@Monkey:
Are you mad at money? See that's exactly how this comes off Marxist. An interpretation that capitalism as a whole was guilty of the crime, which is fine if you want to go there yourself? But talking as if Tubman herself viewed things like that isn't really based off anything at all.
I thought my follow up made it more clear that it's my personal feeling, but I have to address this first because the rest of your post really runs away from my meaning.
The statement you particularly take issue with is that she would consider it a dubious honor, and fine: it's debatable.
Certainly, people need money to survive so it's not like Tubman was "anti-currency" in the strictest sense of the word.
Certainly $20 would be significant to her in particular because it was both the pension she earned as a Civil War spy,
and the amount she needed to free her own father, an amount denied to her by a fellow abolitionist Oliver Jackson,
but ultimately gifted by sympathetic ex-slaves. Like I said: on the nose, given her history.
@Monkey:
if you're NOT taking a Marxist direction on this I'm not really sure what's even going on then. Are all symbols of the country forever tainted by slavery and racism?
Geez, I'd half-heartedly say "kinda yeah?", if only to see the reaction, but I think you're overstating far afield of my intent.
I am talking, and only talking about the symbol of money and what, as a part of a system of chattel slavery, it meant at its time for negroes.
If we were expanding the scope of my distaste, then I would say, well, yeah very generally, US wealth was frequently a symbolic tool of oppression which was used / withheld to perpetuate the financial disenfranchisement & dehumanization of black folk throughout American history, both by the government, and via commerce. Does that mean that people of color shouldn't be on currency? No. Does that mean currency is evil? Obviously not. Does that mean I find Harriet Tubman in particular a poor choice? Yes.
@Monkey:
So you oppose associating black figures with …any and all American symbols? I mean any states that existed (or even territories) at the time that ever had legal slavery? The flag? Washington DC itself? Do you take issue with the MLK statue there?
You're laying it on kinda thick.
Slave-owning states rationalized the act of slavery by any number of means, fiduciary, financial, religious, imperialistic ala "The White Man's Burden" and
through craniometry, what we would now call eugenics, and other pseudo-scientific racist bullshit. Economic considerations were inarguably a part of its continuance.
Gonna be a bit sarcastic here: is that the fault of poor, beleaguered money itself? No. Again, money is merely a symbol.
But considering that symbol, I just think it's a bit tone deaf for Harriet Tubman, who rescued black bodies from a bondage in which their ascribed value was their price tags,
to be on US currency which in her context and her time, took on a value that was not merely monetary. Tubman's legacy was dedicated to undermining the system that
became the foundation of American capitalism, and she did it by stealing "property." It's useless to try and surmise how she would feel about being on the $20 dollar bill in present day, though a fun thought exercise.
But I very much doubt Tubman, who died penniless and risked her life to prove that slaves were worth more than the blood money paid for them, would accept the honor of being on US cash.
It's a debatable point though because many people are pretty happy about this, which also fine by me.