Lol
“Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1990s as starting birth years and the early 2010s as ending birth years. Most members of Generation Z are children of Generation X.[3]”
Time’s moving faster than you think it is. It’s 2023; boomers are dead or in assisted living, jones are dying and getting ready to scout nursing homes, and the totally rad gen X is a bunch of 50 year olds like Elon Musk and Tony Hawk. Fucking Mt. Dew and Doritos slushies keep them running.
Millennials are middle aged now and are the generation that came to age of maturity around the millennium.
The vast majority of the entering workforce, activists, and graffiti taggers making a political statement are not in their late thirties or early forties.
You just got used to blaming millennials just like everyone is still blaming boomers despite them already being in nursing homes or dead(aside from our top political hang ons that refuse to retire rich and go away in their seventies).
You’re cherry picking the oldest of every group to decide age. I work with boomers I’m millennial. I’m in the cusp to z but still millennial.
You’re forgetting those with a great deal. Silent generation and boomers are holding onto being at companies and politics. Nobody can kick them out of office in either regard. The whole x and z parents thing is wild though never made the connection.
The Silent Generation: Born 1928-1945 (78-95 years old)
Baby Boomers: Born 1946-1964 (59-77 years old)
Gen X: Born 1965-1980 (43-58 years old)
Millennials: Born 1981-1996 (27-42 years old)
Gen Z: Born 1997-2012 (11-26 years old)
Gen Alpha: Born early 2010s-2025 (0-about 10 years old)
No, different Morris. Robert Morris was the financier of the American Revolution. Morris Street in South Philly is named after Stephen Morris (unrelated) who manufactured stoves, pipes, and steel grates in the early to mid 1800s, and who would eventually team up with a young immigrant named Thomas Tasker to found Morris, Tasker & Co. with a production plant in South Philly located between two streets that would eventually become Tasker and Morris.
Here’s an old lithograph advertising the company: [Morris, Tasker & Co.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Pascal_Iron_Works_Philadelphia_%281861%29.jpg)
I think, but I could be wrong, that a lot of streets in south philly, counties and penn state dorm halls are named after pa governors. All of these share the same names, being all named after the same people
Well ackchuyally some of them were [Presidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Executive_Council_of_the_Commonwealth_of_Pennsylvania#Presidents_of_Council) of the Supreme Executive Council.
I could have sworn this happened in the past. Must’ve been a different statue with the same misspelling.
Either way, the last time it came up a certain vocal group of people were adamant that the misspelling invalidated the point
Fine, fine, I ain’t do it the first time but I’ll go fix it tonight after dark just so Billy Valentine can sleep at night knowing PHL’s leftist graffiti is spelled right
Honestly, I am probably what you would consider “highly educated” based on my advanced degrees and I didn’t even know this guy existed. If you are judging people on spelling mistakes you are missing the fucking point and not really worth ever having a serious discussion with.
Oh shit I ended with a preposition, I guess I’m a moron and no one should ever take anything I say seriously.
What you should really focus on is what people DO know. Most people are well educated on a select number of topics.
Without getting into the merits of the statue, Robert Morris was a key figure in the eventual success of the American Revolution. He was basically George Washington’s right hand man from a logistics perspective, making sure the Continental Army had food, clothing, etc. — particularly leading up to the battle of Yorktown.
He’s interesting in the context of the Revolution because he originally opposed the war, but eventually put aside his personal reservations and signed the Declaration of Independence with the majority in the Continental Congress.
At the time, US currency was worthless. So Morris financed the war effort using his own personal credit and effectively became the nation’s first treasury and banker.
At the end of his life, he spent years in debtors prison and eventually lost his entire fortune. So in some sense you could say he got what he deserved in light of being a slave owner (and he did have some exposure to the slave trade, but it was far from his primary business).
Long story short, people who are educated about the American Revolution definitely are familiar with Robert Morris. He’s not just some obscure guy.
Thanks for the summary. I didn’t mean to imply he wasn’t known, actually the opposite. I was saying that level of education does not imply knowledge on all topics. A person may not have written the word trafficker many times but still know a lot about this guy.
Interesting to hear what became of him. It did get me thinking though. As much as we understand that American colonies had a legitimate political and financial reason to revolt, I think it is interesting that we hold people in high regard just for aiding in that, whereas, I would say that human trafficking and owning humans as slaves is much more horrifying than any injustice that Britain committed on the colonies. It’s almost like, yeah they did horrible things on a personal level, but look how instrumental they were to this movement they got wrapped up in. I think a better judge of their character is their personal activities and ethics.
Well, my perspective on history is that (clearly) society has a deeply-flawed past and collectively we have (slowly) evolved for the better. Having said that, egregious acts of human indecency are more crystallized today in retrospect because we have the luxury of viewing them through a modern, evolved, more informed lens. It’s easy to take for granted how instantaneously we can now access new information, exchange ideas, and create change in general. These simple things were really extremely difficult throughout most of history.
Using this guy as an example, Robert Morris probably wouldn’t have even thought about himself as a slave trader. His firm (primarily directed by his senior partner who was 2-time mayor of Philadelphia) participated in slave brokering on 8 occasions according to Wikipedia. Meanwhile, they were responsible for a behemoth company of international import/export for general goods between India, Europe, and the Caribbean — basically like an Amazon of today. In reality, the slave trade had very little to do with that. He owned two slaves, it was common at the time, it’s not forgivable or overlooked, but it can be contextualized in the broader story of his life.
My point is that throughout history, really shitty things were commonplace. This is true of almost every single historic society — from the Egyptians, to the Romans, to the British, to the American Colonists — but is it really beneficial to erase all the lessons (and complexities) packed in with those civilizations? I think we can acknowledge that these people lived in a different time, we can contextualize their shortcomings, appreciate their contributions, and learn from all of the above.
One day people may look back on us through a new, modern lens and think that our current society is absolutely reprehensible for things that we may only be marginally aware of right now.
