Portland Board Of Education Director Says Tree Might Be Racist

 

               A Portland high school, recently renamed in honor of Pulitzer Prize-winning African American journalist Ida B. Wells in the interest of wokeness, is also expunging “Trojans” as the schools nickname and mascot. Racist, you know. Non-inclusive.

              Unfortunately, the school hit a snag when deciding on a new nickname and mascot. A survey conducted in February resulted in “Evergreen” being the favorite to replace “Trojan.” However, the final vote on the new identity was delayed after a board member complained that an evergreen tree might have—you guessed it-- racist connotations. Yes, Portland Public Schools Board of Education Director Michelle DePass expressed concern over an evergreen tree’s potential links to the lynching of African Americans in the early 20th century, as some were hung from…trees.

 Why do you think they call them “white” pines?!

Other tree species are called “white” birch and “white” oak. The racism never ends.

But if trees, though inert and incapable of thought, are racist simply because some people utilized them to harm other people, then literally everything is racist. Except that, if literally everything is racist, nothing is racist.

Restaurants are racist, because some in the past didn’t serve Blacks. Businesses are racist, because in the early 20^th century, some hung out signs saying, “”Irish need not apply.” Drinking fountains are racist because, in the same time period, African Americans were not allowed to drink from many of them.

Blaming the object-- whether in lieu of or addition to the person responsible for a given behavior—is a clear sign of insanity, ignorance, or a sinister agenda. This is what leftists do with guns. Yet they never blame spoons for obesity or pencils for misspelled words.

Some folks clearly are racist, however. Those on the left and in the mainstream media who reflexively blame Trump and his supporters for anything and everything and who think saying—and believing—that “All Lives Matter” is a form of racism… are themselves blatantly racist, intolerant, bigoted, close-minded and exclusionary.

As are those who blame a tree…yet refuse to take a good, hard, look in the mirror.