My two criteria for whether someone’s name should be removed from a society or building, or whether a statue should be taken down are, first, that the naming was done to honor the positive achievements of what the person did, and second, that the person’s life, as a whole, created a positive rather than a negative net effect on the world. If you can answer “yes” to the first one and “positive” to the second, the name should stay. It’s when these answers conflict that you have a problem and have to make a judgment call. And so it is with artist and naturalist John Jams Audubon.
There’s no doubt that the National Audubon Society, named after John James Audubon, the “father of American birding”, has been a positive force in conservation and getting people interested in our feathered friends. On the other hand, Audubon owned at least nine slaves and was a white supremacist. This affects the second part of my judgment, and it’s hard to weigh the negative effects of owning slaves, which are substantial, against the net good of someone’s life, which in Audubon’s case includes the Society named after him.
The same conundrum applies to people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who owned many more slaves than did Audubon. Do we rename Washington, D.C. and the Jefferson memorial, and always qualify both of them when writing about them? In general, my view is that the institutions and legacies of all of these men, recognizing their role as slave-holders, should remain, but of course any account of their accomplishments should be qualified, as slavery cannot be excused as “a practice of the times.” (There were abolitionists, who recognized its immorality from the get-go.)
The National Audubon Society has decided to keep its name, though some branches have renamed themselves. To me the renaming is more a performative than social-justice-improving action, since I doubt that the name Audubon has kept minorities out of birding. Yes, they are relatively few, but I attribute that to cultural differences or lack of access to the environment, not to Audubon’s name. And I haven’t heard anyone assert that they’d gladly go into birding or join the Society if only it were renamed.
In the announcement from The Tucson Audubon Society sent in by reader Debi (below), it says that they are changing their name to become a “more inclusive and welcoming organization” and that the new name (not yet chosen) will “carry immense weight and signal our larger commitment to diversity, equity and access.” They also think that the old name turned off minorities interested in birding: “We now recognize that this is a clear barrier for people who might otherwise become involved in or support or work.” Really? How many such people do they know of?
Finally, though, they admit that few people outside the society really know about Audubon’s bad aspects; that outside their bubble the name Audubon has “little or no recognition.”
These two claims are mutually exclusive. You can’t say the name is keeping people out of birding because of Audubon’s legacy, while at the same time assert that few people outside the birding/conservation bubble know about Audubon’s life. (I’ve underline the claims in red below.)
At any rate, readers can weigh in here, but I think I agree with Debi when she added that this announcement, which she was sent, was “basically just more of the SOS (same old shit) that is driving us all batty.” Yes, Audubon was a slaveholder, as were many people, some of them “fathers of our country,” but he left behind a legacy that was positive. I’d vote to keep the name on those grounds and on the grounds of historical continuity, and, like Debi, I’m tired of the constant drive to rename things under the misapprehension that this will substantially improve society. Yes, you can take the name “Hitler” off of stuff, but it’s no longer there anyway, and it seems time to stop trolling the lives of famous people, finding bits sufficiently bad to demonize them. (The geneticist Ronald Fisher is one example of someone who has been unfairly canceled.)
Anyway, judge for yourself. Here’s the announcement that Debi sent.
Changing the name Audubon is more likely to harm this birding society than its namesake? Good luck with that. Good example is Henry Williamson, author of the greatest animal novels (Tarka the Otter, Salar the Salmon et al). Williamson greatly admired Hitler, but his books sell a century later and inspire films and love of the natural world he describes.
The Jayhawk Audubon Society in Lawrence, KS, changed its name to the Lawrence Bird Alliance last year.
https://www.jayhawkaudubon.org/name-change-letter
“The line dividing good and evil cuts not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either— but right through the heart of every human being.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago
Written 1958-1968
“Not to have a correct political point of view is like having no soul […]”
-Mao Zedong / Mao Tse-Tung
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
(February 27, 1957); 1st pocket ed., pp. 43-44
Bullseye!
Can I suggest a third criterion: any statue over 100 year old gets grandfathered in.
For example, Richard Coeur de Lion is not going to measure up by today’s standards, but I wouldn’t want this statue removed, since that history is part of our culture and heritage.
I’m not opposed to that.
That would preserve most of the Confederate statues erected by the DAR and similar organizations around 1900. I wouldn’t favor that.
Thank you for posting Phil. I’ve wondered about that form of history cancellation. Why is it desirable to tear down statues to people’s ancestors when those ancestors joined their neighbors to fight on the wrong side of a civil war? The one or two still standing in my not-yet-a-state-at-that-time are in cemeteries. Why should they be removed? What do we gain by cancelling the dead a hundred and fifty+ years after that war? Ty in advance for any light you can shed on that question.
