Bobby White, Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2009
This town in the Sierra Nevada foothills accepted the gift of a 28-acre plot from the estate of Nobel laureate William B. Shockley in March. The mostly forested land was to become a community park named after the famous physicist—co-inventor of the transistor—and his late wife.
Then the local newspaper pointed out that Mr. Shockley, who died in 1989, was a proponent of eugenics, a widely discredited movement most prominent in the 1920s and ’30s that held that intelligence was racially linked—and that called for sterilizing some Americans who were deemed socially and intellectually unfit.
Community activists and civil-rights organizations are criticizing Auburn’s leaders for accepting the gift’s terms that the park carry the Shockley name, and they are demanding that the town keep Mr. Shockley’s name off the park or give the land back. {snip}
Officials in Auburn, a town of about 13,000 that is more than 90% white, said they didn’t know about Mr. Shockley’s eugenics ties at the time of the gift—and don’t support them—but still plan to go ahead with the park.
The controversy in Auburn offers a window into a debate occurring in communities across the country about whether to strip the names of prominent historical figures from parks, schools and other institutions because of those people’s views on race during earlier eras.
Last year, students at Nathan B. Forrest High School in Jacksonville, Fla.—named after a Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan grand wizard—made an unsuccessful bid to change the name of the school, whose student body is majority black. Also in 2008, student protesters called for Indiana University in Bloomington to drop the name of Ora L. Wildermuth from a gym after a book revealed the prominent Indiana judge, who died in 1964, advocated segregation; the name still stands.
In 2006, Davis, Calif., removed the name of John Sutter, a 19th century California explorer, from a city street after residents raised concerns about Mr. Sutter’s treatment of Native Americans; it is now named after a prominent Native American activist.
{snip}
Eugenics has become a particular strike against once-respected historical figures in California. Last year, community groups persuaded lawmakers to strip the name of Charles M. Goethe, a prominent Sacramento-area banker in the early 1900s and founder of the Eugenics Society of Northern California, from a large Sacramento County park; it is now River Bend Park. In 2007, Sacramento’s school board struck Mr. Goethe’s name from a middle school and renamed it after Rosa Parks.
“The point is to close these hurtful chapters in this country’s past” said Austin Aslan, a community organizer who campaigned against the Goethe name. “It’s part of the great reconciliation this nation is going through.”
{snip}
From the late 1960s until his death, Mr. Shockley publicly pushed his belief that there was a strong genetic component to intelligence that forms along lines of race. He also suggested that some people of below-average IQ be paid if they agreed to voluntary sterilization.
During a 1974 television interview, he gave what he called his “standard statement” to a questioner who asked if he thought blacks were of inferior intelligence: “The major cause of the American Negro’s intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and thus not remediable to a major degree by practical improvements in environment.” In the segment, viewable on YouTube, he denied being a racist.
{snip}
“This is not a racist town, but I’m concerned we may get labeled that way,” said Karen Tajbl, an Auburn resident. “They need to give the land back or rename the park. This man should not be honored.”
Auburn leaders say they don’t support Mr. Shockley’s views. But the city council and recreation department are planning to go ahead with the park under the Shockley name. “It’s a done deal. We are not giving the land back,” said Scott Holbrook, a recreation-district supervisor. “We aren’t racist.”
[Editor’s Note: An earlier story on this controversy can be read here.
Original article
(Posted on August 31, 2009)
Comments
Give it back? What a joke. Bend over whiteman he is doing it to you again. What oter race lets the black pull this bull on them? The answer is NONE races other than white Proclaim their predudice Loud and Clear they are proud of it. They do this as whitey wimpers in the corner.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League which evolved into Planned Parenthood, also believed in eugenics and that some human groups were less intelligent than others. But the liberal minded hypocrites who complained about Shockley would never complain about Sanger since she is part of one of their sacred beliefs — the right to abort a child.
One would have thought that the past forty years would have rehabilitated Dr. Shockley to respectability, given the utter failure of endless affirmative action programs in education, hiring, employee retention, and promotional schemes. But no, for merely stating the obvious, undeniable, and utterly conclusive, Shockley remains a pariah.
