U-M Panel Recommends Taking Yost's Name Off Building
LINK.
"A panel has recommended the university remove Yost's name and is asking members of the school campus community for feedback on the proposal. The President’s Advisory Committee on University History is accepting input on the plan until June 7."
We've had a discussion about this topic around here and it's been written about in books. It's not remotely out of the realm of possibility that he was anti-Catholic but still didn't particularly care about them playing for his team - history is FULL of people who personally dislike a group unless they benefit you. I mean, football integration didn't occur because people suddenly had an epiphany about racial tolerance in this country.
Removing Yost's name from the fieldhouse might be the right thing to do by contemporary standards, but doing so will do as much to materially help Black victims of racial discrimination as changing high school and college team names from Hurons or Redskins to ferocious mammals or birds helps improve the actual living conditions of Native Americans.
If removing names from buildings or changing team mascot names isn't accompanied by focused programs purposed with educating the general public about why their names were removed, then removing/changing names are nothing more than facile, feel-good measures that reassure us we're good, moral people without doing a damn thing to really help the people in whose names the changes are being made.
If anybody thinks that the millions of high school kids over the past three decades whose team mascot names were changed from "Indian" names are even a tiny bit more informed about the bloody, genocidal history of Europeans and indigenous peoples on this continent than they were before the names were changed, I've got some coastal property in Florida for sale.
Yes. It is all window dressing and virtue signaling.
no it isn't. it's removing a tarnished name from a building so as not to associate anything with the tarnished individual. 'Schembechler' should be removed from all buildings and most everything else.
Yost is iffy and I don't see him as "tarnished" whatsoever but none of this is "window dressing and virtue signaling."
Yeah I completely agree with you. Yost is iffy, get rid of Schembechler. And this isnt like people are asking that their corpses be exhumed and launched from a cannon, or that they be purged from all history books. Its changing the name of building or two. Just do it and move on.
@ Don - even if it won't directly help someone, it doesn't mean it's not worth doing. Apologizing doesn't directly help someone. It's simply an admission of a wrong. It's a morally correct thing to do regardless of whether or not someone is helped by the apology. The same goes with renaming buildings named to honor morally deficient leaders.
One could also point out that Yost was the first to *integrate* Michigan football and bring in student-athletes of color
Yost didn't *integrate* Michigan football. He was actually pissed at Coach Kipke for bringing Ward to the program and the two almost came to blows over the issue according to reports.
Technically, Michigan football had been integrated since 1890 (George Jewett), but the first black football letterman (reserve) was under Yost as a coach (prior to Ward).
Curiously, many of the "reports" that attribute this racial animus to Yost (Behee especially) rely heavily on speculation and secondhand account.
I wish the reported had provided some footnoted source materials, but I'm not sure if that's common in this type situation. In terms of lettermen, I don't know what the "reserve" means. But they do say this in the report:
That during the time that Yost was coach and athletic director not a single Black student athlete lettered on the football team except the outstanding Willis Ward who joined the team from Detroit in 1931 and earned his first “M” in 1932.
That throughout the years 1901 through 1932 Yost upheld the so-called “gentleman’s agreement” to keep football for “whites only” and endorsed the view that football was an Anglo Saxon sport at a time when that identification carried powerful racial messages.
Edit: I was reading the 6-page recommendation. The full report does have citations. My bad.
I love to see concrete evidence behind those accusations.
That's why I wished they had provided some citations to the source material. Especially for something that could be controversial like this situation. I don't think there's any way that the authors of the report are making this up. They appear to be a distinguished group of scholars. That said, there's always a degree of interpretation when looking at the primary and secondary material, so it is best if everyone know what these materials are and can potentially evaluate them on their own.
(sorry, wrong reply)
You could read the article, but I'll save you a click.
Officials said the panel of university historians studied the issue for a year after several requests to remove Yost's name from the arena. It determined that Yost's contributions to UM football and athletics were inequitably placed above the “profoundly deep and negative impact he had on people of color,” they said.