And a fourth criterion: Was the offensive behavior offensive at the time? I worry that the way we treat plants will catch up to us someday. “He was a vegetarian!”
I’m a member of the Vegetable Liberation Front.
We break into super markets over night, raid the produce section
for vegetables and then replant them in secret gardens.
To celebrate we then head to the nearest McDonalds.
Love it!
Brilliant!
I would take the view that statues and names should never be removed, no matter what bad things the guy did, even if they were “known” (by some) to have been bad at the time. If the Audubon Society is honouring Audubon for founding or inspiring the Audubon Society, who cares that he owned slaves? If the American Museum for the Honoring of Slavery had a statue of Audubon in its gallery of notable slave owners who became famous, I can see the activists objecting to Audubon’s inclusion there, but that would be up to the AMHS to respond to, not the Audubon Society.
If it turned out, from historical research, that Audubon didn’t do anything with birds but instead his wife did all the work and he took the credit, then there is a case for defenestrating him, and honouring her.
Tyrants often erect statues of themselves to honour their great deeds, which often include murdering their internal enemies. Later regimes might wish to remove those statues but for all the rest of us, cancelation of important historical figures erases our history one decapitation at a time and makes it harder to understand it.
The other strategic reason not to remove or rename (or pay reparations) is that one should not give in on these things unless the other side demanding them gives you something in return, even if it is nothing more than agreeing not to burn down your headquarters. Sell your honour dearly. An internal push to rename your own society is shooting the puck into your own net, like doing land acknowledgements without duress. Not harmless.
Sorry, I don’t agree. Confederate statues should be removed, they celebrate an attempted insurrection in an attempt to preserve slavery. Would you insist on keeping a statue honoring Hitler?
On my campus, we’ve been trying to get the ROTC building renamed from Forrest Hall, in honor of Nathan Bedford Forrest, first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and slave trader, who during the Civil War led the Fort Pillow massacre of black Union soldiers who had surrendered. This seems to me an entirely appropriate thing to do.
Well, assuming I had the right to decide, which I can’t see how I ever would if some Austrian town in the back of beyond had a statue of AH for some reason that meant something to them, then yes I would forbear to make them demolish it.
That’s the problem with questions like, “Would you allow a statue of X to stay?” The question assumes I have the right to tell other people what to do with their statuary. I resent it deeply that one pressure group and its allies who hate my country have been able to bully us into erasing men who were important in our nation building, including one who introduced public education to our little backwoods colony. (The pecksniffs don’t spare women. Some famous Canadian feminists of yesteryear were destined for secular sainthood until they turned out to be Yellow-Peril racists and eugenicists, like most of their contemporaries. Canceled!). Since I would not give those activists the power to tear down our statues, I won’t claim that power myself.
Lots of countries have had civil wars. Yours is special to you. You do you.
Leslie, very persuasive. +1.
So why not, in the interests of educating Americans about their own history, add a plaque to Confederate statues detailing the points you make in your first paragraph? This might add useful nuance and information that an empty plinth lacks and remind people of the changing tides of personal and historical judgment.
Nathan Bedford Forrest is one such example. An outstanding cavalry leader, but also a war criminal, slaver and insurrectionist, in later life he seems to have rejected or greatly moderated his earlier views, being reviled in contemporary newspapers for his changed views.
Yes, change the plaques (as I wrote elsewhere in this post).
Such statuary is not made to educate and teach history. Their intent was to honor such individuals. Why would anyone make a large, prominent statue of someone in a heroic pose, only to add an explanatory plaque that the individual was actually quite odious?
That’s the argument of the preservationists in response to renaming Forrest Hall, that it’s an attempt to erase history. No it’s not, we will still teach history. The hall was named to honor the man, and in fact doing so was an attempt to whitewash history by portraying him as a hero.
It’s not the same people erecting the statue and adding the plaque. Why would you have both? To highlight the range of conflicting attitudes and influences that have led to the current day.
Too much moralistic fervour for eradicating relics of past attitudes that one finds heinous leads (for example) to the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas.
I wonder how many of those complaining about Audubon own Che Guevara T-shirts.
So what? He, Audubon, was a slave owner. Slavery is part of history, the Vikings and Danes took slaves in the 4th and 5th centuries on. “Serfdom was a form of slavery in Medieval times and with the “industrial Revolution”children as young as 6 years old “slaved” in factories and mines and elsewhere. Slavery was and still is common in parts of the world particularly the Middle East and no one gives a damn except the virtuous and those with nothing else to occupy them. In (RAF) Aden in the mid sixties we had a Yemini “boy” who cleaned etc and lived in the mess broom cupboard. Was he a “slave”? maybe not in the accepted way but possibly. He was pretty upset when told we were leaving for good as he did get paid and may have supported family.
