Names, okay. But where does it stop? If I donate to a non-profit I want the money to go to the mission (in this case, bird conservation). Not towards indulgences by paying off DEI administrators or diverting funds to unrelated "social justice" causes.
Historians will want to look back & change the names of institutions named for people who owned Priuses. Those ridiculous un-battery-recyclable status symbols built on the backs of cobalt-mining children that made the leash China has us on for rare minerals like lithium even shorter. Well done. I'll take my 86 Honda Civic, of which I am the original owner, which has gotten and STILL gets 40 mpg, any day of the week.
Audubon owned slaves. I. Don't. Care. If the Audubon Society changes its name, I will respond precisely the same way I did when the Confederate Air Force changed its name to the Commemorative Air Force or when Anheuser-Busch lost its mind: I will withdraw all monetary support. My few dollars don't mean much to these organizations, but it makes ME happy, and that's all that matters.
I’m sorry but including Christian Cooper in this story is indicative of the nature (pun intended) of this piece. This guy threatened a woman with attempting to steal her dogs and when she gave a physical description to the police, cried racism to hide behind his bad behavior. Virtue signaling with name changes is still just virtue signaling. Instead of worrying about the name and the history, maybe worry more about the birds, and perhaps about the human feces they have to ignore as they step over it. Rome is burning while Nero fiddles....
Being a progressive means sacrificing 10,000 years of human history to 50 years of utopian thinking. “Colonialism” is simply the way people lived - until a bunch of privileged brats decided their cushy, guilt ridden, elite ideas more more important then every one else’s. So disheartening...
This piece made me chuckle out loud a few times. I have worked in nonprofits for 11 years and I've been following the leftist, DIE madness in the industry that is rampant and taking over missions and causing such a ruckus. It's everywhere, grab your popcorn and get Googling if you want a show - nonprofits are EATING each other from the inside out over this stuff instead of focusing on what they were really meant to do: their missions!
The Audubon name change is just one of many I am aware of that are having conversations about how their history or a name or some other innocuous piece of their organization that they dug up for some perverted attempt at prostration in the wake of George Floyd because it is perceived as "harming" marginalized communities. It doesn't cause any harm, that's absolutely ridiculous. Most people don't even know who Audubon was let alone that he owned slaves. The name had changed already because it had become synonymous with conservation. The name was redeemed through the acts of the organization in preserving nature, habitats, and bringing joy to retirees looking for bushtits all over the U.S. in a way a dead man for whom it is named cannot. Must everything be reduced to this single, small-minded contention that has to do with the fact that early America involved slavery? Someone find me a civilization that did not participate in such immoral and horrible acts...go on, I'll wait...
Everything is damned and dirty in such a narrow, reductionist narrative and frankly, it's exhausting and it distracts from REAL issues and REAL harms that are happening to marginalized communities that any nonprofit worth its salt would actually be working on. By all means, focus on changing the Audubon society's name because the namesake had slaves about 150 years ago instead of trying to stop the rise of Black on Black crime, the ever increasing high school drop out, the decreasing literary rates in fourth graders, and the epidemic of opioid deaths that are happening NOW. Great idea - you might as well go fly a kite it'll be just as effective as changing an organization's name in the fight against harms to marginalized people.
The problem with most of these people who support cancellations of the past, or presentism, is they rarely ever improve the present. On the contrary, in all likelihood they’re setting us up for a terrible future.
Why is it so hard to understand that 300 years ago social values and circumstances were different than they are today and that slavery was common all over the world? Why all the hand-wringing and hair-pulling instead of celebration for the fact that it was WE (i.e., Britain and the US) who were the first to outlaw slavery!?
Nelson gives the game away. Starts out saying it’s about slavery. Then somehow “harming ‘marginalized’ communities”. Then “white supremacy embedded in the outdoors “. In other words, embedded in everything everywhere, so tear it all down.
It’s a mass delusion he and millions have bought into. They are cultists. And they are winning.
Taking the logic of this, we get rid of that racist Declaration of Independence and all other documents that are the DNA of this country. This sounds to me like Mao’s New Man and the great leap forward. Is this the objective for the USA? If so, this country is really over. I see a lot of virtue signaling and little change, where change is important. In the communities most affected by racism and classism.
This is a brilliant article, and I am amazed by how others think. What strikes me is that we must live by the dictates of an over-sensitive, ideological group of progressives. Only a few people who need help understanding history or human nature care about the name Audubon. But since their little feelings get hurt, the rest of us have to walk on eggshells around them. I was so glad that some chapters kept the name and others withdrew their funding. What some call the culture wars are, in reality, people just defending sanity. I don't need to be told what I am by a bunch of idiot leftists. If they want to start their own group but know this is not a march for progress. This change is actually regressive as it's a descent toward totalitarianism. Thanks again for this provocative and educational read.
“This issue made liberal-minded people strikingly illiberal”
There’s a strange irony in this whole dynamic, the effort to dig up forgotten misdeeds and remind everyone of how they should feel harmed seems more to do more harm than just letting the thing continue to compost and lose its stench.
Cooper said it himself, until someone told him he should be offended and hurt, he wasn’t.
Names, okay. But where does it stop? If I donate to a non-profit I want the money to go to the mission (in this case, bird conservation). Not towards indulgences by paying off DEI administrators or diverting funds to unrelated "social justice" causes.
