abolitionist: But now that Harriet Tubman has won the unofficial vote for which woman should replace Andrew Jackson, I am less thrilled, according to The Guardian. I don’t want to see an abolitionist icon as the face of American money. Why cheapen her by putting her on the face on the 20 dollar bill – the very symbol of the racialized capitalism she was fleeing When I first heard about Women on $20s, the unofficial contest to get a woman face on a $20 bill, I thought it sounded great: dudes have occupied greenbacks for centuries in the US. The female visages of Sacagawea and Susan B Anthony have been relegated to dollar coins no one gives two cents about. I am quite content with my mental image of her conducting the Underground Railroad, that secret antebellum network of other former slaves and abolitionists who risked their lives to smuggle slaves out of the United States and into Canada. I don’t need to see hers as the face of the US treasury, being passed in transactions to underpaid retail workers and appearing in print ads for transnational banks. I don’t want to see Tubman commodified with a price, as she once was as a slave.
(news.financializer.com). As
reported in the news.
Tagged under abolitionist, topics.