FSU Students Can’t Decide If Slavery Worse Than “Political Correctness”
Content Warning: Slavery, racism
Nostalgic for the kitschy ole days of mason jars and auctioning off human beings, many Florida State students are hoping to continue the legacy of institutional racism started by their ancestors by voting to keep the statue of Francis Eppes on campus. Those who are voting to remove the statue are citing Eppes’ ownership of 91 slaves, his launch of a slave-catching militia and the sale of his plantation to support the confederacy. Those who are in favor of keeping the statue, most of whom are not black and therefore would not have been considered property when Eppes was alive, believe that Eppes should be judged by “[his] positive contributions, not because of [his] possessions,” a statement that clearly shows progress in how our society views black people. Many thanks to the Integration Statue for ending racism on campus, and many thanks to Power of We for giving these racists cute profile picture backgrounds, only for them to later turn around and do verbal somersaults to justify slavery and quantify black suffering on PWI campuses.
Students voting to keep the statue argue that without Eppes’ contribution to creating the university, black students, who have only been allowed to attend the university since 1962 and are still disproportionately represented thanks to Florida's abolition of Affirmative Action, would not have gotten the education they have. “If people don’t like the statue, they should leave,” said Francisca Eppes (unaffiliated), who also thinks it’s okay to say the n-word when singing along to Kanye and that Harambe memes are funny. “Kind of like how my ancestors left their homelands for America so that they could sit back and watch black and indigenous people build this country while they took all of the credit and had statues erected in their names.”
“To be honest, I thought the statue was there for me to slovenly kiss on my way home from Potbelly’s until Students for a Democratic Society held their petition,” explained Amina Abdul. “I was undecided on the issue until I realized that maybe a monument serving as a constant reminder of the fact that our campus was built using money earned at the expense of the exploitation of black people could be harmful to them and anyone who isn’t white.”
One feeble argument made by those in favor of keeping the statue is that if the university were to remove the Eppes statue, Americans would have to rid the whole country of any monuments made for other terribly racist founding fathers, and that removing the statue erases Eppes history in a way that failing to acknowledge a historical figure’s participation in systematic oppression somehow does not. Other ironclad arguments made by these individuals include “Finders keepers, losers weepers” and “I know you are, but what am I?”
When asked why he was voting for the statue to remain, freshman Knight McWhite stated, “I sit next to that statue EVERY DAY for lunch, and he has never ONCE said anything racist to me. Eppes is a class act and having him removed would be OUTRAGEOUS!” McWhite then ripped off his shirt and whirled it around in the air before calling Milo Yiannopolous for advice on how to further belittle an entire group of people and subsequently make light of mental health issues by using the word “triggered” as an insult. “We need to stop catering to every politically correct liberal whose feelings are hurt by the littlest things. The statue should stay because removing it offends me and everyone else who didn’t even care about it until it forced us to confront our complicity in a corrupt system that has fought to keep black people down for centuries.”
Vote here to sell the statue and use the money to buy an oculus rift all the racists can use to pretend it’s 1832 again.