Talk:Neoabolitionist
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[edit] Neo-Abolition Article Needs Clarity, Focus, Definition, Explanation, and Examples
At the moment it is muddled. I am willing to help fix it.
Fascinating that neo-abolitionist or neoabolitionist has remained an insider term among historians for so long and has managed not to make it into any mainstream dictionary. I doubt this is an oversight. I checked various of my dictionaries going back to 1965 up to the (current) 11th edition of Merriam-Webster, the publishing industry standard. The word neoabolitionist or neo-abolitionist appears in none of them. The word also does not appear in the online version of an even wider array of online dictionaries: http://onelook.com/
Dictionaries do pick up common parlance and accepted usage. Neocon is in the dictionaries along with many other words beginning either with neo- or without the hyphen. (Chicago Manual of Style would insist on the hyphen, as would Merriam-Webster if the term is ever accepted in M-W). I can be and often am wrong but it seems the term neo-abolitionist has a specific meaning to a tiny group of historians, and at the moment, it is not clear that the is accepted by the historians it is supposed to describe.
Is there an example of a historian referring to himself or herself as neo-abolitionist? Is the term a short cut for a pejorative or imprecise in other ways? Too many questions are unanswered. The following appears in the current version of this article:
The first known use of the term dates to 1964, when historian George B. Tindall said that in the 1920s H. L. Mencken was the "guiding genius" behind "the neoabolitionist myth of the Savage South,". [Tindall, "Mythology: A New Frontier in Southern History," in The Idea of the South: Pursuit of a Central Theme, ed. Frank E. Vandiver (Chicago, 1964), pp. 5-6.]
While that does identify the presumed first occurrence of the word neoabolitionist, still, that quote is locked in jargon and references that high school and college students, or other members of the general public (who are not members of the U.S. history profession, or a subset) would readily be familiar. e.g. What is the Savage South? What is the "neoabolitionist myth"?
As importantly, what was Tindall's viewpoint? What school did he belong to? Did he intend that as a pejorative statement? What was the context of the introduction of the new terminology?
I am studying the way the neo-abolitionist page is written with an eye toward increasing its clarity. While the term Dunning School is readily understandable because it is traceable to a particular historian and his followers, the term neoabolitionist first appeared retroactively-- 7 or 8 decades after the historical school it is supposed to describe, i.e. those people post-Civil War who sought equal rights for African-Americans.
The term supposedly also identifies historians writing after a gap of about 70 years but without explaining the gap. Now that's troubling. I'd like to see some sort of heirarchy, such as the founder of the school and its followers.
The term neoabolitionist is understandable if explicitly defined and placed in the context of post-civil war Abolitionists who continued their work after slavery was abolished by seeking equal treatment for the formerly enslaved. (The current page identifies one former abolitionist, a white who apparently abandoned what he had previously stood for. That seems to be a skewing. Why he did so is not clear. What of Frederick Douglass? Did he also lose his way? Should Douglass be mentioned? Does he fall into the category of neo-abolitionist?)
The overall problem with the term neo-abolitionist is it does not suggest what its proponents seek to abolish.
The pertinent questions are: do the historians described as neoabolitionists (with or withou the hyphen) accept that term as describing what they do?
Or, is it applied by historians who do not share the viewpoint of whatever it is The Neo-Abolitionist School is supposed to represent/stand for/espouse/or interpret history? skywriter 23:24, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
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- Skywriter makes some very good points and I tried to rewrite the article to take them into account. The Oxford English Dictionary does NOT like neo- words, it lists 20 and says "The number of such formations is practically unlimited, and only some of the more prominent or typical are illustrated here." Rjensen 00:44, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Continue to need examples of corruption alleged
In article after article in the section of Wikipedia that connects to the subject of Reconstruction, including this article, there are vague, unsubstantiated allegations of corruption, but no citations and no specifics. What is the basis for those claims? Are they merely allegations with no basis, or is there some meat? Who did what that was corrupt?