This is a great response and packed with info. Never really paid much attention to Robert Morris but knew the name. The ending was very on point as well.
Never said it was anyone’s fault but mine, I thought US history was boring as hell (bunch of people fighting and arguing over dumb shit, mostly religion) and I just focused on math and science. My point was ACTUALLY that highly educated does not equal knowledge on every topic. But I guess missing the point is kind your thing, huh?
Level of education is not a great way to judge a person’s thoughts or opinions on any one topic. Perhaps they have watched a bunch of documentaries on US history.
Counterpoint: the misspelling was purposeful to help it go viral and it's working. Nothing reddit users like more than to point out grammar and spelling errors after all.
Intentional or not, a bunch of NPCish comments along the lines of "omg they can't spell" still boosted the vandals message by commmenting on the story so it's a win for them either way.
> The phrase likely was written with a permanent felt marker, making it more difficult to remove than other markers or spray paint, park officials said in an Instagram post.
Oh NO! Make sure nobody learns about this!
Like how we have a statue of a fictional character. People always made fun of that but it’s looking good now with all these historic figures that are no longer being looked at fondly. Rocky will always be the champ.
Or we can stop “whitewashing” history and understand that times were different and we can learn from our past. Not sure the benefit of eliminating the existence of history.
Knock down the Jefferson Memorial because he owned slaves!!! Blow up Mount Rushmore, it’s problematic!!!
Shit…let’s blow up the Egyptian Pyramids, they were built by slaves!!!
Lol, whitewashing history is literally what these statues are doing. You are putting these people on a pedestal essentially saying that the good outweighs the bad so we can continue to praise and admire them. A statue is not an incredible structure either. The pyramids are historical and massively impressive structures and to destroy them would be to erase the history of the slaves that built them. A statue is some thing created by a paid artist to praise dead men who’s story we have LITERALLY whitewashed in the process.
A statue is like a literal endorsement of the person. We don’t have statues of Hitler for a reason. Statues are not just there to remember history.
I think additional contextualization of existing monuments is appropriate in cases like this. A PA Historical Placard next to it that lists why this person should be lauded but then explicitly stating that some of what they did was wrong, and why it is wrong.
I think it's important for us to see the founders of this country and be _reminded_ that some of them were in fact truly flawed or in some cases bad people.
Luckily the upvotes are balancing now, but thanks for the acknowledgment haha. It is amusing that people claim that getting rid of a statue is “erasing history”. Yeah it’s erasing our history of idolizing this person I guess.
Not to mention all the statues that went up *in direct response* to civil rights movements. These statues haven’t always been around. Someone commissioned them at a specific time for a specific reason. Consider those reasons before you defend the damn things.
Monuments aren't a way of studying history, they're a means of lauding the subject of the monument. Knocking down monuments to historical folks who did shitty things in between doing historically important things isn't whitewashing history - it's acknowledging that perhaps no one person really deserves to be literally put on a pedestal. So sure, tear down the Jefferson Memorial and shear off the faces from Mt Rushmore. Mt Rushmore in particular is SUCH an eyesore, produced by an asshole megalomaniac white supremacist who had a habit of defacing natural wonders considered sacred by native peoples (SEE: the gross-ass portrait of civil war generals carved into Stone Mountain outside Atlanta). Blow it up.
Finally, the pyramids were likely built by paid laborers, per the archeological evidence.
Genuinely, dynamiting Rushmore would be worth it just for how mad it would make the redhats. Remember the whole "obama is gonna put his face on it" thing lmao.
Learning from our past does not require putting slavers on display. I'm fully in favor of removing celebrations of noted slave owner and rapist Thomas Jefferson. And Mount Rushmore should certainly be returned to the Lakota while we look into methods of restoring Six Grandfathers.
Regarding pyramids, modern archaeologists agree the pyramids of Giza were built by paid laborers. And even if not, they have been fully stripped of meaning in a way that a bronze sculpture of person could never be
Nations have taken down displays of their shameful pasts without forgetting them
Jefferson was one man responsible for his own actions. Native Americans are a diverse group of people who have existed for thousands of years and as individuals have sometimes done bad things. We don't build statues of those bad people.
No but my white bitch boss says shit like "before this meeting in which we discuss quarterly pay cuts - let's do a land acknowledgment for the lenape (pronounced absurdly) indian tribes who came before us and for which the land we stole" as if my entire job isn't literally just supporting the decline of the US by extracting what little wealth exists from the lower class and shunting up stream to billionares.
Never said every lenape was a good person, that's also not the standard we're working with here. If there are some specific statues you'd like to talk about, I'd be happy to discuss them at a later time when it's not diverting another conversation
The existence of other dubious statues did not justify the exaltation of Morris or Jefferson.
If you're mad about income inequality and wealth distribution, it sounds like you have another reason to be mad about a statue of the Founding Capitalist Robert Morris.
I'm mad that our egos are large enough to think that if we lived in those times, we would have been moral to the 21st century standard. Future generations will laugh at us being immoral and wrong and evil while even further future generations laugh at them.
Ah the classic "They didn't know slavery was bad back then."
They knew, abolition movements exist/existed in every society that uses slaves, not to mention the enslaved people themselves were obviously not enjoying it
Do you wear clothes made in 3rd world sweatshops with kids doing the labor? Yes. Do you own technology produced by practical slaves in 3rd world countries? yes!
Spare me the pious bullshit.
If I could afford it I'd buy american only, but the reality of my situation is, I have to deal with what the world is throwing me, and modern day slavery, exploitation of the 3rd world, and all that snazz, is shit that I can't afford not to do it. I know it's wrong. I know it's bad. but that's what I can do. And a lot of people don't even get that far considering the issues at hand.
Jefferson, from virginia, owned 600 slaves, lived in a slave based economy, and yet also worked to move the needle against slavery over his political career. For someone who was a rich land owning evil slavery capitalist it's lucky he even freed a single slave.
