A dingbat apologizes for history.
Leftists are great at apologizing for — and demanding apologies for — stuff that neither we nor they had anything to do with. Here comes one more giving it the ol’ college try:
On the University of North Carolina’s 225th birthday Friday, Chancellor Carol Folt issued a public apology for the university’s connections to slavery and injustice to African Americans.[…]
Wrongs? Are we talking about earlier today or last week? Nope. She’s talking about 50-225 years ago.
MORE:
[…] “As chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I offer our university’s deepest apology for the profound injustices of slavery, our full acknowledgment of the strength of enslaved peoples in the face of their suffering, and our respect and indebtedness to them,” Folt said. “And I reaffirm our university’s commitment to facing squarely and working to right the wrongs of history so they are never again inflicted.”
She said the university must continue to reconcile its past with its present.
Speaking to a crowd at the University Day celebration at Memorial Hall, Folt said that words, though important, are not enough.
“Our apology must lead to purposeful action,” the chancellor said, “and it has to build upon the effort and the sacrifices of so many across the years who fought so hard for much of what we value at Carolina today.”
Folt said there are many people working within the university to increase access and affordability for all students “and to embrace the diversity that is our national heritage.”
[…]
The university also announced earlier this month that it will change the name on a plaque at Kenan Memorial Stadium to distance the university from William Rand Kenan Sr., who was involved in the Wilmington racial violence of 1898. The plaque on the stadium will be altered to honor William Rand Kenan Jr., Kenan Sr.’s son.
Three years ago, the university’s Board of Trustees voted to rename Saunders Hall, which had been named for William Saunders, a 19th Century Ku Klux Klan leader. The building is now called Carolina Hall.[…]
Okay. Anyone in the South, who had economic means and lived during or prior to 1865, likely owned slaves. 
Those folks ponied up the money to build those campus buildings, and got their name on them. We have that campus because of those folks.
A lot of bad things have happened in American and world history. Hundreds of years ago, a lot of black Africans sold a lot of other black Africans into slavery. What has that got to do with 2018? We can’t erase it.
A lot of black folks are doing a lot of terrible things to other black folks on the streets of Durham, Charlotte, and many other cities. Where is the outrage from the leftist mob about that? (It’s apparently more fun to gin up guilt among white folks about stuff from hundreds of years ago which they had no part in.)
If we’re getting into the disavowal game — Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and many other Founding Fathers owned slaves. Does this open the door to wiping them from our culture and history books?
MORE:
The empty pedestal that once held Silent Sam still stands at a major entrance to campus off Franklin Street. Folt has said she wants to find a new home for the statue, but not at the university’s “front door.”
That area, McCorkle Place, will in the coming months feature new markers and thresholds that pay tribute to indigenous people who first lived in Chapel Hill and the enslaved who built the campus. Already at McCorkle, there is an Unsung Founders Memorial, a sculpture featuring a black granite tabletop supported by 300 figures. It was a gift of the Class of 2002.
That monument will be repaired with the idea of creating “a space that is respectful and contemplative,” said Jim Leloudis, a history professor who leads the university’s history task force. That group, appointed in 2015, has been working on ways to contextualize campus history by giving a more full and accurate account of it.
That will include the area where Silent Sam stood for more than a century.
Leloudis, speaking at the event, said the university will deploy its considerable research already compiled to develop an exhibit that will teach the history of the monument, “of the era of white supremacy in which it was erected.”
Silent Sam was erected in 1913. The Civil War had been over for 48 years. Other than the Spanish-American War, it was likely the single-most defining event for that generation of North Carolinians.
There were likely a lot of veterans still living, and a lot of memories of the killed in action still very fresh. The monument paid tribute to UNC faculty and staff who sacrificed during that bloody four years. It was a war memorial and a piece of history that has been defiled by the leftist mob.
MORE:
[…] Of 183 named buildings, memorials and spaces on the campus, Leloudis said. Thirty-three are named for people who owned slaves, and 10 are named for political figures and scholars who advocated white supremacy. Also, 23 are named for women, but only five are named for African Americans.
*Of course, we can’t forget the pigeon-holing and identity politics.* MORE:
[…] “Each of those places has a story to tell,” Leloudis said. “Some of those stories are sobering, some of them are inspiring, and each and every one of them is enlightening.”
Some wondered Friday whether the apology and the markers were enough, and whether they really would tell the full story.
