Talk:Joseph LeConte

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Untitled[edit]

LeConte was about as "white supremacist" as most others of his time, but the diary entry is interesting, so I'm preserving here in the hopes that somebody will come up with a good way to weave into the bio:

'Looking back now from the standpoint of 1901, my contention is entirely justified. Wherever the labor is reliable and the management judicious the land makes as much now as it ever did in slave times, and, therefore, the owner is as rich as he ever was. He has suffered no loss. But in some places negro labor continues to be utterly unreliable. This is especially true of the so-called "black belt," where the negroes are greatly in excess of the whites, and more especially true in Liberty County, where I still have nearly two thousand acres of land, half of it very rich. It has never made me a cent since the war.
The negroes there will not work for wages, as they can live almost with out work on fish, crawfish, and oysters; a little patch of cotton furnishing them the means for tobacco and clothing. They have no ambition to improve, and live almost like animals. The whole lower and richer part of the country is practically given up to them, the whites having nearly all gone elsewhere. And yet the kindliest feelings exist among the blacks toward the whites, especially toward their former masters. Whenever I go down to the old place, I am greeted with the greatest joy and affection and called "Massah," as in slavery times. In 1892 old Sandy actually threw his arms around my neck and embraced me. But they always expect some gratuity, and I never disappoint them. In the middle and up country, where the proportion of whites is greater, the negroes are slowly improving in conduct and in thrift, but in the "black belt" they are either stationary or are gradually relapsing into fetishism and African rites and dances.' from The Diary of Joseph LeConte

In the meantime, something this long in a short bio is POV-pushing, so I removed from there. Stan 12:51, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that his White Supremacist views should be mentioned. In most LeConte biographies it's politely not mentioned at all. OTOH, it shouldn't be the major focus of his biography as it was just an incidental part of his life and times in South Carolina.

Another person added and removed an incorrect statement about LeConte being in Alaska. He was never in Alaska. John Muir named LeConte Glacier after him, but LeConte was not there. In geology and biology you traditionally don't name things after yourself, but your friends (or your friends name something after you). Dananderson 00:48, 26 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The diary entry quote up above is interesting, as it is almost verbatim what was said about the Hawaiians. I've often thought this has less to do with race at the end of the day, and more to do with the disconnect between the foreign concept of the Protestant work ethic and capitalism, and how it attempts to force itself on every culture it encounters like a virus. In other words, what if one does not want to live by the Protestant work ethic and the values of capitalism? Where does one go? It's convenient to frame this as racism, and for the most part, that's the best way to describe it, but there's also a serious, dominant overlay of European cultural and religious values that are constantly being imposed on everyone they encounter. This is rarely discussed or addressed. Capitalist values and the Protestant work ethic are assumed as the dominant cultural value, when in fact, they are as artificial and self-selected as any other value. They are aggressively imposed on everyone by default without regard to alternate views or lifestyles, and if you don't accept them without question, you are considered a lesser person, "lazy" and of no value. This is the problem. But the far more disturbing aspect of this, is that there is nowhere you can go to escape the oppressive, totalitarian nature of these cultural values. It is an authoritarian, totalitarian ideology that pretends to be liberating and the sole repository of freedom, but won't allow any variety or differences. See The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This isn't racism, this is actually religious bigotry. Viriditas (talk) 10:19, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Anything stated in a Wikipedia article must be verifiable from reliable sources. Our own analysis of the material is original research, and cannot be used in an article. So, if reliable sources state that LeConte was a racist, we can say that. If reliable sources state that LeConte was imposing his view of the Protestant work ethic on the work habits of other peoples, we can say that. Without reliable sources supporting those statements, we cannot say it in the article. Donald Albury 14:54, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The article says LeConte was a proponent of theistic evolution, which is the "view of creation taught at the majority of mainline Protestant seminaries". The diary entry above is not unique to this particular set of beliefs, it is very much a part of the worldview. I'm not arguing that it wasn't racist, I'm saying that racism is embedded in the religious philosophy. When capitalism came to Hawaii (~1800), those bringing it to the islands justified it in the same way LeConte did in his diary. In sugar plantations in Hawaii it is noted that "Hawaiian people saw little use for working on the plantations when they could easily subsist by farming and fishing". This was the view of most native people before capitalism was imposed on them by colonial missionaries. I don't think this is original research but more of a historical observation. In other words, racism very much has a religious component to it, one that is often overlooked. There are many different moving parts here. One of the most well known is the curse of Ham myth. "...in order to promote economic motivations within Europe associated with colonialism, the curse of Ham was used to shift the common Aristotelian belief that phenotypic differentiation among humans was a result of climatic difference, to a racialist perspective that phenotypic differentiation among the species was due to there being different racial types". One could make the argument that modern racism as we know it is, in part, rooted in religious philosophy, among many other things, including the evolution of in-group favoritism, etc. I think my overall point is that dismissing LeConte simply as an exemplar of racism for his time, avoids the underlying history and context. I am considering the creation of a new article to deal with this, but I'm only in the thinking out loud stage. Viriditas (talk) 20:36, 29 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Le Conte vs. LeConte[edit]

A picture of the title page of Joseph Le Conte's autobiography is included at The Autobiography of Joseph Le Conte: Electronic Edition, and clearly shows the name as 'Le Conte', not 'LeConte'. The list at USGS Geographic Names Information System Feature Query Results for 'LeConte' or 'Le Conte' shows that most geographical features named for members of this family use the form 'Le Conte'. While the name is often corrupted to 'LeConte' or 'Leconte', there are plenty of sources for 'Le Conte', and that certainly is the form used by the family and by earlier sources. -- Donald Albury (Dalbury)(Talk) 12:16, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Middle School Info[edit]

User:Bubblez 1added the following to the bottom of the main article. I am moving it here so someone can clean up and add back in a more appropriate place if they so desire.--Roswell native 04:17, 5 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There was a school built after his name Leconte(joseph)Middle School.It is on Bronson street in Los Angeles,California
in Hollywood.Alot of stars graduated from there that's why it is called Home of the Stars.Also alot of students attend
that school maybe about 5,000 including tracks A,B,C and Magnet,also there are grades 6,7,and 8.

Death[edit]

Le Conte died July 6, 1901, not June. He was on a Sierra Club outing held in July. Here's an extensive article about the circumstances of his death: Yosemite Nature Notes 25(4):66-69 (April 1946 “Joseph N. LeConte,” 25(4):66-69 by Elizabeth H. Godfrey See also [www.sierraclub.org/education/leconte/pdf/joseph_leconte_factsheet.pdf Sierra Club Fact Sheet]

Extra image available[edit]

There is an image of Le Conte at s:Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/270 which someone may wish to screen capture. -- billinghurst (talk) 03:02, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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Edits of May 20, 2019[edit]

I reverted an edit today because, while there are relevant points to part of it, there were also problems, such the insertion of a bare url, the addition of a citation to a blog, and the addition of a list of various places named after LeConte with a non-NPOV statement complaining they haven't been renamed. Please let us discuss the elements of this edit to determine what can be appropriately included in the article. - Donald Albury 02:05, 21 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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