Changing $20 bill is bankrupt idea
By the numbers: 100,000,000: Coronavirus cases worldwide. 25,000,000: Coronavirus cases in USA.
436,000: Coronavirus deaths in America. Countless: Number of Americans gravely sick, both literally and economically, from effects of COVID. 20: Denomination of U.S. dollar bill that the Biden administration wants to change, booting off a U.S. president’s image. Number of other issues that the Biden administration and Congress should be working on before coronavirus relief is passed: Zero. None. Zip.
Move over, Jerry Maguire. When President Biden’s Treasury Department says, “Show me the money!” it means it. Literally.
Since changing the image on our currency clearly ranks as one of Mr. Biden’s most pressing issues, the new president decided to reboot the Obama-era initiative of booting President Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill, replaced with Underground Railroad abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
So what prompted this move? And why now?
Some will claim that race is the driving factor, with a former slave eclipsing a one-time slave owner.
If race entered into the equation, it shouldn’t have. Obviously, slavery was wrong, as we all know. But do we condemn, for all of eternity, those who owned slaves — a common practice of that era? Do we disregard, and even whitewash from history, a person’s decent qualities and accomplishments, solely because of that sin?
If that’s the case, every monument to Thomas Jefferson — by far America’s biggest hypocrite on the slavery issue — has to go. The man who threatened to derail the Declaration of Independence if an anti-slavery clause wasn’t added was himself an avid slave owner. As a crusader against the practice — so long as he could keep his slaves — Jefferson is perhaps America’s most overrated “hero.”
But does that mean we should blast his face off Rushmore, and dismantle the Jefferson Memorial? Should we close the University of Virginia, which he founded? Same for George Washington, who also owned slaves. And do we shutter the Ivy League’s Brown University, founded on profits from the slave trade, as well as numerous other schools with ties to slavery, from Harvard to Yale, and Princeton to Georgetown?
Of course not. We should be mature enough to discern mistakes from accomplishments, celebrating the significance of the latter while not endorsing the former.
Tubman trumping Jackson, while a bad idea for many reasons, has no place in the race debate. President Jackson’s accomplishments — from defeating the British at the Battle of New Orleans, to founding the Democratic Party, to preserving the Union when South Carolina threatened succession — earned him a place on the $20 (perhaps the most widely viewed denomination, since it’s the predominant bill dispensed by ATMs). That honor should not be revoked, regardless of someone else’s accomplishments.
In the same vein, Harriet Tubman’s courageous achievements obviously merit recognition. Fine. But do it in such a way that it doesn’t diminish a former president.
Build more monuments and construct more museums in her honor. Name a congressional wing after her. Or yes, place her on U.S. currency, but make it an original denomination, be it a newly-minted coin or a $15 bill. Don’t denigrate her and that for which she fought — equality and fairness — by creating a controversy where there needn’t be one.
Both she and President Jackson deserve better.
President Jackson’s fate was widely expected to be the same for Alexander Hamilton, who was slated to be wiped from the $10 bill. But in no small part, credit for saving his portrait from the monetary dustbin was given to — are you ready for this? — the Broadway play “Hamilton.”
No joke. Pressure from “Hamilton” fans figured in the 2016 decision to keep Mr. Hamilton’s image on the $10 intact.
United States’ currency is a physical symbol of the world’s foremost democracy, and an endearing icon of stability and history. It cannot, and should not, be bandied around by the whims of rudderless Presidents and short-lived Treasury secretaries.
Perhaps most tragic is that so few care about this issue, especially the narcissistic millennials. Broad stroke of the brush, to be sure, but it’s nonetheless true that too many simply disregard our history with a cavalier shrug, despite the ease of learning which technology provides.
Unless we cash in that attitude quickly and buy a dose of common sense, the problem will never be solved, no matter how many Harriet Tubman $20 bills we print.
And you can take that to the bank.