Maya Little, the history graduate student who faces criminal and honor court charges for pouring ink and blood on Silent Sam earlier this year, tweeted her skepticism in a reply to a news story about University Day:
“Will any of Leloudis’ plaques acknowledge the antiracist activists who have worked tirelessly these last 50 years to bring Silent Sam down and end white supremacy at UNC? Will they acknowledge that UNC refused for 105 years to do anything besides protect Silent Sam?”
[…]
This is re-writing history, like so many left-wing authoritarians have done around the world and throughout history. You learn by studying the truth about the past, not by deleting it into the trash bin. One would think an institution of “higher learning” would understand that.
Who hired this stupid yankee dolt as chancellor? Send the ignorant twit back to yankeeland.
What about Yale University? Its founder and namesake, Elihu Yale was very big in the Atlantic Slave Trade, bringing the slaves over in horrible conditions from Africa. Why don’t the damnyankees look at their own institutions first. Shouldn’t they be demanding that Yale University change its name?
Folt is wrong.
She did not have relatives that fought in the Civil War. I had Great Great -Grandfathers and Uncles that did. They fought to prevent the North from STEALING PROPERTY AND MONEY FROM THE SOUTHERN BUSINESSES AND STOP RAPING THEIR WIFES AND ALL FEMALES! We fought in the Civil War for the South but we OWNED NO SLAVES. History on the SOUTH HAS NOT BEEN PROVIDED TO US FOR WHAT REALLY HAPPENED!
Well, the victors do get to write the history. So that is why we only hear about slavery as the reason rather than the Northern economic and political oppression that was taking place at the time that were also major contributors to the conflict.
Universities: Propagating wildly expensive ignorance since 1969.
It’s a very sad situation at UNC these days. No doubt that Carol Folt is a freakish, historically ignorant dingbat. Sadly, however, even worse are the UNC trustees–all Republicans–who are allowing her to drag the good name of UNC through the mud with her never-ending liberal assaults on tradition. If you ever believed that Republicans were good conservatives, you can wipe that thought out of your mind for good. Might as well vote Democrat this fall. Republicans are not our friends. What’s worse, they are liars.
“The UNC Trustees are all Republicans”… That is incorrect.
Even if you do not know the difference between the Brd of Trustees and Brd of Governors … neither board is composed of “all Republicans”.
The Board of Governors IS predominately Repub.
We’re getting so tired of ineffectual Republican majorities.
Both the UNC trustees and UNC system Board of Governors are overwhelmingly Republican–far beyond a super majority. And all of the BOG members were appointed by the Republican legislative leadership. So there is no excuse whatsoever for the Carol Folt train wreck at UNC-CH. Republicans are sitting by doing nothing while this leftist Democrat wreaks havoc at UNC. That is why knowledgeable Republicans and educational reformers are so fed up with the NC GOP. They promise conservative policy and reform and give us nothing. I call that “lying.”
I have no problem with, and share, many of those concerns. Simply correcting that “ALL the Brd of Trustees are Repub”.
Thom Tillis selling seats on the Board of Governors to big contributors to his Senate campaign is a big part of the problem.
When Republicans get these appointments, they need to go to people who have a serious interest in higher education reform, not political hacks out to purchase a prestigious position.
So you don’t think that institutions that exploited people have any responsibility to say or do anything to acknowledge the awful behavior or to try to take steps to make things better. That’s nuts!
One question I have now. Are they going to research every single donor who wants to give any $$ to the university from now on to be sure they never ever had a slave in their family? That only seems the right way to do things now. Also, they should find a way to give back all the dollars they gladly accepted in the past to the donor’s families. Regardless of whose name is on the building it should still be associated with slavery.
Here is a consolidated list of UNC Board of Governors …
http://www.northcarolina.edu/apps/bog/members.htm
Wow…. just when you think UNC has hit rock bottom, they surprise you. Folt needs to go, but it’s going to take a lot more than that to get them back out of looneytowm.
They seem to be doing just fine. In the top 5 Public University in the U.S. News and World Report this year.
The college is fine; it’s the politics that are in the gutter!
The college is what it is, at least in part (maybe largely), due to its politics.
Looneytown leadership gives our flagship University the face of Antifa.
I appreciate Boggle posting the names of the UNC Board of Governors members. We need to be calling them and urging them to get control of the UNC bureaucracy and set some policy guidelines. It seems to me that the BOG has no idea what they are doing and have simply sat by while Antifa and radicals have taken over the UNC campus and administration. I hear there are a few good members of the BOG, but the leadership for these past several years has been atrocious.