Cancel Culture Comes for … Birds? By Sarah Schutte
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/cancel-culture-comes-for-birds/
Those who think bird names reinforce prejudice have gone stork raven mad.
C ancel culture is at it again, and this time, they’re coming after . . . birds? Look out, Bachman’s sparrow. Because you were named after a 19th-century Lutheran minister with connections to slavery, you might lose your name. Over 140 North American bird species have eponymous names, from Anna’s hummingbird to MacGillivray’s warbler, but some in the birding community, such as the recently founded Bird Names for Birds, are determined to see these types of names completely rooted out. How refreshing it is to know that because we’ve solved all of the world’s other pressing issues, the only thing we have left to fix is bird names that make people feel “unsafe.”
It was a longspur that started it all. McCown’s longspur, to be specific. John McCown was a Confederate general, a historical fact that became a major issue after the George Floyd protests of last summer, which prompted birding authorities to take action. Now that McCown’s longspur is officially the Thick-billed longspur, activists can breathe more easily and set their bins on other feathered targets.
The Washington Post, NPR, and BirdWatching Daily, all with headlines such as “The Racist Legacy Many Birds Carry” and “Monuments and Teams Have Changed Names As America Reckons with Racism. Birds Are Next,” are filled with quotes from these activists. Many of them claim that we need to “decolonialize” birding, or that the black community isn’t represented enough in this field, or that they feel oppressed by having to wear a shirt with Audubon’s name on it (apparently, the Father of Birding had ties to slavery, too).
Don’t get me wrong; birds can be dangerous. Swans can break a grown man’s leg. Cassowaries have been known to kill humans. Our biblical friend Tobit went blind from bird droppings, for heaven’s sake. But claiming to be threatened or to feel endangered by the name of a bird is disingenuous silliness.
I don’t mean to be insensitive, but have these people truly heard what they are saying? It is tone-deaf, historically illiterate, and absurd. The Washington Post article goes into great detail about some of the men after whom different birds are named, and while some of them certainly did engage in some cringe-inducing activities, our knee-jerk reaction to rename or blot out anything that might make us uncomfortable is deeply unwise.
In some of these articles, the men are labeled “pseudo-scientists.” It would behoove these writers and activists to do a little research before they start name-calling and find out where exactly our current scientific fields of study emerged from. Nature keeps her secrets close, and these people didn’t have textbooks; they had brains. Whatever the faults of these men, and countless others besides them, they were curious about the world around them, and they took the time to look, listen, and record. Quacks there certainly were (and are). Ridiculous, offensive, or just plain wrong theories abounded (and still do). But it was the curiosity of these men — and women, too! — that paved the way for our various scientific fields today. Maybe they weren’t what we happen to think of as a “scientists” today, but they were at least attempting to use their God-given reason to discover the truth of their world, which is more than can be said for some people today.
If the name bothers these activists this much, perhaps they should turn it into a teachable moment. Why do we name birds, or any animal for that matter, after a person? When did that person live? Where did he live? What were his original observations about this species? By erasing these names, we are erasing history and context. It has nothing to do with “giving these people a platform.” If we went through every single person, place, thing, or idea from all of history with this fine-toothed virtue-signaling comb, no one and nothing would get a pass. It is an impossible standard, set up by those who think it wise to use their precious time on this earth to point a finger at other people’s faults.
American Birding Association president Jeff Gordon recently noted, “The biggest threat birds face isn’t glass collisions or outdoor cats or even global warming, as dire as those threats are. It’s being ignored to death. Not enough people know, and not enough people care.” All of these activists claim that changing bird names is for the purpose of making birding accessible to everyone. But if this is their method, it is absurdity in the extreme, hidden under the guise of raising bird awareness. Instead, they are taking something that is already accessible to anyone with an ounce of curiosity and a little time to visit a local park and turning it into a social-justice nightmare.
Simply from a language perspective, we should be careful of changing bird names willy-nilly. As Helen Andrews puts it:
Bird names are one of the treasures of the English language. Some are onomatopoeic, like chickadee, bobolink, and dickcissel. Some are extravagantly latinate, like ferruginous hawk, olivaceous flycatcher, or flammulated owl. Some are just very, very old. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors were talking about swans, sparrows, and ravens when William the Conqueror was a boy.
The hashtags #BlackinNature and #SafeinNature currently flying around in these circles are another disingenuous attempt to make a neutral hobby a hotbed of activism. It causes strife and anger rather than instilling a wonder at the beauty of nature. My family goes birding almost daily, and we’ve been on numerous birding expeditions in multiple states. We’ve met people from all walks of life and of all ages. Almost to a man (yes, yes, and women, too), they are excited to know what we’ve seen, to share birding tips, and to impart practical wisdom. We weren’t there counting the number of blacks, Asians, or Hispanics — we were all too busy marveling at a rare Mississippi Kite, or sharing a scope with someone who needs a Purple Gallinule for her life list.
This is a beautiful hobby that already does so much to unite, and these activists and organization presidents should be heartily ashamed of themselves for their ignorant, destructive actions and words. Certainly, the conservation of God’s feathered creatures is important, but turning this work into a nonsensical social-justice issue will not only cause confusion for people trying to correctly ID birds; it will also create division and destroy some of the joy that birds can bring.
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