Deady Hall houses the University of Oregon’s math department and is a beacon of institutional racism. It should be renamed because math is a historically white subject, influenced by capitalism, which is racist.
We fought for our space in the EMu. The University should prioritize diversity because the DP wuznt enuff. When we organized and fought for ethnic studies, we were able to protect unions and MCC. Thank you Diego! You keep fighting for us bud. Show them what it means to be a MEChista! Can’t wait for you to be VP!
The University’s budget for MLK Day was minuscule compared to other universities’, and this reflects its priorities. If the University prides itself with diversity, inclusiveness, accessibility and social change, then let’s just say actions speak louder than words.
I’m a little confused and amused by this last paragraph: is he asking for the Math department to change its name, or is he asking for money for MLK day? If the latter, how does throwing some money around constitute an action?
The argument made kind of reminds me of those made against school mascots by native-american rights groups: shcools with names of the “redskins” or “chiefs” or “braves” were re-named (well, not all of them, in the case of the braves); or, the battle in Portland to re-name Broadway Blvd. to Cesar Chavez Blvd. The case of the road seems ridiculous, and I think Diego has a point in there: why name a building after a confirmed racist?
But I would like to follow up his thought on actions speaking louder that words: effects speak louder than actions. What is the effect of re-naming Deady Hall? It’s not like Deady is not a “safe space” because of its name (those math thugs are pretty mean…). Deady Hall has history: its name is in the Oregon Fight song (for those that remember the words). It was the first erected building on campus in 1876. Renaming Deady would take away part of the University’s history.
I liked this argument the best:
“The University’s budget for MLK Day was minuscule compared to other universities'”
What does this even mean? It seems like something you would hear argued in the Real Housewives of Orange County. More money means more respect for MLK, less racism, and so on? I don’t buy it. What were these budgets anyway? What was the UO budget?
The previous two-thirds are spent talking about racist history in Oregon, Martin Luther King