Kipling's poem "If" scrubbed off wall of university (generation, legal)

[The Dark Enlightenment]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating...

...it appears that Rudyard Kipling has fallen out of favour with today’s generation of students, after it emerged that his “If” poem has been scrubbed off a building by university students who claim he was a “racist”.
Student leaders at Manchester University declared that Kipling “stands for the opposite of liberation, empowerment, and human rights”.
The poem, which had been painted on the wall of the students’ union building by an artist, was removed by students on Tuesday, in a bid to “reclaim” history on behalf of those who have been “oppressed” by “the likes of Kipling”.
In lieu of Kipling’s If, students used a black marker pen to write out the poem Still I Rise by Maya Angelou on the same stretch of wall.
---
Fatima Abid, the general secretary of Machester’s SU, said that after seeing the Kipling poem on the wall last Friday, student leaders decided within an hour that it must be taken down.
“God knows black and brown voices have been written out of history enough, and it’s time we try to reverse that, at the very least in our union,” said Miss Abid, 24.

The Telegraph

[Toyman at Jewel Lake]

So are the students going to be allowed to vandalize public property and paint graffiti without repercussions?

[golgi1]

“We, as an exec team, believe that Kipling stands for the opposite of liberation, empowerment, and human rights - the things that we, as an SU, stand for,” Miss Khan said.

And here I thought that Universities "stood" for education, which at its core was always the antithesis of ideology and instead sought to teach the mind precisely how to question (how to think, not what to think).

“God knows black and brown voices have been written out of history enough, and it’s time we try to reverse that, at the very least in our union,” said Miss Abid, 24.

Minorities gain widespread access to University education, and then seek to change the education without mastering its fruits as a group. This is illogical.

Instead, they should first master the "white man's" educational system as a group. The classics literature curriculum exists for a reason. It has always been a cornerstone of a classical liberal education, or in other words what actually defines "educated". Its on offer, until its not due to demands of people who are unaware of exactly what it is that they are attacking and demanding.

Of course, I'm now referring to the extension of this Kipling row that has been going on in upper tier private universities, wherein minority students, most of whom are coming from non-elite backgrounds, demand a curriculum change toward ousting the classics in favor of modern minority authored literature.

This is like winning the lottery as a poor person, in gaining entry to an elite institution, and then demanding that someone spray paint all over the money because you dislike the color green. You may change the color of the money to suit your tastes, but you ruin the value of the money in the process. Even when you try (and fail) to demand that others recognize said value. And most of these students are never going to "win the lottery" again.

[golgi1]

Originally Posted by Toyman at Jewel Lake

So are the students going to be allowed to vandalize public property and paint graffiti without repercussions?

They were correcting an injustice that White people are too privileged to see. They are, like, mmm... let's see,"valiant vandals". Which I believe is a decriminalized category in the British legal code. Repercussions to them would be racist.

[Brave New World]

Originally Posted by Toyman at Jewel Lake

So are the students going to be allowed to vandalize public property and paint graffiti without repercussions?

Students are stupid, however it was the Student Union in this case, and as far as I am concerned they can do as they please in their own union area.

In terms of Kipling he was a fine writer and his work just reflected the times in which he lived.

The students claimed that Kiplings poem 'The White Man’s Burden', a poem about the Philippine–American War (1899–1902), in which he invites the United States to assume colonial control of that country was racist.

The White Man's Burden - Wikipedia

[Steve McDonald]

As much as I've enjoyed many of Kipling's works, it's hard to look past the basic disrespect he showed for people from less technologically-advanced, non-Western cultures, as he does in this poem. In fact, however, he was highly critical of Queen Victoria's imperialism around the world and of the harm that was done to their own people by it. Read "The Widow at Windsor", to get an example. She never gave him a knighthood, as many would have thought he was due, because of his writings against her.

But although the United States assumed control of the Phillippines, it was with the promise to their people, that they would be granted independence in the future. Soon after the close of World War II, this was done.

[cachibatches]

A great way for these students to fight racism would be to stop acting as anti-literate savages. Someone has to say it.

If we judged all work by ad hominem, then we would have to scrub:

Martin Luther King- plagerist
Alex Haley- plagerist
Eldridge Cleaver- Rapist
Huey Newton- Violent Criminal
Tupac Shakur- Rapist
Maya Angelou- Brothel Madame

etc.

Judge the work, not the person. If you don't like the work, don't read it. Don't try to childishly hide it from others. That is bringing us towards Fahrenheit 451 days.

[Brave New World]

TBF - the University of Manchester is a very big university and it only takes a few left wing SJW's to cause trouble. I very much doubt that most students even cared about this.

[desertdetroiter]

I don’t see the problem since UM isn’t even in this country. Who are we to tell British kids what they should want in their own schools?

If they don’t like Kipling, then big whoop.

[The Dark Enlightenment]

Originally Posted by desertdetroiter

I don’t see the problem since UM isn’t even in this country. .

Which country... Japan? That's where this thread was posted from.

Who are we to tell British kids what they should want in their own schools?

If they don’t like Kipling, then big whoop

We're people with opinions on anything and everything to do with politics, no matter where it happens in the world. And yeah, IMO the ongoing project to scrub the West clean of things that might offend Fatima Abid does rate at least a moderate whoop.