In the absence of specifics, these assertions risk either being deleted, being called unsubstantiated, or false claims. I am hoping for details.
Following up on my earlier note (in March) on this page: besides lacking specifics on the question of these allegations, also missing are the individuals who made the claims along with the historians who researched the claims with citations to their findings. Were there indictments? Was anyone convicted? That seems to be an appropriate measure of whether or not the claims are true or blowing wind.
Here's an example:
This was deleted: "The article on Thaddeus Stevens in Wikipedia offers no examples of corruption by Stevens, and the articles on the Northernerns, African Americans and white southerners, also offer no examples of alleged corruption, despite the allegations of corruption.
and yet this claim about Stevens et al. was left in?
- Most textbooks followed the Dunning School which depicted Reconstruction as a disaster, traceable, those turn of the 20th century historians alleged, to corruption by the Radical Republican coalition, including its national leader Thaddeus Stevens and state leaders, including African Americans Freedmen, Northerners who went South in support of civil rights, called carpetbaggers, and the largest group, white Southerners who were members of the Republican Party, called scalawags.
That is a large group of people to make accusations about? A broad swipe. And yet, there is nothing to suggest it is verifiable. Is any of it true? How can this be verified? Can anyone shed light? This will be appreciated. Thanks.
Skywriter 22:55, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] neoconfederate hatred of abolitionists
Alas Wiki has some neo-confederates who hate and belittle the abolitionists but that is not good reason for removing an article that talks about the revival of abolitionist sentiment in the 1960s. It was Howard Zinn for example who wrote a famous book about the Civil Rights movement that identified them as "new abolitionists". ( SNCC: The New Abolitionists by Howard Zinn (1st ed 1964, new ed 2002). As for the dictionaries they of course explain that they strongly resist adding "neo" words because there are so many of them.
- Zinn was not, of course, talking about historians of any kind; but about the civil rights movement itself. This is not, therefore, a citation for the sense of neoabolitionist supposedly being discussed here. Septentrionalis 01:53, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Noting the removal of citations
Earlier versions of this article pointed out that the term neoabolitionist and neo-abolition is not in any dictionary accepted by the publishing industry. I have re-added that material with link, and I have also linked to Harvard Sitkoff's article in the magazine of American Historians pointing out that neo-abolition is a derisive label.
Unless the agenda is to suppress other viewpoints, I suggest that this viewpoint not be deleted from this article.
I have also copyedited this article. A lot of what has been added to this article over time more properly belongs to, and is a rehash of what is in, or should be in the article about abolition. All of the attempts in this article to link the movement to abolish slavery to the term "neoabolition" favored by conservatives to mock historians of African American history over the last 50 years-- is disingenuous. Much of what is in this article is also a rehashing of what is in other articles on Wikipedia concerning Reconstruction, most of them written from the pro-conservative historian perspective of the conservative history teacher, now retired, Rjensen.
What is in this article is not about what Rjensen claims is "neoabolitionist" but a rehash of other articles from his viewpoint --a viewpoint that is demonstrably both hostile to African Americans and friendly to consevative historians who disparaged and/or failed to record the African American viewpoint. So, this represents a real problem on Wikipedia in areas of history that need to change over time to more fairly reflect diverse viewpoints. At the moment, much of what is in related articles is from an extreme conservative, often confusing viewpoint-- that fails to represent fairly-- contemporary scholarship. These and related articles fail to fairly reflect the scholarship of the last half century as clearly discussed in Harvard Sitkoff's article[ http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/deseg/sitkoff.html#Anchor-Segregatio-29011 ] I hope Rjensen stops making personal attacks on me, and considers the trail of hostility he is leaving in the aforementioned articles. This is a request that Rjensen stop the edit warring and begin to present the scholarship without injecting his personal viewpoints. Skywriter 18:22, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] August 2006
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This article was nominated for deletion on 1 August 2006. The result of the discussion was to Keep the article. |