My mother and siblings all born in Northern India between the wars, long before partition lived in British Army Quarters and were waited on hand and foot by” servants”, was this a form of slavery? hard to say but it was common.
We hopefully learn from our historical actions not by hiding them and pretending they did not happen.
Yes, absolutely. Slavery has been part of human societies pretty well forever. Some of the wokerati appear to believe that it was invented by white Europeans in the 16th century. In the end, it was white Europeans who got round to abolishing it, and trying to persuade others to do likewise. Sadly, slavery continues to this day, and it isn’t white Europeans who are practising it.
If you are going to judge someone, you must judge them with in the time and culture which they lived, not by today’s morals and ethics. If you look deep enough you will find negative things in everyone, no one is a saint, even Einstein abandoned his wife and child. He was a womanizer and philanderer.
Slavery in the south ended in 1865. Indentured servitude, the north’s euphemism for slavery, did not end until the early 1900s, my great-great-grandmother sold herself for a ticket on a coffin ship to escape Ireland.
After a year or so of discussions, my local San Francisco Bay Area Audubon chapter last year changed its name from Mt. Diablo Audubon Society to Mount Diablo Bird Alliance.
(Mount Diablo is a prominent feature on the local terrain.)
Here are some of the comments I provided to the organization’s online questionnaire during the evaluation period:
• • •
What are your reasons for or against changing the name?
I am unsure because it was the current name that brought my attention to the local group. If the name had been different, I would likely not have investigated more.
On the other hand, John James Audubon did seem to be quite out of step with the trend toward abolition of slavery. But even with a name change, his legacy will always be part of the group’s history.
As with other naming controversies, weighing positive contributions against retroactively acknowledged deficits is fraught. I would not want to see the Enlightenment under attack because its authors were primarily white men.
I think it would be wrong to hide or heavily discount Audubon’s positive contributions, but I do tend toward using a new name, if not strongly.
If we choose a new name, what values would you like it to express?
Scientific methodology in support of a robust ecology for birds and other wildlife — which is also good for humanity. Don’t use personal names even if they might be politically palatable or fashionable now.
If we choose a new name, do you have any suggestions for that name?
“The Aves Society of Mount Diablo”
[I’m glad the organization didn’t use my suggestion.]
Do you have any other comments you’d like to share?
I think shortening “Mount” to “Mt.” is unnecessary. It doesn’t have to fit on a postage stamp.
Audubon must have been really bad if a group with the actual “Devil” in its name wants to avoid any association with him.
Ha! From a California parks organization: • In the late 1700s and 1800s, the Spanish began to arrive in the region, bringing missionaries with them. The modern name of Mount Diablo comes from members of the Spanish military referring to it as “the thicket of the Devil” after losing track of several Native Americans they were attempting to capture. •
I live on a road named after “Mount Diablo,” so I must be a particularly bad(ass) atheist. 😎
I predict big headaches and much explaining in the future for fundraisers. “Well, we’ve changed our name but we’re still the same Audubon Society we always were…” The fact that they’re remaining a chapter of the larger foundation that opted to NOT change its name and that the Tucson chapter makes a point of that connection, proves the needlessness of this action. They are happy to ride the coattails of the National Audubon Society. Contradictions all around. (I love the bit about people thinking Audubon is a “highway in Germany”. Yeap. Better change that name!
It will be interesting to see if the national organization eventually follows the lead of its local chapters, which seem inclined to change their names. Or will local chapters eventually sever their connections to the national organization? It seems changes in political ecology are putting stress on this species of organization. Will outlier organizational DNA play a role in survival?
Right. Which direction (from which direction) do trends flow?Remember the term “everything is local”? Technology has turned old dictums on their head. Culture seems to be flattening. I miss the past. I’m veering off topic… Sorry. I come from the “sticks and stones…” generation. I’m not overly upset about name changes, rather, I don’t see them having any net positive effect. Mostly I see this stuff as a big production that makes communication more cumbersome and/or stilted.
Yes, it’s stilted and most likely performative virtue signaling. At least this is just a naming issue that would mainly involve just stationery and other printed material.
Worse are the efforts to remove, hide, or destroy statues. Just amending the plaques and giving context would probably be the best solution (and educational), and/or moving them to a museum. Even a statue of Hitler would be fine, I think, if a plaque explained what a monster he was.
Destroying statues kind of reminds me of the mythical god who drowned humanity because it didn’t live up to his standards.
And the other mythical god who drowned humanity because it was just too damn noisy. Beware?
Which mythical god would that be? I’m not following…
Jerry, you will have seen in today’s news that the New York Audubon Society (a big one!) will now be named the New York Bird Alliance.