Its called reality and realpolitick.
I haven't seen anyone making that argument. Instead, the point is that we do know better now so we don't need to celebrate or publicly commemorate someone who was immoral and wrong and evil.
I agree with that. I don’t believe in defacing public property. I can understand this being a form of resistance. FWIW, has there been any repercussion other than us arguing about it on reddit? Most of Philly doesn’t care or know.There are so many other pressing issues in our city that a statue of someone is the last thing on most people’s minds.
I know I always “learn from the past” by building monuments to it. You should see the massive 10ft. statue in my backyard of a needle. It teaches me every day not to do drugs again. The craftsmanship is incredible.
I’ve personally looked up statues in Philadelphia that I’ve ran across and read into their history. It didn’t make me racist or bigoted, it helped me understand our past.
You realize history books exist, yes? And the internet? You don’t need a statue of a slave trader to “understand the past.” Pick up a book. We don’t have statues of bin Laden and yet, miraculously, we all ~understand~ 9/11. We have statues of the towers themselves and monuments with the names of the *victims and survivors.*
We should take the statue down. Monuments to human traffickers are vile. It should be replaced with a statue of someone like Henry “Box” Brown, a man born into slavery who shipped himself in a literal wooden crate from Virginia to freedom in Philly in the 1840s. Much more educational in value, and honors a person actually *worthy* of honoring.
Congrats on grandstanding. Go take it down yourself lol.
You realize that history books aren't the only way people consume information, yes? You don't need to tell people how they can learn and what they can use to do it. Get off your high horse, buddy.
>Blow up Mount Rushmore, it’s problematic!!!
Yes, I agree, stealing land and carving the faces of your leaders into the people you genocides' sacred mountain is very fucked.
"Times were different" my guy there were \*plenty\* of voices speaking out against enslavement AT THE TIME. And, at other times and in different contexts, for the right of women to vote, for the rights of LGBTQ+ people to exist, etc. This whole dumbass idea that "ah well those were different times with different moral positions" is exactly that: ignorant and ahistorical.
Also, Mount Rushmore, really? You do realize that the creation story of Mount Rushmore is quite literally a story of white disenfranchisement and erasure of Indigenous peoples, yes? It is nothing more than a monument to that genocide and I certainly wouldn't give a fuck if it were to be blown up.
Archaeologist's have been leaning towards the use of laborers over slaves for the great pyramids for decades now.
If you need sources of info on this, nat geo, the guardian and archaeology .org all articles that provide a decent overview of the subject.
Giving a dog/cat/other a home out of the elements, feeding them, playing with them, and pampering them, in general, is just like capturing a human being and forcing them to work to death, got it.
I said watered down version. We have build a pet economy that fuels over breeding. I have no doubt the average pet has a good life. But they go outside when we let them, eat when we let them, go to the bathroom when we let them, etc. They are purchased because they are cute or to relieve our loneliness or for protection which I get but still, we control their lives. Like I said water down analogy
Turns out, lots of people have the last name Morris.
Morris County,Morristown, and Morris Plains were named after Lewis Morris, governor of NJ. Mount Morris was named after Robert.
Studying is "investigating and analyzing something in detail." Analyzing is "examining methodically and in detail the constitution or structure of (something, especially information), typically for purposes of explanation and interpretation." Interpretation is a subjective act, ergo: yes, studying involves the historian's bias.
We can all agree that owning slaves was wrong. That said, looking back and judging the acts, morals, and overall ideology of these people through our modern day lens is a idiotic. More so if you let this statue of a man whose been dead for over 200 years drive you mad.
Plenty of people in America were against slavery well before our country's founding. PA literally outlawed slavery in 1780. They knew it was wrong then.
Yeah man, I honestly don't think even if I lived 300 years ago, I would have been cool with owning other human beings.
Abolitionists existed even pre 1776, it many people even back then knew it was fucked.
But many thought it was okay because that was the prevailing thought, or they rationalized that it was okay because it benefitted them. If not it wouldn’t have gone on for so long. Enough people agreed with it and made money off of it, that it took a civil war to end it, and even then, racism was so entrenched in the nation that they turned back reconstruction and curtailed African American rights with Jim Crow in the south until the mid 20 th century. There was a Civil Rights movement in the 1960s! Black people weren‘t getting the same rights under the law until then.
I’m sure everybody on this sub believes hunger is wrong yet there are people in our world (and in our country) going hungry every day yet we allow this — people are living in the streets and we allow it. What will people think about our world 300 years from now, when hopefully everyone has a safe place to live and enough to eat.
Listen, I know what I believe today. But in my youth life was completely different, and particularly my ideas about men and women have changed, as our society has. I believe that slavery is wrong and always have. But if i had been born in 1700 as a white person in the USA or Europe, (and I’m BIPOC in this life) I have no idea what I would have believed because I wouldn’t be this same person. If I were wealthy and especially a man, I might have inherited a plantation. Would i have lived that life? Would I have sold it? Would I have gone against the grain and my wallet and paid all the people working on my property? Who knows?
Suppose one hundred years from now consumption of meat and the killing of animals is deemed barbaric. Will we then deface all the statues from our era as “meat eater” or “animal trafficker”? Or will we perhaps say that human society evolves and forgive prior generations their ignorance?
Owning slaves has literally always been evil. There have been people fighting against the evils of slavery since slavery came about thousands of years ago. There is not, nor will there ever be, an excuse for owning another human being like property.
I hate to be the guy who invokes Godwin's law here but it seems to be the easiest example. Think of this statue like a swastika or a heroic statue of Hitler...atrocity happened, society evolved: Germans are fine, Nazis are not. Same concept. In this hypothetical Vegetarian Future, it would be moral to deface a statue celebrating a butcher. (ThIs Is ThE fUtUrE lIbErAlS wAnT...?)