Presentism is vile. Acknowledging the man's past is one thing. Changing the society's name is foolish.
Historians will want to look back & change the names of institutions named for people who owned Priuses. Those ridiculous un-battery-recyclable status symbols built on the backs of cobalt-mining children that made the leash China has us on for rare minerals like lithium even shorter. Well done. I'll take my 86 Honda Civic, of which I am the original owner, which has gotten and STILL gets 40 mpg, any day of the week.
Audubon owned slaves. I. Don't. Care. If the Audubon Society changes its name, I will respond precisely the same way I did when the Confederate Air Force changed its name to the Commemorative Air Force or when Anheuser-Busch lost its mind: I will withdraw all monetary support. My few dollars don't mean much to these organizations, but it makes ME happy, and that's all that matters.
I’m sorry but including Christian Cooper in this story is indicative of the nature (pun intended) of this piece. This guy threatened a woman with attempting to steal her dogs and when she gave a physical description to the police, cried racism to hide behind his bad behavior. Virtue signaling with name changes is still just virtue signaling. Instead of worrying about the name and the history, maybe worry more about the birds, and perhaps about the human feces they have to ignore as they step over it. Rome is burning while Nero fiddles....
Being a progressive means sacrificing 10,000 years of human history to 50 years of utopian thinking. “Colonialism” is simply the way people lived - until a bunch of privileged brats decided their cushy, guilt ridden, elite ideas more more important then every one else’s. So disheartening...
This piece made me chuckle out loud a few times. I have worked in nonprofits for 11 years and I've been following the leftist, DIE madness in the industry that is rampant and taking over missions and causing such a ruckus. It's everywhere, grab your popcorn and get Googling if you want a show - nonprofits are EATING each other from the inside out over this stuff instead of focusing on what they were really meant to do: their missions!
The Audubon name change is just one of many I am aware of that are having conversations about how their history or a name or some other innocuous piece of their organization that they dug up for some perverted attempt at prostration in the wake of George Floyd because it is perceived as "harming" marginalized communities. It doesn't cause any harm, that's absolutely ridiculous. Most people don't even know who Audubon was let alone that he owned slaves. The name had changed already because it had become synonymous with conservation. The name was redeemed through the acts of the organization in preserving nature, habitats, and bringing joy to retirees looking for bushtits all over the U.S. in a way a dead man for whom it is named cannot. Must everything be reduced to this single, small-minded contention that has to do with the fact that early America involved slavery? Someone find me a civilization that did not participate in such immoral and horrible acts...go on, I'll wait...
Everything is damned and dirty in such a narrow, reductionist narrative and frankly, it's exhausting and it distracts from REAL issues and REAL harms that are happening to marginalized communities that any nonprofit worth its salt would actually be working on. By all means, focus on changing the Audubon society's name because the namesake had slaves about 150 years ago instead of trying to stop the rise of Black on Black crime, the ever increasing high school drop out, the decreasing literary rates in fourth graders, and the epidemic of opioid deaths that are happening NOW. Great idea - you might as well go fly a kite it'll be just as effective as changing an organization's name in the fight against harms to marginalized people.
The problem with most of these people who support cancellations of the past, or presentism, is they rarely ever improve the present. On the contrary, in all likelihood they’re setting us up for a terrible future.
I wonder what all these loons would says about the blacks who owned black slaves in the south.
Why is it so hard to understand that 300 years ago social values and circumstances were different than they are today and that slavery was common all over the world? Why all the hand-wringing and hair-pulling instead of celebration for the fact that it was WE (i.e., Britain and the US) who were the first to outlaw slavery!?
Should've left it buried. Who he was is unimportant. What the organization has done since it was founded is what the name means.
Nelson gives the game away. Starts out saying it’s about slavery. Then somehow “harming ‘marginalized’ communities”. Then “white supremacy embedded in the outdoors “. In other words, embedded in everything everywhere, so tear it all down.
It’s a mass delusion he and millions have bought into. They are cultists. And they are winning.
Taking the logic of this, we get rid of that racist Declaration of Independence and all other documents that are the DNA of this country. This sounds to me like Mao’s New Man and the great leap forward. Is this the objective for the USA? If so, this country is really over. I see a lot of virtue signaling and little change, where change is important. In the communities most affected by racism and classism.
This is a brilliant article, and I am amazed by how others think. What strikes me is that we must live by the dictates of an over-sensitive, ideological group of progressives. Only a few people who need help understanding history or human nature care about the name Audubon. But since their little feelings get hurt, the rest of us have to walk on eggshells around them. I was so glad that some chapters kept the name and others withdrew their funding. What some call the culture wars are, in reality, people just defending sanity. I don't need to be told what I am by a bunch of idiot leftists. If they want to start their own group but know this is not a march for progress. This change is actually regressive as it's a descent toward totalitarianism. Thanks again for this provocative and educational read.
“This issue made liberal-minded people strikingly illiberal”
There’s a strange irony in this whole dynamic, the effort to dig up forgotten misdeeds and remind everyone of how they should feel harmed seems more to do more harm than just letting the thing continue to compost and lose its stench.
Cooper said it himself, until someone told him he should be offended and hurt, he wasn’t.
And when all is said and done, Audubon was the one who started this. He was white and a man. Get over it and go look for birds.