I loved the powerful editorial in this week’s Brooklyn Paper. It may be one of their best. Here’s an excerpt.
That an old, established, global bank has some skeletons in its closet should not surprise anyone. But the particular nature of Barclays skeletons should have given Ratner pause.
Those who downplay the significance of having the Barclays name atop a publicly subsidized arena that African-Americans will walk past every day — and where African-Americans will earn their living, both on the court and in the concessions stands — should put themselves in the shoes of the descendents of the slaves that Barclays family members once traded as property.
Naming an arena after a slave-trading family is a slap in the face, akin to a developer building an arena in Borough Park — with its high population of Holocaust survivors — and naming it “Volkswagen Field.”
anyone in business back then was in the slave trade. george washington, tho. jefferson, etc. chase, the bank of ny
making this into an issue of slavery reparations is completely changing the tenor of the debate, and not in a good way
let the project live or die on its merits, don’t let’s make this into a further divisive issue
True, except even Volkswagon has a better record than Barclay’s