This merely reaffirms an observation I made about the time Shockley’s racial/intelligence observations were first circulated.
To wit, there is nothing in this world so hotly denied as a thoroughly self-evident but unpleasant truth.
what a bunch of wusses. “We aren’t racist” but they take the land! Shockley’s name will be an irritant to those who believe blacks are “as good” as whites in intelligence. Let the fools protest: as long as Shockley’s name is on the park, it makes a powerful statement about white supremacy. Wha Wha. The NAACP or SPLC will sue eventually. Let there be a trial on Shockley’s views, like the Darwin monkey trial. Maybe Jesse Jackson can be a witness to demonstrate black “intelligence”.
But All whites are racist so either remove white’s names from everything or get over it. Besides a Judge will rule that the town can accept the land while naming the park something else. Maybe Emmet Till Park. White’s wills and bequests can be disrepected.
I have a suggestion for a compromise.
Instead of using the land as a public park, build a Eugenics institute on it.
Then the name will be entirely appropriate, no problem. :D
“In 2007, Sacramento’s school board struck Mr. Goethe’s name from a middle school and renamed it after Rosa Parks.” WOW!! Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire! Was not Rosa Parks an employee of the NAACP, a “race-specific” organization, thereby making HER a “racist”?
“Mr. Shockley…also suggested that some people of below-average IQ be paid if they agreed to voluntary sterilization.” This probably would have been way cheaper than the gazillions that have been spent on prison systems and law enforcement in America.
Why don’t the people of Auburn put the name of the park up to a vote? Let those 90+% White residents of the town have their say, without any PC intimidation. Then, if the majority don’t want Shockley’s name on the park, they give the land back. Very simple.
“…a proponent of eugenics, a widely discredited movement most prominent in the 1920s and ’30s”
Today, eugenics has been replaced by the widely trendy disgenics and things are only going to get worse.
“They need to give the land back or rename the park. This man should not be honored.”
Darling, you honor Shockley every time you go online, as modern computers could not exist without Shockley’s transistor. He also helped create Silicon Valley.
“In 2006, Davis, Calif., removed the name of John Sutter, a 19th century California explorer, from a city street after residents raised concerns about Mr. Sutter’s treatment of Native Americans; it is now named after a prominent Native American activist.”
Here is a great example of misinformation and how it is used to hide the impact or meaning of changes.
Snippet;
John Augustus Sutter 1803-80, American pioneer, b. Kandern, Baden, of Swiss parents. His original name was Johann August Suter. He emigrated to the United States in 1834, went to St. Louis, then to Santa Fe. Fired with a desire to go to the Pacific coast, he went to the Oregon country and entered the coast trade in the Northwest, going to the Hawaiian Islands, to Sitka, Alaska, and finally (1839) to California. He settled in the Sacramento valley and obtained large grants of land from the Mexican governor of California. There he established his colony, known as New Helvetia, and built Sutter’s Fort (see Sacramento ). Rich and powerful, Sutter helped many newcomers to California. In 1848, James W. Marshall found gold while building a sawmill on Sutter’s land. The news spread, and gold-mad crowds poured across the continent in the rush of 1849. They killed Sutter’s cattle and swarmed over his lands hunting for gold. He struggled against them in vain, and moved E to Pennsylvania, a ruined man, in 1873. He had earlier been granted a pension from California, and to the end he hoped that the U.S. Congress would reimburse him for his losses.
Contemporary observers at Sutter’s Fort claimed that Sutter resorted to slavery, denial of food and kidnapping to force Indians to work for him. It is said that he paid his Indian workers in cheap pieces of tin that could only be exchanged at his store for merchandise.
Sutter was inclined to harshly punish insubordinate actions by the Indians, such as leaving the harvest at New Helvetia to attend to a good hunting or acorn season. Sutter sent armed posses into the foothills to punish and capture “runaway” workers.
> end
The cheap pieces of tin were script used to pay for items just as all frontier outposts used. The Russians at nearby Fort Ross used paper script (I have examples of it) and Russians as well as Indians were paid with it. When the Russians deserted Fort Ross, they sold their cannon to John Sutter, along with other items. I know this because I was a member of the Fort Ross historical society in the early 1990s.
