Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

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Frelga
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Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by Frelga »

Harriet Tubman to Replace Andrew Jackson on the Face of the $20 Bill
African-American civil rights activist and abolitionist Harriet Tubman will become the new face of the $20 bill, replacing former President Andrew Jackson, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced today, while Alexander Hamilton will remain on the $10 bill.

The changes are part of an effort by the Obama administration to put a woman on paper currency and Lew said that along with Tubman becoming the face of the $20 bill, images of women and civil rights era leaders will also be added to bills.

"We are putting a woman on the 20, the 10, and the 5 and we are going to move as quickly as we can get all of these bills out there," Lew said in an interview with ABC News.

The new designs will start to go into effect in 2020, the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote.
The comment sections look predictable, I regret to say.
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by Primula Baggins »

How horrifying that women and, worse, women of color should be recognized for historic heroism. It's all some kind of horrible mistake....
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

Ben Carson thinks that Harriet Tubman should be relegated to the almost never used 2 dollar bill because Andrew Jackson was "the last president to balance the budget" and thus should stay on the 20.

:roll:
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

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Voronwë the Faithful wrote:Ben Carson thinks that Harriet Tubman should be relegated to the almost never used 2 dollar bill because Andrew Jackson was "the last president to balance the budget" and thus should stay on the 20.

:roll:
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by Primula Baggins »

I've also seen serious proposals that a new bill should be invented just for the ladies. The twenty-five? The fifteen? The three? This way, you see, there's no need to displace a man at all. It's brilliant!
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

Here's a link, just to show that I wasn't making it up.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/20/politics/ ... d=23681711
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by Dave_LF »

I wonder how many of the angry people understand that they were going to change the bill(s) anyway to fight counterfeiting? I suspect a lot of them think the Treasury is upending tradition purely in order to put a woman on the bill.
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

Well to be fair, in all of the other recent redesigns of bills there was never any talk of replacing the old white guys that were featured on the front, so in a way the Treasury Department is upending tradition.

Interestingly, I have seen several feminists and other progressives argue that putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 is an insult because she did not fight for capitalism.

Here is an example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/postever ... e-20-bill/
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

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I don't Think that matters, Dave.
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

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At least Hamilton isn't getting dumped anymore. One has to wonder how much Lin-Manuel Miranda had to do with that!
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

A lot, from everything that I have read.
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by Primula Baggins »

When it was announced that a woman would be put on the ten, I read rumblings that twenties are used so much more that it would be a more definite honor to place the unnamed woman on the twenty. That might have been a factor, along with the fact that Jackson has some unpleasant history with Native Americans, not to mention being a slave owner (and yes, lots of the Great Patriots were, and we're stuck with it, but that wasn't the only strike against Jackson).

I doubt that the musical saved Hamilton! But it probably makes more people happy that he gets to stay.

Not to mention this classic Saturday Night Live video, which will retain its relevance:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/1397
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by Frelga »

Well, a few of the articles I read do credit the musical with saving Hamilton.

The saner discussion threads also point out that Jackson did not believe in paper money.

I wonder if there would have been that much argument if they wanted to put, e.g., Reagan on the bill.
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by yovargas »

I honestly feel like....... well, all the other ones have Presidents (except Benjamin Franklin who is, you know, Benjamin Franklin), so it feels weird to decide to go with a non-President. Like, in the long run it doesn't matter I guess but it feels kinda awkward to me, maybe even a bit....patronizing or something? I dunno....

I suppose more people will learn about the history of Tubman and that's a good thing.
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by Primula Baggins »

Hamilton was never president either, yov. So that's two out of the six bills in common circulation.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by yovargas »

Oh yeah. Let's so President-slash-Founding Father instead then.
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by Primula Baggins »

The problem is that that category includes only white men (Obama, yes, but they have to be dead—and noncontroversial). It seems reasonable to me to spread the honor more widely, among those who helped shape our history in other ways.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

yovargas wrote:Oh yeah. Let's so President-slash-Founding Father instead then.
Why? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm genuinely interested why you think that only presidents or so-called founding fathers should be honored. How about founding mothers? Martha Washington was briefly on one dollar bills in 1891, but that didn't last.
1891-1-silver-certificate-gem-uncirculated.jpg
1891-1-silver-certificate-gem-uncirculated.jpg (47.8 KiB) Viewed 12362 times
How about Betsy Ross? Abigail Adams? Or how about African American Revolutionary War Hero Oliver Cromwell? Would he qualify? What exactly is the standard of who should be on our money?

Come to think of, maybe the slave-trading, genocidal wingnut Andrew Jackson is the best representative of our money after all.
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by Primula Baggins »

That's pretty negative, Voronwë. I think we have better representatives in our history; and in any case, isn't honoring people in this public, national way necessarily aspirational? Not, this is who we are, but, this is who we admire and respect—examples for our kids?
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Harriet Tubman will be on the $20 bill

Post by yovargas »

Voronwë the Faithful wrote:Why? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm genuinely interested why you think that only presidents or so-called founding fathers should be honored.
I'm not saying others shouldn't be honored, I'm just saying the art had a pretty clear theme - major President/Founders. I'm not saying that's what the theme should be or has to be or whatever, just that that's what the theme is. It'd be little different than putting Tubman on Mt. Rushmore. I'm not saying Tubman doesn't deserve a statue or memorial, but putting her on Mt. Rushmore would be weird. If they had announced they were redoing all the bills to move away from President/Founders to an Important Civilian Figure theme that would likely feel more natural. This, not so much.....
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