The Black Florence Nightingale A Pc Myth?

[anotheoldgit]

Further to my thread titled:

/// Should The More Renowned Figures Of History Be Featured In History Lessons? ///

It would seem from this report that a certain Mary-Seacoles, has been wrongfully portrayed in our history books, all in the name of Political Correctness.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255095/The-black-Florence-Nightingale-making-PC-myth-One-historian-explains-Mary-Seacoles-story-stood-up.html

[jno]

it does seem Nightingale's great gift was as a statistician - seriously - working out what problems were and where - but "the lady with the lamp" sounds so much better (and so much more womanly) than "the lady with the abacus".

None the less, I can't see why both don't deserve statues rather more than the nobodies currently occupying the plinths around Trafalgar Sq (see if you can name any of them without looking them up).

[FredPuli43]

The Victorians appear to have thought highly of Mary Seacole (see the link). Both she and Nightingale have been the subject of myth and then denigration;that is the fate of many historical figures.

Do you think Seacole's case is any different from that of other figures, aog, or do you think she is a special case?

[DaisyNonna]

Was teaching about her 20 years ago! All teachers are not curriculum blinded.

[dotty.]

sorry but i attended a lecture on mary seacoles in the early 90s at the Public Record Office and viewed the primary source material myself.

[sp1814]

I learned about Mary Seacole in the 1970s.

It had nothing to do with political correctness...a term which was coined in the late 1980s.

Anyone who tries to conflate the two is being historically and chronologically naive.

By the way, let's be careful about 'going with the flow' on Daily Mail stories. I always try to fact check them from more objective sources. Has this been reported elsewhere?

[anotheoldgit]

sp1814

/// It had nothing to do with political correctness...a term which was coined in the late 1980s. ///

The 1980s, are you sure about that?

/// New Left rhetoric ///

/// By 1970, New Left proponents had adopted the term political correctness.[1] In the essay The Black Woman, Toni Cade Bambara says: ". . . a man cannot be politically correct and a [male] chauvinist too." The New Left later re-appropriated the term political correctness as satirical self-criticism; per Debra Shultz: "Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the New Left, feminists, and progressives . . . used their term politically correct ironically, as a guard against their own orthodoxy in social change efforts".[1][2][6] Hence, it is a popular English usage in the underground comic book Merton of the Movement, by Bobby London, while ideologically sound, an alternative term, followed a like lexical path, appearing in Bart Dickon’s satirical comic strips.[1][7] Moreover, Ellen Willis says: " . . . in the early ’80s, when feminists used the term political correctness, it was used to refer sarcastically to the anti-pornography movement’s efforts to define a ‘feminist sexuality’ ".[8 ///

Source Wikipedia.

[emmie]

I knew nothing of Mary Seacole whilst at school, no one had heard of her then. Though i have read a deal about her in the last few years. Both she and Florence Nightingale have come in for a good deal of criticism in recent years, some probably warranted. But the fact remains that Florence Nightingale was a crusader in the same way that the Pankhursts were, and we need those women in our history, warts and all.

[sp1814]

Yes AOG - political correctness only gained traction in the 1980s.

The late 1980s.

No-one had heard of political correctness when I was at school. It's the same as the Internet. Just because it was devised in the 60s, doesn't mean that everyone knew about it.

[anotheoldgit]

sp1814

You still seem unconvinced even after I provided some proof that PC came into fruition in the 1970s. You make a sweeping statement that "nobody had heard of Political Correctness when you was at school", perhaps you would care to provide a little more solid proof than that?