John Sutter was never an explorer. He was a businessman looking to establish himself in the frontier. He was a legal settler and rancher with a patent that even Mexico today would have to respect. In regard to the modern claims of slavery and reports of how they were paid or required to complete contracted work, this was not unusual for the times anywhere in the world. Certainly, worse went on in Europe and the Industrial Revolution was at the same time, enslaving whites in Europe and America - economically at least, and harnessing them to unnatural machinery for 16 hour workdays, men women and children. Imagine the complaint today, if blacks and Indians had been subjected to this!!!
John Sutter had a legal Spanish land grant that even modern Mexico would be forced to accept.
It is also fair to remind the author and the modern revisionists in Davis that the Spanish enslaved Indians to build their missions. The Indians caught European diseases at the missions and this killed off many of them long before John Sutter arrived on the scene. Ought we to change the names of those 21 missions because of these historical atrocities? So no more, San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, San Raphael, and the rest! How would the Hispanic lobbies like that?
Idiots, one and all!
William Shockley, who did more to advance our technological civilization than a million Karen Tajbls, simply told the truth. It is scary how politically fashionable falsehoods are now driving the erasure of our history.
Meanwhile I’m sure that many parks, streets, and buildings will get named after psychopath Ted Kennedy. (And yes, how Kennedy acted at Chappaquiddick certainly shows that he was a psychopath. I’m sure Shockley never treated any black person as badly as Kennedy treated Mary Jo Kopechne.)
He was right. Now all who are deemed “racist” will be shoved down the memory hole…
Dr. Shockley was a genetic scientist, and knew what he was talking about.
Let them do what they want, but be consistant and also quit
Funny as it is, engineering schools themselves have become increasingly pc, and seem to be embarrased that US born electrical engineers continue to be mostly white males.
Abraham Lincoln was a racist too, and Washington and Jefferson owned slaves. So let’s tear down all the memorials to those guys in the capital and rename the capital “Tubman” or something like that.
All those protesters are good candidates for sterilization.
Practically every Human who lived prior to the 1950’s would be considered “racist” by today’s standards. So what do they suggest we do? Change all the thousands of place names that commemorate those people?
The people of Auburn are not going far enough. If they really wanted to prove how anti-racist they are, they would immediately destroy all of the computers in their city and replace them with ones that operate with vacuum tubes.
I assume, then, that Hillary Clinton will be returning her Margaret Sanger award? Sadly, whites all to often voluntarily practice eugenics on themselves, a prime example of unintended consequences.
in 2008, student protesters called for Indiana University in Bloomington to drop the name of Ora L. Wildermuth from a gym after a book revealed the prominent Indiana judge, who died in 1964, advocated segregation
What do you want to bet that virtually every one of these student protesters when they graduate will themselves “advocate segregation”—with their actions in choosing a neighborhood in which to raise a family. How many of them will locate in Gary Indiana, for example? When there is no penalty for hypocrisy, everyone is a hypocrite.
“The point is to close these hurtful chapters in this country’s past” said Austin Aslan, a community organizer who campaigned against the Goethe name. “It’s part of the great reconciliation this nation is going through.”
Is this “community organizer” (that says it all) so much a fool that he does not realize that this is only the beginning of an endless game, for if you dig deeply enough into any historical figure’s past, you will find views politically incorrect by today’s standards. Of course, that is the whole idea, for it keeps demagogues like comrade Aslan employed.
“In 2007, Sacramento’s school board struck Mr. Goethe’s name from a middle school and renamed it after Rosa Parks”
To the best of my knowledge, Rosa Parks never lived there and had nothing to do with the local history.
Rosa Parks acted up, and became famous for it. Charles M. Goethe was “a prominent Sacramento banker” with a lifetime of community service.
Behold the new priorities. Fully congruent with the emphasis on being famous and demanding, and full of disdain for discipline and work.
The ‘progressive’ leftist teachers will not rest from their agenda, until every school in the land is named after Rosa Parks or MLK.
