US Treasury To Feature Harriet Tubman On $20 Bill (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Harriet Tubman will become the first African-American woman to be featured on the face of U.S. paper currency in more than a century. Tubman was born a slave and went on to become an anti-slavery crusader. Ironically, she will be replacing Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the U.S. and a slave owner. According to Wikipedia, "Jackson held as many as 44 [slaves] by 1820, and later held up to 150 slaves, making him among planter elite. Throughout his lifetime Jackson may have owned as many as 300 slaves." The decision to feature a woman on a bill started in part from a young girl's letter to President Obama about the lack of women on U.S. currency. A social media campaign "Women on 20s" then began pushing for a woman to replace Jackson on the currency early last year. Originally, the department announced it would feature a woman on the $10 bill instead of Alexander Hamilton. Now it's being reported Hamilton will stay on the front of the bill with a group of women on the back of it. Civil rights era leaders will reportedly be depicted in the new $5 bill.

Comments

We always need heroes

[fyngyrz]

(Plus, we're replacing a Democrat with a Republican, so there's that.)

The Republicans have exchanged ideologies with the Democrats since then, so while this replaced a Democrat in name, what it actually did was emplace a person with something more related to current Republican ideology with a person holding something more related to current Democrat ideology.

History is full of funny gotchas like that. :)

Re:Political correctness lives on.

[AK Marc]

(Plus, we're replacing a Democrat with a Republican, so there's that.)

Between then and now, the parties have switched with the Republicans going from the liberal party to the conservative party, so putting any weight in a party label doesn't make much sense.

Maybe they'll start teaching her now too

[T.E.D.]

Tubman was born a slave and went on to become an anti-slavery crusader

This is about the most boring summary of her life possible.

Try this:

Short version - She was America's Joan of Arc.

Long version - She was beaten nearly to death as a teenage slave, and heard voices the rest of her life, which she believed to be God. Often did what God (the voice) told her to. Listening to God she

• Escaped slavery (no mean feat for anyone)
• Went back to the south at least 13 times, helping about 80 more escape. She reported avoiding slave catchers multiple times by listening to her voice of God and following his instructions. She was never once captured
• Helped out with the recruiting for John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. It failed miserably, but likely helped bring on the war that destroyed slavery. The Battle Hymn of the Republic was originally an ode to John Brown.
• Conducted multiple "scouting" (spy) missions into Confederate territory during the Civil War
• Led a military assault on several plantations during the war, liberating about 750 slaves (most of the men of which promptly joined the Union army)

Personally, I hope they use her Civil War woodcut portrait, which shows her holding a rifle.

Re:Mint and print so we can move on

[swb]

Parent is attempting to state carefully parsed statistical structures to counter widely available statistics that show that Blacks commit crimes at a rate greater than their proportion in the population. The goal is to refuse these statistics and to demonstrate that the criminal justice system is inherently biased and that this bias actually is the primary explanation for statistics which show Blacks committing crimes at a rate greater than their proportion of the population.

Personally, I'm willing to accept the idea that there is a greater level of criminality among Black populations but that it's a complex mix of sociological problems and economic distress that drives it, not race or racism. I think the criminal justice system is hard on anybody who isn't able to afford expensive legal representation.

Re:Political correctness lives on.

[OhPlz]

Since when do rules matter when it comes to the federal government? Obama could just make an executive order.

That is a terribly misleading statistic

[SuperKendall]

A Black man at 30 years old with no criminal convictions offends at a rate below that of a white man of 30 years of age with no criminal convictions.

I'm quite sure that is the case - because anyone with even a small tendency to crime has ALREADY been filtered out of your cherry-picked subset by the also-fact that quite a larger percentage of young black males will have a conviction than young white males. That may be because of profiling or poverty or whatever, but that is irrelevant in terms of your "fact" being bullshit and terribly misleading.

Re:Laudable, but not without potential consequence

[epyT-R]

You're applying logic to 'social justice'? There's your problem.

Re:Laudable, but not without potential consequence

[Anonymous Coward]

I consider all people humans.

I hope you aren't a college student, because you can get in trouble for saying that. Seriously... it's a "microaggression" enshrined in official policy at several colleges, more to come soon I'm sure.

Why is this a "microaggression? To quote the cited policy from above: "Statements that indicate that a White person does not want to or need to acknowledge race." (That doesn't really explain anything IMHO. I guess if you are a White person [capital letter in original] you are obliged to "acknowledge race"... whatever that means. TL;DR It just is a microaggression, shut up.) But if you are lucky enough to be a non-White person, I guess maybe you would be permitted to say that? Eh, probably better not to risk it.

Remember that Martin Luther King Jr. said he had a dream that people would be judged, not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character? This is considered "problematic" now.

Personally I agree with you. Even if statistically some things correlate with race, we should attempt to be color-blind in policy and in our interpersonal relations. However, I'm a white male, so my opinion is considered worse than wrong by the people who care about microaggressions.

I was raised on the slogan "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." The current crop of college students is being taught that nothing is more important than words and labels, and that rather than trying to be a good person or set a good example that they should be invoking authority to smack down people over minor offenses.

Re:I can't understand the sheer hatred for White M

[Penguinisto]

I agree, and I'm a pale blue-eyed dude.

Besides, I find it hilarious that ideological leftists would lobby so hard to replace a dead Democrat president with a Republican who happened to have a strong love for the Second Amendment... Me, I'm good with that.