“Wokeness” is for the birds, critics might say. Except that this apparently isn’t true. For while we’ve heard of birds carrying messages and birds carrying diseases, our avian friends also allegedly carry something else: a “racist legacy.”
That’s according to the Washington Post, anyway. No, the problem isn’t that Tweety gave half-black Sylvester fits or that the Roadrunner ever brought notably brown Wile E. Coyote to ruin (although the issue in both cases was furry-on-feathered crime). Rather, bird-brained white ornithologists are wringing their pasty hands red over “whether to change as many as 150 eponyms, names of birds that honor people with connections to slavery and supremacy,” writes WaPo.
“The Bachman’s sparrow, Wallace’s fruit dove and other winged creatures bear the names of men who fought for the Southern cause, stole skulls from Indian graves for pseudoscientific studies that were later debunked, and bought and sold Black people,” the paper continues. “Some of these men stoked violence and participated in it without consequence.”
Wow, you mean, WaPo, just like the Marxist organization Black Lives Matter?
“Even John James Audubon’s name is fraught in a nation embroiled in a racial reckoning,” the paper further explains. “Long the most recognized figure in North American birding for his detailed drawings of the continent’s species, he was also an enslaver who mocked abolitionists working to free Black people. Some of his behavior is so shameful that the 116-year-old National Audubon Society [NAS] — the country’s premier bird conservation group, with 500 local chapters — hasn’t ruled out changing its name. An oriole, warbler and shearwater all share it.”
So NAS interim chief executive Elizabeth Gray made the requisite pandering statement, saying that she was Deeply Troubled™ “by the racist actions of John James Audubon and recognize how painful that legacy is for Black, Indigenous and people of color who are part of our staff, volunteers, donors and members.” Yes, she no doubt cannot even sleep at night.
The backstory here is that the NAS is likely on its heels because the previous CEO, David Yarnold, was forced to resign in April over charges that he permitted “an atmosphere marked by systemic racism, gender discrimination, intimidation and threats” (otherwise known as a “liberal workplace”), wrote Politico at the time.
The WaPo bird-name story is very long, with the usual cherry-picked complaints about black ornithologists feeling unwelcome, the “stories” (who knows how true they are?) about white discoverers who we’re now to believe were Satan’s spawn, and politically correct fallacies.
As for the last thing, WaPo quotes J. Drew Lanham, a black ornithologist and professor at Clemson University in South Carolina, as saying, “Conservation has been driven by white patriarchy.”
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Well, darn those old white men for giving us national parks, nature reserves, preserved species, and the world’s best environments. If only they’d followed China’s and the Third World’s lead, we, too, could have raped wilderness areas. (Read “Why the Greentopians Would Destroy the Earth.”)
Even many commenters under the WaPo piece recoiled at the steroid-level political correctness. One wrote, “And for their next trick, the woke backyard astronomers will demand to have black holes renamed.” Another remarked, “Why don’t we just erase all history on everything. This is moronic.”
But the goal, actually, is not to erase all history — just Western history (and influence) as our Year Zero push proceeds apace.
Consider: Islam’s prophet Mohammed, along with being a caravan raider, mass killer, and employer of torture, was also a slave owner and trader. Do the wokesters ever propose canceling him? No, and they won’t, either.
This isn’t just because they like their heads exactly where they are. In reality, since slavery was status quo throughout the world until the West ended it in its lands in the 19th century, it’s hard go back a ways and find prominent people who didn’t either have an association with it or rubber-stamp it in some way. Despite this, the PC-slavery/oppressor purge is only applied to white historical figures.
Now, fill in the blank: If you complain about a transgression but only hold accountable those of a certain race who are guilty of it, you perhaps are a ______.
Speaking of which, one of WaPo’s central complaints — that ornithology is too white — is heard regarding many fields today. In fact, Fox News host Tucker Carlson reported on the birdbrain bigotry story Monday night (video below) and illustrated how the same “charge” was leveled regarding national park visitors.
Interestingly, though, while we hear the above and that opera attendees and certain neighborhoods are “too white,” it’s never said that the NBA, rap concerts, and certain other neighborhoods are too black. So another question:
If you only complain about racial homogeneity when just one particular race is numerically dominant, you just may be a ______.
(Hint: If you entered the same word in both blanks, you may be on the right track.)
There’s much more that can be said here. For one thing and reflecting a lack of virtue, our Left is not only narrow-minded but stone-hearted and unforgiving. All “have sinned” and “fallen short of the glory of God,” the Bible informs, expressing an eternal truth. Must historical figures be perfect to be remembered? (No, not if they’re leftists.)
Moreover, who are these wokesters to make themselves, vice-ridden as they are, the very yardstick for rightness as if they’re God? How will history judge them a century hence considering their support for prenatal infanticide?
Related to this, the cultural revolutionaries’ yardstick is narrow, too. They judge people, unsparingly, for “racism” (as they define it) even though it’s merely a subcategory of one Deadly Sin: wrath. What of the rest: Greed, Gluttony, Lust, Envy, Sloth, and Pride? Shall we apply every one and cancel all of humanity?
No, the Left will just continue with its provincial, puritanical obsession with race, an obsession more intense than any Puritan supposedly had regarding sex. Somehow, another Bible quotation, concerning a beam and a speck, comes to mind.