Karen Tajbl said, they have to give the land back or rename the park. No Karen, if you rename the park, you also have to give the land back-that’s a condition of the Trust for giving the land in the first place. People like Karen should not use modern electronics since they are the contribution of Shockley and other racists. But to understand that would require a subtle intelligence and the integrity which grows from it. Ms Tajbl has neither.
And so as not to be hypocrites, none of these people should use any device that contains transistors, whether bipolar transistors for which Shockley was the primary inventor, but especially FETs (Field Effect Transistors) which William Shockley alone invented. That means no use of TV, computers, cars, appliances, planes, anything with microprocessors … or anything manufactured with electronic equipment,… well basically everything made the past fifty years.
I’m sure these “good” White folks of Auburn will do what other “good” White folks do that are fortunate enough to live in predominantly White areas - they’ll compromise. I see them going ahead with the park, and then putting statues of MLK, Rosa Parks and other false idols through-out it and naming it something like ‘Shockley Park of Equality’. They will then encourage MLK and Cinco de Mayo festivities be held there.
No, the point is NOT to close “hurtful chapters” in our Country’s past, but to ERASE them completly.
Encouragingly, most of the comments on the WSJ seem to support keeping Shockley’s name on the park.
If any Amren readers are in the Auburn area, maybe you could contact some of these whiners and ask them if they would be willing to give up any of the myriad electronic devices in their lives, in protest of Mr. Shockley. It would be interesting to hear their nonsensical rationalizations. Somebody needs to tell them they can’t have it both ways. Pick and choose what you want from some historical figure does not make sense. If the individual in question is so repulsive in their beliefs, then one should not honor them by using any devices they played a major role in developing. It would seem any of his eugenicist views on a practical basis really never harmed anyone, but his contribution to the invention of the transisitor led to so many good things we all love and so much improvement in our collective quality of life…..it can’t be fathomed. As one reader put it, they should just put it to a vote of the city residents, and if they don’t want it, they can return the land. No outsiders should be involved in this issue as it is, and should remain, strictly a local affair. I bet some of these complianers are not from the immediate local area. Probably some of those Bay Area PC types are on the bandwagon on this issue.
I agree with critics who want Auburn to unshock Schockley. We should go a small step further and stop using the name of Margaret Sanger`s partner on all these carriers and civic buildings. This racist was the father of one president and the grand father of another. Senator Walker Bush of Maine was an unrepentent eugenicist who like every other human being with a brain larger than a chimp`s knew that when riff raff breed they make more riff raff.
Shockley was a great man of science & a very important inventor. He deserves a statue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley
The fact that William Shockley does not fit the stereotype,… so called (racist) is I think one of the things thats got these multicultists all riled up. In the hollywood drama’s .. the left always try’s to portray racialists as angy, inferior, self hating, self projecting, abused when young , taught hatred when young Etc. Ad Nausium… The truth is Shockley was a diligent well adjusted scientist that like other scientists love truth and reason in the natural world and I think when he read of a sociopath that threw acid in the face of a shop keeper in order to rob the store he began to apply his mind to his rapidly deteriorating society. The culprit in that case was a member of a large black dysfunctional family that was generationally on welfare and of very low intellect,.. this caused him to switch from the transiter field to genetics… which became his passion. We see all to clearly that the left is trying to promote miscegination with whites to lift the blacks out of their low IQ, and they attack us vehemently for noticing this,… too bad the black cat is out of the bag!
“Shockley, who died in 1989, was a proponent of eugenics, a widely discredited movement”
— Tom S wrote:
Sure. There are parks and streets that are not popularly known by their official names. It’s not uncommon.
So Shockley Park will eventually become known to all as “Equality Park” or “MLK Park” or something such; in time no one will remember that Shockley ever existed, although his name was never formally removed.
…”so as not to be hypocrites, none of these people should use any device that contains transistors… That means no use of TV, computers, cars, appliances, planes, anything with microprocessors … or anything manufactured with electronic equipment… well, basically everything made the past fifty years.”