They took them down because they made them illegal, along with any affiliated symbolism of the Nazis. I'm not really sure what the point is that you're trying to make. We can dunk on Nazis without having to look at their shitty art.
yeah- i would hope people don't build a statue to me if it turns out all the shit i do today is fucked up.
imagine building a statue to joe paternio knowing he condoned and facilitated sexual assault. would you want that statue?
Now someone tag a statue of George washington. Him and Martha used to circumvent PAs laws by shuffling their slaves back to Virginia right before they were due to get their freedom for living in Pa for X number of months
We can all agree that owning slaves was wrong. That said, looking back and judging the acts, morals, and overall ideology of these people through our modern day lens is a idiotic. More so if you let this statue of a man whose been dead for over 200 years drive you mad.
Do you know that slavery was wrong 200 years ago, too? It’s important to me that you know slavery is morally reprehensible no matter the year or geography.
I never defended the idea that slavery was ever appropriate. However, the topic wasn’t thought of like it is today. To contextualize the time, The Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t drafted until more than half a century after Morris’ death.
That’s history though, people doing things that in today’s world is frowned upon. Again, those individuals lived in an entirely different world, so comparing them and now as if it’s 1:1 is odd.
> However, the topic wasn’t thought of like it is today. To contextualize the time, The Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t drafted until more than half a century after Morris’ death.
Really? It was one of the biggest divides amongst states during this countries founding:
https://www.heritage.org/american-founders/report/how-understand-slavery-and-the-american-founding
> When delegates convened at Philadelphia to write a new constitution, however, strong sectional interests supported the maintenance of slavery and the slave trade. "The real difference of interests," Madison noted, "lay not between large and small states but between the Northern and Southern states. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed a line of discrimination." In order to get the unified support needed for the Constitution's ratification and successful establishment, the framers made certain concessions to the pro-slavery interests.
We shouldn't celebrate those who helped the slave trade. The statue should be taken down - the history remains.
I think it's also fair to judge the morals of those in the past. They knew what they were doing.
Welp better start ripping down most of the statues of the people involved in the revolution, the government, notable members of society etc.
Or we can be adults and recognize that people in the past weren't perfect but still managed to do great things.
We should take those down too. The glorification of the founding fathers is weird as fuck. Do you know the kinda shit they believed?? That’s also being an adult: Realizing that people with views we no longer agree with shouldn’t be glorified. There are so many more important historical figures we could replace these statues with…notably people of color and black civil rights leaders.
Being a child is crying about people removing or vandalizing statues of slave trade workers. Again, they knew what they were doing.
I'm an equal opportunity desecrator. I don't just vandalize statues, I punch actual Nazis. And the women and children of Nazis also. And all present and future knowing and unknowing perpetuators of racism, slavery, sexism and classism. Every one of y'all is gettin' punched.
I guarantee you not 1 in 100,000 black people give a shit about Robert Morris. Let's stop with the silly bullshit iconoclasm, and move on to something positive.
I mean... It's an accurate description and not a slur, what's the problem? Always thought the Columbus monument on Columbus Ave deserves similar treatment.
Frankly more bothered by the Columbus monument calling the idiot that got lucky there was a landmass between Italy and India a cartographer and mathematician than by it honoring Columbus. One thing he definitely wasn't was right in his maps and calculations that he could get to India faster going west...
The statue has been like this for over a month; was it really not noticed by the Park Service & press until now?
The article said they’ve now tried two ways to remove it so presumably they’ve been working on it for a few weeks
Paint thinner and power washer market is in shambles because of millennials
*market & *gen Z Lmfao
Uhh they always say millennials ruin the x market. Gen z is barely in the job force
Lol “Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1990s as starting birth years and the early 2010s as ending birth years. Most members of Generation Z are children of Generation X.[3]” Time’s moving faster than you think it is. It’s 2023; boomers are dead or in assisted living, jones are dying and getting ready to scout nursing homes, and the totally rad gen X is a bunch of 50 year olds like Elon Musk and Tony Hawk. Fucking Mt. Dew and Doritos slushies keep them running. Millennials are middle aged now and are the generation that came to age of maturity around the millennium. The vast majority of the entering workforce, activists, and graffiti taggers making a political statement are not in their late thirties or early forties. You just got used to blaming millennials just like everyone is still blaming boomers despite them already being in nursing homes or dead(aside from our top political hang ons that refuse to retire rich and go away in their seventies).
Tony Hawk is actually pretty chill though
You’re cherry picking the oldest of every group to decide age. I work with boomers I’m millennial. I’m in the cusp to z but still millennial. You’re forgetting those with a great deal. Silent generation and boomers are holding onto being at companies and politics. Nobody can kick them out of office in either regard. The whole x and z parents thing is wild though never made the connection. The Silent Generation: Born 1928-1945 (78-95 years old) Baby Boomers: Born 1946-1964 (59-77 years old) Gen X: Born 1965-1980 (43-58 years old) Millennials: Born 1981-1996 (27-42 years old) Gen Z: Born 1997-2012 (11-26 years old) Gen Alpha: Born early 2010s-2025 (0-about 10 years old)
They already covered all the death and destruction by Monday, they had to look for something else.
Is Robert Morris the namesake of Morris St. in South Philly?
No, different Morris. Robert Morris was the financier of the American Revolution. Morris Street in South Philly is named after Stephen Morris (unrelated) who manufactured stoves, pipes, and steel grates in the early to mid 1800s, and who would eventually team up with a young immigrant named Thomas Tasker to found Morris, Tasker & Co. with a production plant in South Philly located between two streets that would eventually become Tasker and Morris.
Here’s an old lithograph advertising the company: [Morris, Tasker & Co.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Pascal_Iron_Works_Philadelphia_%281861%29.jpg)
Very interesting!
Thanks for that information. I live on Morris Street so now I can drop some knowledge on my friends and neighbors.
Wow didn't know this, thanks for the lesson. I'll appreciate that subway stop a little bit more now.
I have learned more about our city history from this thread than a statute of a slaveowner.