Right - and the example they cited was weaksauce: "It was also during this time that Yost was instrumental in benching African American football star Willis Ward because Georgia Tech refused to play Michigan at home if an African American was allowed to play. That decision was a factor in the committee's decision to recommend changing the arena's name."
Others shared above why this backwards revisionism of history is a joke. He didn't play a black player? In the 1930's? Did he discriminate against said player or otherwise segregate him in any way? Seems like grasping.
who the fuck cares? call it my little pony arena ... changing the name of the arena does absolutely jack squat to the team, the history, the program, the coach, the fans ... it has no effect on anything.
From the article - this was one of the "questionable" main factors:
"It was also during this time that Yost was instrumental in benching African American football star Willis Ward because Georgia Tech refused to play Michigan at home if an African American was allowed to play. That decision was a factor in the committee's decision to recommend changing the arena's name."
Seems pretty "tame", but guessing there is more about the guy I don't know...but the fact they highlighted this seemingly "minor" issue as a main reason makes me wonder what else is out there.
Unless they bring forward better supporting evidence this looks like a weak case in my opinion. Also, I would prefer they keep the Willis Ward story more about Willis Ward and Gerald Ford.
If UM is trying to tell me that 20 years before Brown Vs. Board of Education someone did something discriminatory in the state of Michigan, I have news for you, that would have unfortunately been almost everyone in 1930.
And the reason Yost did it was because a bunch of people from a southern prison colony a few decades removed from the civil war were still racist . . . once again . . . call me shocked.
To go back in time and judge someone, when none of us were alive, for doing something that was globally supported at the time looks like a waste of time in my opinion.
This is anti labor virtue signaling politics at its worst. And any able bodied person involved in this effort should be given a hammer and drill immediately. We can't even build housing in 2021, yet this is the conversation at UM. BRAVO.
Hawaii was a violent island warring monarchy
Istanbul was once run by a harem queen with imprisoned children and castrated man servants
History is full of much worse, please move on and stop harping on every bad thing that happened before you were born and before you got the internet and a swivel chair.
Are you having a stroke? What the hell does any of this have to do with ‘anti labor’ or building housing? Seriously, are you ok?
If you have the time to be getting paid to sit in your ivory tower and pontificate whether someone in 1930 was being racist . . . I can guarantee you haven't worked a day in your life and whatever curriculum and leadership that comes from this type of thinking is certainly going to be anti labor and anti worker.
People who are afraid to lift a finger and play college politics all day, as opposed to doing real work, are the only people that have time to come up with something this absurd.
They are getting paid to play games and avoid real work. It is obvious.
How about calling it Michigan Fieldhouse and naming the rink itself after Vic Heyliger (six national championships) and/or Red Berenson (two NCs)
Why just call it The University of Michigan Hockey Building? Same for all of the other facilities across the entire campus or campuses. I'm not calling you out but I there is so much hypocrisy about this deleting/cancel culture stuff that it drives me crazy.
The Wolverine Ice House
Wait til they hear about Ross.
And Fred Wilpon.
The Last Dollar Bernie Madoff Didn't Get Field House seems like a fine name to me
Should it be different if you pay for the buildings?
I'm sure we could switch it to the "Miami Dolphins Present the SoulCycle School of Business". Hell it feels like this is the way vanity naming rights are going anyways
I'll repost this from a reply in this very thread because there seems to be a lot of people suggesting we rename it after Red Berenson.
I'm not necessarily against renaming it that, but haven't we learned our lesson yet naming buildings after people? Have we done our due diligence on this? Are there any skeletons on Red's closet that would force us to remove his name years later? Or even harder to tell, is there anything Red did that is OK by today's standards but will be completely unacceptable in the future?
Driving while visually impaired and urinating on the wall of an Ann Arbor branch library in 1994?
Survivable now but maybe extra controversial in 50 years?
https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/midaily/mdp.39015071754928/693
Not sure how controversial that will be in 50 years when no one knows what the hell a "library" was.
