Racism and Bird Names

11/9/23 Yahoo News:

"Last week, the American Ornithological Society said it would change the name of any bird whose name referenced a historical figure: Cooper’s Hawk, for example, or Townsend’s warbler. Birds will no longer be named after people but, instead, after each one’s physical traits or native habitats.

• The change is intended to reflect the fact that some of those birds are named for people who owned slaves, supported the Confederacy or partook in anti-Indigenous campaigns. Bird names “deemed offensive and exclusionary” will also be changed."

I had no idea after whom these birds were named.  Someone needs to grow up and stop looking for reasons to be offended.

Someone Learned Nothing in American History

2/8/22 KTTH reports on a school board that has provided for a separate parents meeting for people of color concerning selection of a new superintendent. 

And to show that this is not paranoid spin, they link to the district's announcement. 

Critical Race Theory and antiracism are beginning to look like black supremacy relying on privileged whites to tell the rest of us (both white and black) to shut up and say, "Massa."  Promoting racism in a country where blacks are 12% of the population is not just wrong: it is suicidal.  There are not that many privileged whites.

A Sure Sign That They Have Something to Hide

10/26/21 Yahoo News:

Parents of Loudoun County public school students have been asked to sign a type of nondisclosure agreement to view a curriculum connected to a group known to push critical race theory.

The NDA is required to be signed by parents who want to review the “Second Step” curriculum. Parents are required to acknowledge that the presentation of the material is “not a public event” and that “copying, broadcast or recording of any kind is prohibited.”

"Affluent White Vanity That Is Wokeism"

10/13/21 KTTH:

"A Seattle elementary school canceled Halloween activities over concerns about student equity and inclusion. Specifically, Seattle Public Schools says Black males do not celebrate and, more generally, students of color feel marginalized by the holiday. One parent, however, thinks this is an “exercise in affluent white vanity that is wokeism."

Black students don't go trick or treating?  I could have sworn African-Americans were like other Americans.  Are they abnormal, or to be PC, "holiday deviant."

Some Christians (myself among them) find Halloween distasteful because it is pagan in origin and unhealthily focused on dark images.  I am also upset how what used to be a juvenile activity has become an adult (but not terribly mature adult) past time.  

This is not to say that there cannot be some fun doing costume party. At one company, a guy did a great job with a suit that was hobo hand me down on one side and proper attire on the other.  He was shaved and properly groomed on one side and unshaven and scruffy on the other.  It was cleverly done and not from a costume store.

Vaxracism!

9/23/21 Daily Wire:

"Chivona Newsome, an organizer with Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, led a protest on Monday at Carmine’s Italian Restaurant in New York City after a hostess denied entry to three black women last week because they would not provide proof of vaccination. The women, tourists from Texas, allegedly attacked the hostess and were arrested on charges of assault and criminal mischief."

Of course it is not racism.  Black refusal to get vaccinated is not because of racism.  Black mistrust of government healthcare is not entirely without reason.  But guess what?  Lots of conservatives are similarly mistrustful of the government and this is not okay?

America's "Racist" Constitution

Every properly woke person knows that our Constitution is racist.  They did not abolish slavery.  Indeed while the word slave appears nowhere in it until the 13th Amendment abolished it. Art. 4 Sec. 2, cl. 3 provides for extradition of persons "bound to service," a term that applied to apprentices, indentured servants and slaves.  Art. I, sec. 2 treats non-free persons as 3/5 of a person for purposes of taxation and representation.   In both cases, this means slaves.

So why did the Framers so carefully avoid the word slave?  A number of Framers including some slaveholders (such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) regarded slavery as an evil that needed to go away at some point.  Breen's Tobacco Culture examines how tobaccos reliance on slave labor eventually led Washington to switch from tobacco to wheat.  Many other delegates were active abolitionists such as Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton.   

Even supporters of slavery from states profoundly tied to the system recognized the immorality of it, or at least getting high and mighty about it.  When C.C. Pinckney returned from Philadelphia and had to justify why the new Constitution had no Bill of Rights, he explained: One was that bills of rights generally begin by declaring that all men are by nature born free. The reporter's summary of his observation concluded, "Now, we should make that declaration with a very bad grace, when a large part of our property consists in men who are actually born slaves."^[18]

So what did the new Constitution do about slavery, a contentious issue that risked losing South Carolina and Georgia from the United States?  It did something no other government of the time had the moral character to do: it set a deadline for abolition of the international slave trade in 1808.  Yes Britain did likewise in 1807 but the U.S. Constitution stated the goal in 1788.  This was well before William Wilberforce's successful persuasion of Parliament.

Abolition of the Atlantic slave trade other than by America and Britain was a byproduct of the treaties signed as part of the Congress of Vienna (1815).

For all that America's founders missed the boat on slavery they were still ahead of the rest of the world.  Remind your local antiracist of this.