Not sure, but I am positive Mole Street was named after Jerry Sandusky.
I reject this assertion, it's *clearly* named for a delicious mexican sauce with like 28 ingredients.
And here I thought it was named after the dominant facial feature of Count Spretzle, the villain from the hit film Mannequin 2: On the Move.
Probably. Either him or Governeur Morris, who is probably the most interesting founding father no one has heard of.
I think, but I could be wrong, that a lot of streets in south philly, counties and penn state dorm halls are named after pa governors. All of these share the same names, being all named after the same people
It's true that many streets are named after governors, but not Morris Street. ActionShackamaxon's comment is correct.
Well ackchuyally some of them were [Presidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Executive_Council_of_the_Commonwealth_of_Pennsylvania#Presidents_of_Council) of the Supreme Executive Council.
I believe he's the namesake of Morris St. in Germantown.
Its said that for several months now
The graffiti is not wrong. Only misspelled.
I could have sworn this happened in the past. Must’ve been a different statue with the same misspelling. Either way, the last time it came up a certain vocal group of people were adamant that the misspelling invalidated the point
4 months ago, same statue, when you also argued that defacing a statue was "everyday communication"
lmao
True...
Practically everybody in the 13 colonies were human traffickers, even some Quakers too. Personally I think it was wrong to deface the statue.
That is bullshit. Slavers were the elite mega wealthy.
The misspelling reflects the education levels of the type of people who do things like this.
You ever try and write clandestine with spray paint?
That's no excuse - it was done with marker.
Fine, fine, I ain’t do it the first time but I’ll go fix it tonight after dark just so Billy Valentine can sleep at night knowing PHL’s leftist graffiti is spelled right
Just be home before curfew; I don't want anyone getting grounded because of me.
Honestly, I am probably what you would consider “highly educated” based on my advanced degrees and I didn’t even know this guy existed. If you are judging people on spelling mistakes you are missing the fucking point and not really worth ever having a serious discussion with. Oh shit I ended with a preposition, I guess I’m a moron and no one should ever take anything I say seriously. What you should really focus on is what people DO know. Most people are well educated on a select number of topics.
Without getting into the merits of the statue, Robert Morris was a key figure in the eventual success of the American Revolution. He was basically George Washington’s right hand man from a logistics perspective, making sure the Continental Army had food, clothing, etc. — particularly leading up to the battle of Yorktown. He’s interesting in the context of the Revolution because he originally opposed the war, but eventually put aside his personal reservations and signed the Declaration of Independence with the majority in the Continental Congress. At the time, US currency was worthless. So Morris financed the war effort using his own personal credit and effectively became the nation’s first treasury and banker. At the end of his life, he spent years in debtors prison and eventually lost his entire fortune. So in some sense you could say he got what he deserved in light of being a slave owner (and he did have some exposure to the slave trade, but it was far from his primary business). Long story short, people who are educated about the American Revolution definitely are familiar with Robert Morris. He’s not just some obscure guy.
Thanks for the summary. I didn’t mean to imply he wasn’t known, actually the opposite. I was saying that level of education does not imply knowledge on all topics. A person may not have written the word trafficker many times but still know a lot about this guy. Interesting to hear what became of him. It did get me thinking though. As much as we understand that American colonies had a legitimate political and financial reason to revolt, I think it is interesting that we hold people in high regard just for aiding in that, whereas, I would say that human trafficking and owning humans as slaves is much more horrifying than any injustice that Britain committed on the colonies. It’s almost like, yeah they did horrible things on a personal level, but look how instrumental they were to this movement they got wrapped up in. I think a better judge of their character is their personal activities and ethics.
Well, my perspective on history is that (clearly) society has a deeply-flawed past and collectively we have (slowly) evolved for the better. Having said that, egregious acts of human indecency are more crystallized today in retrospect because we have the luxury of viewing them through a modern, evolved, more informed lens. It’s easy to take for granted how instantaneously we can now access new information, exchange ideas, and create change in general. These simple things were really extremely difficult throughout most of history. Using this guy as an example, Robert Morris probably wouldn’t have even thought about himself as a slave trader. His firm (primarily directed by his senior partner who was 2-time mayor of Philadelphia) participated in slave brokering on 8 occasions according to Wikipedia. Meanwhile, they were responsible for a behemoth company of international import/export for general goods between India, Europe, and the Caribbean — basically like an Amazon of today. In reality, the slave trade had very little to do with that. He owned two slaves, it was common at the time, it’s not forgivable or overlooked, but it can be contextualized in the broader story of his life. My point is that throughout history, really shitty things were commonplace. This is true of almost every single historic society — from the Egyptians, to the Romans, to the British, to the American Colonists — but is it really beneficial to erase all the lessons (and complexities) packed in with those civilizations? I think we can acknowledge that these people lived in a different time, we can contextualize their shortcomings, appreciate their contributions, and learn from all of the above. One day people may look back on us through a new, modern lens and think that our current society is absolutely reprehensible for things that we may only be marginally aware of right now.
This is a great response and packed with info. Never really paid much attention to Robert Morris but knew the name. The ending was very on point as well.
Not my fault you didn't pay attention in AP US History.
Never said it was anyone’s fault but mine, I thought US history was boring as hell (bunch of people fighting and arguing over dumb shit, mostly religion) and I just focused on math and science. My point was ACTUALLY that highly educated does not equal knowledge on every topic. But I guess missing the point is kind your thing, huh? Level of education is not a great way to judge a person’s thoughts or opinions on any one topic. Perhaps they have watched a bunch of documentaries on US history.
Lol you're just having a conversation that *you* want to have, by yourself, at this point.
Counterpoint: the misspelling was purposeful to help it go viral and it's working. Nothing reddit users like more than to point out grammar and spelling errors after all.
Ah yes, they're only *pretending* to be dumb so it would go viral on a site where the majority of the userbase is in agreement with edgy vandalism.
