AOC's Alma Mater Considers Changing Name of Dog Mascot Over Racism Concerns
Boston University, the alma mater of the progressive left’s shining young star, New York Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, has chosen its own mascot as the next victim on the anti-racism chopping block.
The name of the school’s Boston terrier mascot has been deemed to be problematic. School officials are now suggesting that the name will have to be changed.
BU President Robert Brown put out a statement acknowledging that the school’s lovable dog mascot is “at odds with our tradition.”
The mascot’s name, Rhett, references the film “Gone With the Wind,” which was temporarily removed from HBO’s streaming service in June for “racist depictions” of the American South.
In the movie, Rhett is the name of the character played by Clark Gable. The Rhett of the film is in love with the character Scarlett — which also happens to be BU’s primary school color.
“Despite this seemingly cute connection between the movie and our mascot’s name, the fact is that the movie’s portrayal of the American Civil War, postwar reconstruction, and slavery is offensive,” Brown said in a statement, according to WBZ-TV.
“And it is reasonable for people to question why, at a university founded by abolitionists, we have a mascot nicknamed for a character in a film whose racist depictions are completely at odds with our own tradition.”
A BU committee will decide whether the Rhett name will be retired sometime in mid-October.
Boston University’s campus band group suggested that leadership was not going far enough. In addition to the name change, the group believes the school should consider “defunding BUPD, cutting times with the Boston Police Department, renaming the Yawkey Center, and/or matching BU StuGov & UMOJA’s fundraiser donations to the BLM movement.”
A statement from the BU Pep Band student leadership regarding the potential renaming of our mascot, Rhett the Terrier: pic.twitter.com/G1sCQ1tk5w
— BU Bands (@BUBand) July 1, 2020
Boston University has made several other strides in recent weeks to further the Black Lives Matter agenda, including opening the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research.
Additionally, BU awarded Ibram X. Kendi, an academic who popularized the term “anti-racism,” with the school’s Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities.
In recognition of his achievements, as well as his role as a public intellectual helping to reframe the conversation on racism, @DrIbram, who launched the new BU @AntiracismCtr, has been awarded BU’s Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities. https://t.co/8vQ4doVobz
— Boston University (@BU_Tweets) July 1, 2020
According to BU, the Mellon Professorship is one of the university’s highest honors. The only other recipient of the award was Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who won the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize.
The term anti-racism has a deeply troubling purpose that Boston University seems totally willing to fully take on. Either that, or the school is completely ignorant of the term’s true meaning.
Kendi has suggested that simply declaring you are not racist is not enough. In order to be fully “anti-racist,” one must take on the lifelong goal of activism against racism which, coincidentally, involves taking up and supporting various left-wing policies and positions.
Either you join the left or you are a racist. In the minds of anti-racism’s true followers, there is no in-between.
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