How can slaves provide consent? Especially if you purchased them, or borrowed them from their owners, for the express purpose of performing surgeries on them?

People are typically paid to participate in clinical trials. These women had room and board provided for them, which was effectively a payment to their owners. They were also not offered pain management that was seen as standard or necessary at the time. You and I have the freedom to choose to participate in…

You line of thinking is like saying everything Hitler did is justified and he should be honored because his actions helped spur technology forward centuries by fast forwarding and creating every modern industry we have today through direct means and indirect means like bringing the world to war.

Yes. This. Somewhere on the internet today (maybe twitter?) someone said (in reference to removing monuments) - it’s not erasing history but deciding which side to honor.

this isn’t debunking. this is an attempt at justification. a bad attempt.

Your chosen quoted passage literally says “yes, black people were abused. But that’s no excuse for them not to go ahead and do it, because the end result justifies the means.”

Yup. In so many words. “Whitewashed” doesn’t even cover it.

. . .So he’s saying that if we appease these Nazis, then there will be peace in our time?

This is just...I don’t know, horrifying sounds like too soft a word. I admit I never knew of this man or what he did. It’s as if we’d erected a statue of Mengele.

Since when do we negotiate with terrorists?

I just hate this attitude that some people have that we should be conciliatory towards bigots. Like if we just kept our pain to ourselves, then the Nazis won’t get riled up. Like, fuck that. This coworker also echoed Trump’s argument from yesterday and said well, if we take down Robert E Lee’s statue, then who next?…

One of my favorite Stephen Colbert moments came about 10 years ago when when he ripped Dinesh D’Souza apart for his assertion that “the cultural left” caused 9/11 by not appeasing the terrorists enough. It’s still up on the Comedy Central website, though I believe you have to be in the US to watch it.

A coworker basically just told me we should leave confederate monuments as they are because then it won’t rile up the Nazis. Yeah, the bigots will quiet down if we only leave their statues alone.

Replace every monument or portrait of this man with representations of the women he abused and victimized. They suffered so medical science could advance and they should be recognized for their contribution. He deserves not one more day of recognition.

My god, is that really the statue? You can’t tell me whoever did the commission on this wasn’t secretly trying to stick it to the Klan. It looks worse than my kid’s play-doh lumps.

It never fails to amaze me how shitty that statue is. Did they get a rush order for ‘statue of old asshole to oppress black people with’ and the only reference they could find was a death mask?

Would def watch.

I think I know the perfect spot.

Why would they stop? They love the idea of exploiting black labor.

Sounds like there should be a statue of Nearest Green in Tennessee! We should clear out some space to make room ;)