FYI, Yost was involved in establishing the Hockey program in the ‘20s and saw to it that they had an enclosed facility with refrigeration for the ice prior to the depression wiped out half of college hockey. Our historical success is rooted in actions taken when Yost was AD. He was also a bigot for much of his adult life. Given the ease with which the media and internet reduces people to 2-D, we’ll change the name, feel good about it for a while, and move on without any substantive change.
Your take is rational and will probably get shouted down.
Honestly, I know people have suggested renaming it after Berenson (which would be fine), but at this point I'm surprised any school names buildings after people. Like, call it "Wolverine Ice Arena" or something so you don't play with fire that, say, in 40 years it comes out that the person you named it after has some pretty significant skeletons in his or her closet.
Exactly!! Have made comments above along those line but you say it best! Had enough hypocrisy for now?-I sure have.
I think it's kinda stupid to rename it but I also don't give a shit. I still call Comerica Park "Tiger's Stadium."
They could rename it "Zingerman's #73 Tarb's Tenacious Tenure, Turkey breast, fresh avocado spread, Wisconsin muenster cheese, tomato, & plenty of Zingerman's Russian dressing on grilled farm bread Ice Arena."
And I'll still call it Yost. Why do people care what the building is named, as long as they still play Michigan Hockey there?
i'd go for "zingerman's georgia reuben extra dressing fieldhouse," but i take your meaning.
Serious question relating to naming buildings after people in general. Did anyone that lived 100 years ago possess morals or belief structures that hold up vs. today's standards? Furthermore, Is there a point at which improvement tapers off and we reach a stable level of desirable morality or is there always steady improvement. If the latter, then isn't everyone's behavior and morals questionable if you wait long enough? Looking at this from more of a high-level philosophical perspective. Not implying Yost's name should or shouldn't be removed. its just an interesting topic or potential dilemma as we evolve culturally.
I agree morality is always evolving and ignoring context for someone's actions isn't fair to them, but at the same time just because being racist was more socially acceptable in the 1920s doesn't mean people didn't intellectually understand it wasn't right to treat someone different based on the color of his or her skin, country of origin, religion, etc. They may not have cared, or didn't want to deal with the fallout, or whatever. But this is sort of the same argument people made in defense of Bo et al. regarding Anderson, and it always rings a bit hollow to absolve people (not saying you're doing that) with a "it was a different era" outlook. It was "wrong" then and while I don't think they should remove Yost's name from the history books for being your "average" racist white man for his time, you also don't need to keep naming an arena after him.
I just thought about this: Michigan Stadium (football) wasn't named after anybody and that's since 1927. How novel is that? What foresight! Guess we'll never have to be concerned about renaming it after anybody in the future.
It's relative and evolving, so the best you can do is judge versus the standard of the day. That's a curve you'd hope your heroes and forefathers were ahead of, but at an absolute minimum, wouldn't be caught behind, e.g. America being behind England and most of "Old Europe" in banning the slave trade and then slavery itself.
Otherwise, everyone's legacy is doomed. Forty years from now we'll all be properly condemnable.
Why just last week I learned Mother Teresa was actually a cult leader!
That’s a serious question? Cause the answer is obviously yes. There are good and bad people in every era and there are definitely people that lived 100 years ago or even 400 years ago that would be considered not shitty today. That’s pretty obvious. I mean there are thousands of buildings named after people that aren’t controversial at all. We just hear about the ones people have an issue with.
The good vs. bad people dichotomy is great example of the lack of nuance that hurts these conversation. Life isn't like a Hollywood movie where the villain is evil just to be evil and then there's the good guys. I don't think it's completely obvious at all that people born hundreds of years ago would be aligned with today's moral standards. I think they would have the capability to be if they grew up in today's culture, but they didn't. A "good person" back then would be defined differently than today. Norms around race, marriage, sexuality, career, etc. would be completely different. I highly doubt of you pluck anyone from 1850 and discuss transgender rights or sexuality or racial issues they're going to have answers that align with your own today. Does that make them a bad person? I don't know, but it's an interesting question for sure.