Indeed, if you were to go back in time and deeply investigate the social, racial, political views of nearly EVERY famous person who ever lived, HARDLY ONE OF THEM would be considered acceptable according to today’s rigid, politically correct ideology. (Probably not even Karl Marx, who once proclaimed, in disgust with his more fanatical followers: “I am not a Marxist!”)
— NBJ wrote:
Absolutely correct. But in order to ERASE them completely, you would also have to erase the society and culture that wrote them. The civilization, the entire people. And that means US!
And, little by little, that’s what it’s coming to.
17 — Odoacer wrote at 9:07 PM on August 31:
“The people of Auburn are not going far enough. If they really wanted to prove how anti-racist they are, they would immediately destroy all of the computers in their city and replace them with ones that operate with vacuum tubes.”
Why? White men invented vacuum tubes too. If they want to go back to their roots. They could go back to counting with cords or making marks on bones or stones. But ancient white tribes used those methods and others as well. I guess they are stuck with white associated technology.
i remember reading and hearing a lot about shockley over the years. not much if anything really negative as i remember, just that his intelligence theories were ”discredited” or not widely held. how is it possible that this obvious genius could be so right about something as puzzling and complex as the transistor and be so dead wrong about something that to me - and if the truth be known, almost everyone else - is so obvious.
““This is not a racist town, but I’m concerned we may get labeled that way,” said Karen Tajbl, an Auburn resident. “They need to give the land back or rename the park. This man should not be honored.”
SAYS YOU! As I can tell, it’s not a very ‘American’ name you sport, Ms. Tjbjel, or ‘whatever’ as my kids say.
This is a small example of what it looks like when one culture displaces another. As native language and culture are replaced, the names that the natives had for their cities and landmarks are removed. For example, it happened all over Eastern Europe after WWII.
What is hard to understand is why the now-dominant Western culture doesn’t resist its own extinction.
“This is not a racist town, but I’m concerned we may get labeled that way,” said Karen Tajbl, an Auburn resident.
SAYS YOU! As I can tell, it’s not a very ‘American’ name you sport, Ms. Tjbjel, or ‘whatever’ as my kids say.
Thank you! I had observed (and wondered about) the same. Nowadays, with this unbridled immigration that we have been subjected to for so long, one notices more and more of these strange, unpronounceable names that seem unrelated to any known civilized language. They are popping up everywhere. Just who is she to be lecturing us about American values and what “we” Americans want?
Charles B. Tiffany: I blame Jefferson for propounded the greatest lie of all time “All men are crated equal.”
In fairness to Jefferson, he never meant that all people are of equal talents or moral uprightness. He merely meant that there should be no hereditary aristocracy with legal privileges above others. He fully recognized that there is a natural aristocracy among men, in which some people accomplish much more of value than others, and should be appropriately rewarded. Jefferson was far from being any sort of egalitarian.
William Shockley was not allowed to speak on college campuses because of his beliefs. The liberals made sure of this.
But around the same time Eldridge Cleaver, a serial rapist was wildly popular on these campuses.
The kind of people we are dealing with admire rapists and hate a great scientist. They are evil and insane.
Sheesh, Mr Shockley gives a gift of land to be used as a municipal park (a lovely civic gesture on his part) and people whinge because they thought he was a ‘racist’, oh, but keep the land and erase his name from it? Unbelievable.
“In 2007, Sacramento’s school board struck Mr. Goethe’s name from a middle school and renamed it after Rosa Parks.”
Unreal. Mr Goethe was obviously a useful member of the community (you don’t get schools etc named after you if you’re not) and ‘activists’ and ‘historical revisionists’ decide his views are / were unfashionable, so he gets erased from history and his name substituted with Rosa Parks! What a miserable story.
“Practically every Human who lived prior to the 1950’s would be considered “racist” by today’s standards. So what do they suggest we do? Change all the thousands of place names that commemorate those people?”
Ah, yes. I think that’s exactly what these people want. Irrespective of their important achievements. This is not funny, but there may well be schools and parks in the future named after ‘Snoop Dog’, ‘Icey Tea’ and ‘50 Cent’…
Wait til they find out that in order to get the transistors of his day to work, you apply what is called a “BIAS CURRENT” across the junction… :-)