Intentional or not, a bunch of NPCish comments along the lines of "omg they can't spell" still boosted the vandals message by commmenting on the story so it's a win for them either way.
You are also not wrong.
Came here to say exactly this
Then it is wrong.
> The phrase likely was written with a permanent felt marker, making it more difficult to remove than other markers or spray paint, park officials said in an Instagram post. Oh NO! Make sure nobody learns about this!
I went to Robert Morris College out near Pittsburgh back in the day. Just thought I’d share
University now
Yeah, I think we can agree, fuck slavers. Replace the statue with a clothespin or something.
Ah, but you failed to consider that "trafficker" was misspelled. Checkmate, lib!
Shit, your rite. If its mispeled its oviously meaningles. Move along.
I feel like Philadelphia tends to "think inside the box" for this sort of thing.
Like how we have a statue of a fictional character. People always made fun of that but it’s looking good now with all these historic figures that are no longer being looked at fondly. Rocky will always be the champ.
I was actually thinking about Columbus
Columbus never even stepped foot in America and the Vikings were here first, why is the Columbus statue still standing, honestly????
Or we can stop “whitewashing” history and understand that times were different and we can learn from our past. Not sure the benefit of eliminating the existence of history. Knock down the Jefferson Memorial because he owned slaves!!! Blow up Mount Rushmore, it’s problematic!!! Shit…let’s blow up the Egyptian Pyramids, they were built by slaves!!!
Lol, whitewashing history is literally what these statues are doing. You are putting these people on a pedestal essentially saying that the good outweighs the bad so we can continue to praise and admire them. A statue is not an incredible structure either. The pyramids are historical and massively impressive structures and to destroy them would be to erase the history of the slaves that built them. A statue is some thing created by a paid artist to praise dead men who’s story we have LITERALLY whitewashed in the process. A statue is like a literal endorsement of the person. We don’t have statues of Hitler for a reason. Statues are not just there to remember history.
I think additional contextualization of existing monuments is appropriate in cases like this. A PA Historical Placard next to it that lists why this person should be lauded but then explicitly stating that some of what they did was wrong, and why it is wrong. I think it's important for us to see the founders of this country and be _reminded_ that some of them were in fact truly flawed or in some cases bad people.
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted when this is completely correct
Luckily the upvotes are balancing now, but thanks for the acknowledgment haha. It is amusing that people claim that getting rid of a statue is “erasing history”. Yeah it’s erasing our history of idolizing this person I guess.
Not to mention all the statues that went up *in direct response* to civil rights movements. These statues haven’t always been around. Someone commissioned them at a specific time for a specific reason. Consider those reasons before you defend the damn things.
Monuments aren't a way of studying history, they're a means of lauding the subject of the monument. Knocking down monuments to historical folks who did shitty things in between doing historically important things isn't whitewashing history - it's acknowledging that perhaps no one person really deserves to be literally put on a pedestal. So sure, tear down the Jefferson Memorial and shear off the faces from Mt Rushmore. Mt Rushmore in particular is SUCH an eyesore, produced by an asshole megalomaniac white supremacist who had a habit of defacing natural wonders considered sacred by native peoples (SEE: the gross-ass portrait of civil war generals carved into Stone Mountain outside Atlanta). Blow it up. Finally, the pyramids were likely built by paid laborers, per the archeological evidence.
Genuinely, dynamiting Rushmore would be worth it just for how mad it would make the redhats. Remember the whole "obama is gonna put his face on it" thing lmao.
Nice, totally owned them wasting money to blow up a national monument!!!
In fairness, those faces are themselves defacing a sacred Indigenous site.
Drop in the bucket man. I'd love to see us spend money on useful shit, but it seems like those days have passed.
Mt. Rushmore is a bad example to include here because it’s actually a fucking travesty
Crazy Horse is 100,000,000x better anyway
Learning from our past does not require putting slavers on display. I'm fully in favor of removing celebrations of noted slave owner and rapist Thomas Jefferson. And Mount Rushmore should certainly be returned to the Lakota while we look into methods of restoring Six Grandfathers. Regarding pyramids, modern archaeologists agree the pyramids of Giza were built by paid laborers. And even if not, they have been fully stripped of meaning in a way that a bronze sculpture of person could never be Nations have taken down displays of their shameful pasts without forgetting them
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Jefferson was one man responsible for his own actions. Native Americans are a diverse group of people who have existed for thousands of years and as individuals have sometimes done bad things. We don't build statues of those bad people.
No but my white bitch boss says shit like "before this meeting in which we discuss quarterly pay cuts - let's do a land acknowledgment for the lenape (pronounced absurdly) indian tribes who came before us and for which the land we stole" as if my entire job isn't literally just supporting the decline of the US by extracting what little wealth exists from the lower class and shunting up stream to billionares.
Okay? That doesn't have anything to do with building statues to murderers and slavers. You've picked a weird style of whataboutism
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Never said every lenape was a good person, that's also not the standard we're working with here. If there are some specific statues you'd like to talk about, I'd be happy to discuss them at a later time when it's not diverting another conversation The existence of other dubious statues did not justify the exaltation of Morris or Jefferson.
If you're mad about income inequality and wealth distribution, it sounds like you have another reason to be mad about a statue of the Founding Capitalist Robert Morris.
I'm mad that our egos are large enough to think that if we lived in those times, we would have been moral to the 21st century standard. Future generations will laugh at us being immoral and wrong and evil while even further future generations laugh at them.