As you know, I’m active in the New York birding community. I and most of my friends are opposed to changing the name. My reasons are much the same as those you articulate.. I would only differ in my take on the issue of name recognition. Especially on Christmas Bird Counts on Long Island, homeowners will sometimes ask what I’m doing on roads along their property. I make a point of saying that I’m doing the Audubon Society’s CBC, and the response often suggests name recognition. Of course, this might be different outside the New York City region.
Jerry, you will have seen in today’s news that the New York Audubon Society (a big one!) will now be named the New York Bird Alliance.
As you know, I’m active in the New York birding community. I and most of my friends are opposed to changing the name. My reasons are much the same as those you articulate.. I would only differ in my take on the issue of name recognition. Especially on Christmas Bird Counts on Long Island, homeowners will sometimes ask what I’m doing on roads along their property. I make a point of saying that I’m doing the Audubon Society’s CBC, and the response often suggests name recognition. Of course, this might be different outside the New York City region.
What’s the deal with using “Alliance” instead of “Society”? To give it a more social justicey feel?
You go, Gurl!
These are people with absolutely no knowledge of how culture functions — and don’t care. Just be hip and follow the latest trend of denying the past or at least obscuring it with the present. The present in some niches of our own society have their Trump and Trumpism, but they are those who believe themselves to by pure. Very pure, and who believe they can change the past by rewriting the present. Erase the past. Good motto. Dynamite the Washington Monument and think about dynamiting Washington DC. Purify our world. On the other hand — Get Real! Ban smugness.
I am shocked, shocked that the New York Bird Alliance (formerly the New York Audubon Society) retains the name “New York”, named as it is after the infamous Duke of York. Incidentally, readers of this site who share my view of the SOS will enjoy Lionel Shriver’s latest novel “Mania”. I am reading it now, and it is a gas.
Here is a sample. “When one of the thickos claims five times seven is sixty-two, our math teacher says, ‘Excellent! That’s one answer, and a very good answer. So, would anyone else like to contribute a different answer? ‘ “
But it’s not “York” — it’s New York, which makes it different, updated, hip, and unrelated to past associations. Right? 😎 (I was hothouse-grown in New York City with roots transplanted from Germany that were spiced with Ukrainian DNA.)
Something tells me that Audubon State Park in Henderson, KY, a place where Audubon roamed and studied for nearly a decade, will not see a name change anytime soon. (Flyover country has some advantages.) For anyone who might drift that way, the museum, housed in a WPA-era building, has a complete set of his “Birds of America.” Architecture built to human scale, artful in its own way, well-placed on the landscape, housing a wonderful set of prints. What has this Pecksniff generation and its mentors produced? What work will last their lifetimes, let alone several? The answer suggests why they are so zealous to destroy the work of others.
Why are so many Americans donning guilt over crimes committed by others hundreds of years ago? Is original sin permanent? Do new names banish the guilt? Instead why dont we celebrate the activists who fought and defied slavery instead of cursing slave owners long dead? And what is accomplished by defiling the very mention of slave owners? Why dont activists today fight against slavery in India,
Africa,child prostitution in Asia? 40 million slaves in India….Haiti has more per capita slaves than any other country, and everyone averts their gaze. Hypocrisy.
It first occurred to me that birds often indulge in displays, and that perhaps twitchers can catch the tendency to do so. But then it hit me: performing unnecessary, widely unpopular acts at some cost to oneself, and thus signalling your fitness to other twitchers—this is a peacock’s tail! When we finally accept that performative social justice is just another example of sexual selection, remember you read it here first, folks!
I notice, from one of the green buttons at the top of their announcement, that the Tucson Society is still content to refer to FIELD TRIPS. It’s difficult to keep up with the latest, but wasn’t this label confined to the Orwellian dust bin some time ago on the grounds that this might be offensive to some as slaves worked in fields. Perhaps they’ll get round to that one at some point, if they are to be consistent in their Pecksniffery?
My thoughts on this are mixed. I am very active in my (very small) local Audubon chapter. There are some who would like a name change, some opposed, some indifferent. For a variety of reasons, much of it has nothing to do with John James Audubon’s legacy.
I live in an area where the Audubon name means “radical environmentalist” to some and stodgy old bird watchers to others. Attracting new members is a continuous problem.
I have lived in different areas and a consistent view is that National Audubon does not provide much support to the local chapters.
Although I’m a member, I’ve gone to only one local Audubon chapter (renamed “Bird Alliance”), and I rarely read its online newsletter. I’m sure it does nice work. But I feel a much greater affinity with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, of which I’m also a member.
I really liked what you put in here:
(There were abolitionists, who recognized its immorality from the get-go.)
My highlighting this is not meant to comment on what to name or rename. We should remember too, that some abolitionists paid a high price for their stance & activities, and others had flaws of their own, people being humans, and all. One wonders, in the various human cultures and societies, if there were always those, here & there, thinking, as the sacrafricial altar was in play:…this ain’t right…