Are you primarily talking about white people?! Because I think I know POC views on race issues and how to treat people that look different from them. Ergo, yes, 100 years ago there were many, many good people (including whites!).
Of course there's always good people and bad people and every type of people. It goes without saying. I'm looking at the majority. What you would reasonably expect from the average person of the day. What if UofM was putting pressure on Yost to play the game so he chose not to the play black players. Wouldn't that be rich if Yost was pressured by UofM to give in so they wouldn't miss a game and now they're "holding him accountable" for what he was pressured to do. Idk if that's true, but it's not beyond possibility that there could be all kinds of pressures from whatever the equivalent of boosters were or people running the show.
Its not a good vs bad dichotomy, in that everyone can be divided into 2 groups: good and bad. Its that people are on a spectrum, but people have existed in every era which would be considered "good" by any standard (future, past, or present) and people which would be considered "bad" by any standard.
To follow with your example, there were people that existed 100 years ago and even 1000 years ago that were both pro and anti transgender rights. It may have been more common to be anti-trans, but to me it is absolutely obvious that not 100% of people born prior to 2000 AD (or any year you want to use) were anti trans. Same thing can be said of any of the issues in your post. It may have been more acceptable to be openly racist is 1850, but that doesn't mean that 100% of people walking around were racist, even by today's standard, or any future standard.
So its weird to me that you jumped on some phrasing to say I was exhibiting a "lack of nuance", when you seem to want to paint all people who ever lived in the past with the same brush. People in the past had as much variety in opinion as there is today, and there absolutely were people around who lived up to today's "moral standard".
Not painting with a broad brush. You can always find someone who believes anything. I don't deny that you could probably find a handful of people in 1850 that were forward thinkers and held beliefs very close to today's standards. When comparing two very broad eras, I think it's okay to make some basic generalities to simply. We're talking about the vast majority here, not one-off examples of one topic. For example, in 1958 4% approved of interracial marriage. Now it's around 90% approval. If you add in other questions on similar topics, the number of people who answer favorably by today's standards is going to be incredibly small. Hell, only 20 years ago, president Clinton said a marriage is between a man and a woman. You find me your guy from 400 years ago that was pro gay rights, pro women's rights, pro trans, and loved all minorities. Good luck! The people who believed all those at the same time were probably burned at a stake or something.
the very definition of good and bad change over the times … what were considered virtue in the Spartan society are certainly evil by today’s standard
One of the key questions the panel asks (not only in the case of Yost but for all "commemorative" building names it's asked to consider) is ...
The Principle of Historical and Institutional Context: “It is easy to blame those in the past for lacking the knowledge, wisdom and values that we seem to possess. Keeping in mind that we will likely suffer the same fate at the hands of those who come after us, it behooves us to understand that it is impossible to hold someone accountable for failing to share our contemporary ideas and values. Instead, the question must be what ideas, values, and actions were possible in a particular historical context.”
In essence, were there those at the time who questioned the actions we describe?
And they found that in this case, there were significant numbers of students on campus that did question Yost's decision to restrict Ward, and that he hired Pinkerton detectives to investigate his critics, using AD funds, leading to the explusion of many of the students who protested against he decision.
Yeah, three students who led the campus protest against benching Ward, were identified by Yost's Pinkertons (who noted the students' "Jewishness" in their report), and who were removed from the school quietly the following year by Michigan's president. Also hundreds of students who were protesting, the Michigan Daily, and tons of alumni and press who begged Yost to either call off the game or tell Georgia Tech to suck it up like big boys.
Yost was confused at the reaction he got from benching Ward. Ohio State had benched their one black player in 1930 and 1931, and Yost also had his brother in law Dan McGugin, who was coaching Vandy, writing him saying "Dude, you have no idea how crazy these people down here will get if you try to desegregate something."