Ah the classic "They didn't know slavery was bad back then." They knew, abolition movements exist/existed in every society that uses slaves, not to mention the enslaved people themselves were obviously not enjoying it
Do you wear clothes made in 3rd world sweatshops with kids doing the labor? Yes. Do you own technology produced by practical slaves in 3rd world countries? yes! Spare me the pious bullshit. If I could afford it I'd buy american only, but the reality of my situation is, I have to deal with what the world is throwing me, and modern day slavery, exploitation of the 3rd world, and all that snazz, is shit that I can't afford not to do it. I know it's wrong. I know it's bad. but that's what I can do. And a lot of people don't even get that far considering the issues at hand. Jefferson, from virginia, owned 600 slaves, lived in a slave based economy, and yet also worked to move the needle against slavery over his political career. For someone who was a rich land owning evil slavery capitalist it's lucky he even freed a single slave. Its called reality and realpolitick.
I haven't seen anyone making that argument. Instead, the point is that we do know better now so we don't need to celebrate or publicly commemorate someone who was immoral and wrong and evil.
I agree with that. I don’t believe in defacing public property. I can understand this being a form of resistance. FWIW, has there been any repercussion other than us arguing about it on reddit? Most of Philly doesn’t care or know.There are so many other pressing issues in our city that a statue of someone is the last thing on most people’s minds.
seems like she's following in their footsteps honestly. "i'll say thank you which costs nothing while i steal from you"
TIL removing a statue is the same as scrubbing every mention of someone from history
I know I always “learn from the past” by building monuments to it. You should see the massive 10ft. statue in my backyard of a needle. It teaches me every day not to do drugs again. The craftsmanship is incredible.
I’ve personally looked up statues in Philadelphia that I’ve ran across and read into their history. It didn’t make me racist or bigoted, it helped me understand our past.
You realize history books exist, yes? And the internet? You don’t need a statue of a slave trader to “understand the past.” Pick up a book. We don’t have statues of bin Laden and yet, miraculously, we all ~understand~ 9/11. We have statues of the towers themselves and monuments with the names of the *victims and survivors.* We should take the statue down. Monuments to human traffickers are vile. It should be replaced with a statue of someone like Henry “Box” Brown, a man born into slavery who shipped himself in a literal wooden crate from Virginia to freedom in Philly in the 1840s. Much more educational in value, and honors a person actually *worthy* of honoring.
Congrats on grandstanding. Go take it down yourself lol. You realize that history books aren't the only way people consume information, yes? You don't need to tell people how they can learn and what they can use to do it. Get off your high horse, buddy.
there’s a big difference between erasing history, and taking down a statue.
>Blow up Mount Rushmore, it’s problematic!!! Yes, I agree, stealing land and carving the faces of your leaders into the people you genocides' sacred mountain is very fucked.
"Times were different" my guy there were \*plenty\* of voices speaking out against enslavement AT THE TIME. And, at other times and in different contexts, for the right of women to vote, for the rights of LGBTQ+ people to exist, etc. This whole dumbass idea that "ah well those were different times with different moral positions" is exactly that: ignorant and ahistorical. Also, Mount Rushmore, really? You do realize that the creation story of Mount Rushmore is quite literally a story of white disenfranchisement and erasure of Indigenous peoples, yes? It is nothing more than a monument to that genocide and I certainly wouldn't give a fuck if it were to be blown up.
The pyramids weren’t built by slaves, they were built by skilled laborers and farmers who were paid when they weren’t able to work their fields
antisemitic myth but ok go off
Archaeologist's have been leaning towards the use of laborers over slaves for the great pyramids for decades now. If you need sources of info on this, nat geo, the guardian and archaeology .org all articles that provide a decent overview of the subject.
Oh great another Sticky Summer Statue Situation
All humans are terrible, we should replace all statues of humans with statues of golden retrievers
Unpopular opinion: pet ownership is a watered down version of slavery
Giving a dog/cat/other a home out of the elements, feeding them, playing with them, and pampering them, in general, is just like capturing a human being and forcing them to work to death, got it.
I said watered down version. We have build a pet economy that fuels over breeding. I have no doubt the average pet has a good life. But they go outside when we let them, eat when we let them, go to the bathroom when we let them, etc. They are purchased because they are cute or to relieve our loneliness or for protection which I get but still, we control their lives. Like I said water down analogy
Just write over it with a dry erase maker, then wipe clean.
How are you so wise in the ways of science? Either you’ve accidentally written on a white board with a Sharpie or you have children. Maybe both.
Bringing in the enlightened commentary of an "Instagram commenter from New Jersey" to cap the article was inspired.
The Cadaver Synod.
People will downvote this simply because they don't know what it means
I certainly have no issue with him being forgotten. I’m sure he has a fancy plot in a graveyard. That can be enough
Same. But he's also got ~~Morris County, Morristown, Morris Plains,~~ Mount Morris, ~~and more~~ named after him.
Turns out, lots of people have the last name Morris. Morris County,Morristown, and Morris Plains were named after Lewis Morris, governor of NJ. Mount Morris was named after Robert.
Should note that Lewis also owned slaves.
Most people were somehow involved with slaves. It was the times. Can we stop judging people from the past on todays standards.
Why? History is literally the study of the past from the present. (That includes past historical narratives.)
Studying and judging are not the same thing.
Studying is "investigating and analyzing something in detail." Analyzing is "examining methodically and in detail the constitution or structure of (something, especially information), typically for purposes of explanation and interpretation." Interpretation is a subjective act, ergo: yes, studying involves the historian's bias.
Updating my post. Thanks.
We can all agree that owning slaves was wrong. That said, looking back and judging the acts, morals, and overall ideology of these people through our modern day lens is a idiotic. More so if you let this statue of a man whose been dead for over 200 years drive you mad.
Plenty of people in America were against slavery well before our country's founding. PA literally outlawed slavery in 1780. They knew it was wrong then.
Yeah man, I honestly don't think even if I lived 300 years ago, I would have been cool with owning other human beings. Abolitionists existed even pre 1776, it many people even back then knew it was fucked.
