Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers should change their team name because of its ties to brutality and racism, a Chicago Tribune columnist argued Thursday.
Steve Chapman wrote that the Rangers were “revered” in Texas but “the legends omit a lot of the reality.” Chapman cites the book “Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers” by Doug J. Swanson as the main reason for the organization to change the name.
“They burned peasant villages and slaughtered innocents,” Swanson wrote in the book. “They committed war crimes. Their murders of Mexicans and Mexican Americans made them as feared on the border as the Ku Klux Klan in the South.”
Chapman added: “A century ago, during the fighting that took place along the border during the Mexican Revolution, blood flowed like the Rio Grande."
And from the Chicago Tribune column referenced above:
The injustices of the present are forcing a confrontation with our past — a past wreathed in nostalgia and myths that conceal grim realities. The Civil War ended 155 years ago, but only recently have Americans begun renouncing flags, statues and monuments paying homage to Southern traitors. Other symbols of racist oppression are also under attack.
Lately the movement has gained momentum. A committee in the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate voted to strip the names of Confederate generals from Army bases. Protesters in Richmond, Virginia, pulled down statues of Jefferson Davis and Christopher Columbus. The city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, removed a statue of a Spanish conquistador.
In Texas, the shift has put one of the world’s most storied law enforcement agencies under harsh scrutiny. Dallas city and airport officials recently removed a statue that had stood at Love Field since 1962 — of a Texas Ranger.
Read the full column:
While I don't dispute those facts, my concern is "where does this end?".
Can't we find something wrong with just about every piece of American history if we look really, really, really hard?
Heck, Martin Luther King Jr. was known to be a guy who liked his women (yes, plural). Are we going to rip all his stuff down? Heck no.
But who decides what is "wrong enough" to be erased from the American landscape?
Grace & Peace & Love to you all -
Matt