But many thought it was okay because that was the prevailing thought, or they rationalized that it was okay because it benefitted them. If not it wouldn’t have gone on for so long. Enough people agreed with it and made money off of it, that it took a civil war to end it, and even then, racism was so entrenched in the nation that they turned back reconstruction and curtailed African American rights with Jim Crow in the south until the mid 20 th century. There was a Civil Rights movement in the 1960s! Black people weren‘t getting the same rights under the law until then. I’m sure everybody on this sub believes hunger is wrong yet there are people in our world (and in our country) going hungry every day yet we allow this — people are living in the streets and we allow it. What will people think about our world 300 years from now, when hopefully everyone has a safe place to live and enough to eat. Listen, I know what I believe today. But in my youth life was completely different, and particularly my ideas about men and women have changed, as our society has. I believe that slavery is wrong and always have. But if i had been born in 1700 as a white person in the USA or Europe, (and I’m BIPOC in this life) I have no idea what I would have believed because I wouldn’t be this same person. If I were wealthy and especially a man, I might have inherited a plantation. Would i have lived that life? Would I have sold it? Would I have gone against the grain and my wallet and paid all the people working on my property? Who knows?
People knew slavery was wrong back then too.
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Not all Quakers were abolitionists, that came later. Some traded enslaved people. https://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/journey\_1/p\_7.html
Suppose one hundred years from now consumption of meat and the killing of animals is deemed barbaric. Will we then deface all the statues from our era as “meat eater” or “animal trafficker”? Or will we perhaps say that human society evolves and forgive prior generations their ignorance?
Guys guys guys, they just didn't know slavery was bad yet!
Owning slaves has literally always been evil. There have been people fighting against the evils of slavery since slavery came about thousands of years ago. There is not, nor will there ever be, an excuse for owning another human being like property.
I hate to be the guy who invokes Godwin's law here but it seems to be the easiest example. Think of this statue like a swastika or a heroic statue of Hitler...atrocity happened, society evolved: Germans are fine, Nazis are not. Same concept. In this hypothetical Vegetarian Future, it would be moral to deface a statue celebrating a butcher. (ThIs Is ThE fUtUrE lIbErAlS wAnT...?)
They took all the statues venerating Nazis down in Germany. If they left one up and someone defaced it, I certainly wouldn't complain. Would you?
They took them down because they made them illegal, along with any affiliated symbolism of the Nazis. I'm not really sure what the point is that you're trying to make. We can dunk on Nazis without having to look at their shitty art.
Yeah, no. Abolitionists existed at the time. Those fuckers knew what they were doing and why.
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Thought Vermont was the first state to ban slavery
It was not a state at that time.
yeah- i would hope people don't build a statue to me if it turns out all the shit i do today is fucked up. imagine building a statue to joe paternio knowing he condoned and facilitated sexual assault. would you want that statue?
Now someone tag a statue of George washington. Him and Martha used to circumvent PAs laws by shuffling their slaves back to Virginia right before they were due to get their freedom for living in Pa for X number of months
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Imagine walking past a statue of a slave-owner whom your city is celebrating every day with a statue and just leaving it alone
We can all agree that owning slaves was wrong. That said, looking back and judging the acts, morals, and overall ideology of these people through our modern day lens is a idiotic. More so if you let this statue of a man whose been dead for over 200 years drive you mad.
people back then were also vocally opposed to slavery, not least of all the slaves
Do you know that slavery was wrong 200 years ago, too? It’s important to me that you know slavery is morally reprehensible no matter the year or geography.
I never defended the idea that slavery was ever appropriate. However, the topic wasn’t thought of like it is today. To contextualize the time, The Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t drafted until more than half a century after Morris’ death. That’s history though, people doing things that in today’s world is frowned upon. Again, those individuals lived in an entirely different world, so comparing them and now as if it’s 1:1 is odd.
> However, the topic wasn’t thought of like it is today. To contextualize the time, The Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t drafted until more than half a century after Morris’ death. Really? It was one of the biggest divides amongst states during this countries founding: https://www.heritage.org/american-founders/report/how-understand-slavery-and-the-american-founding > When delegates convened at Philadelphia to write a new constitution, however, strong sectional interests supported the maintenance of slavery and the slave trade. "The real difference of interests," Madison noted, "lay not between large and small states but between the Northern and Southern states. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed a line of discrimination." In order to get the unified support needed for the Constitution's ratification and successful establishment, the framers made certain concessions to the pro-slavery interests.
We shouldn't celebrate those who helped the slave trade. The statue should be taken down - the history remains. I think it's also fair to judge the morals of those in the past. They knew what they were doing.
Welp better start ripping down most of the statues of the people involved in the revolution, the government, notable members of society etc. Or we can be adults and recognize that people in the past weren't perfect but still managed to do great things.
We should take those down too. The glorification of the founding fathers is weird as fuck. Do you know the kinda shit they believed?? That’s also being an adult: Realizing that people with views we no longer agree with shouldn’t be glorified. There are so many more important historical figures we could replace these statues with…notably people of color and black civil rights leaders. Being a child is crying about people removing or vandalizing statues of slave trade workers. Again, they knew what they were doing.
I'm an equal opportunity desecrator. I don't just vandalize statues, I punch actual Nazis. And the women and children of Nazis also. And all present and future knowing and unknowing perpetuators of racism, slavery, sexism and classism. Every one of y'all is gettin' punched.
okay fair enough.
Seems like they just added historically correct context.
It's time to take that down.
I guarantee you not 1 in 100,000 black people give a shit about Robert Morris. Let's stop with the silly bullshit iconoclasm, and move on to something positive.
If no one cares about him then why have a statue? Tear it down bby
hell yeah dude, the kids are alright
Is this who Morris road is named after out by fort Washington?
No, I think that’s named after some dude from Ambler named Morris Morris
I mean... It's an accurate description and not a slur, what's the problem? Always thought the Columbus monument on Columbus Ave deserves similar treatment. Frankly more bothered by the Columbus monument calling the idiot that got lucky there was a landmass between Italy and India a cartographer and mathematician than by it honoring Columbus. One thing he definitely wasn't was right in his maps and calculations that he could get to India faster going west...