Oregon State and the University of Oregon have decided to rename their sports rivalry, dropping the “Civil War” moniker that had been commonly used since the 1930s.
“That we did not act before to change the name was a mistake,” Oregon State President Ed Ray said, “We do so now, along with other important actions to advance equal opportunity and justice for all and in recognition that Black Lives Matter.”
Our cultural betters at universities and in the entertainment industry seem to think everyone is stupid. Ray thinks you’re stupid enough to think that this name change is “an important action” that somehow promotes or preserves black lives or even signals anything meaningful about the BLM cause. It seems quite eye roll-worthy that Oregon and Oregon State don’t think you can watch a football game between two major universities from the same state with the tagline “Civil War” because you’ll immediately think of slavery and the Confederate flag.
Come to think of it, there might be other civil wars — you know, actual wars — that we need to rename now. (Where does that Buenaventura Durruti get off, trivializing slavery?)
The University of Florida did the same thing, tossing the Gator Bait chant for what university President Kent Fuchs said was “horrific historic racist imagery associated with the phrase.” Of course, Fuchs is smarter than you, and he knows “of no evidence of racism associated with our ‘Gator Bait’ cheer.” But surely, someone will think otherwise. Everyone else is just too dumb to know any differently, including Lawrence Wright, the black former football player who popularized the chant in 1995 and now objects to its cancellation.
The same thing is happening in the entertainment industry. Greg Daniels, producer of the popular sitcom The Office, announced that a blackface scene was retrospectively cut from an episode. By Daniels’s own admission, the scene was “used to criticize a specific racist European practice,” not to mock black people.
This was glaringly obvious to anyone who watched the episode in question. But Daniels thinks you’re too stupid to get it, so it’s gone.
Tina Fey’s show 30 Rock is pulling four episodes that contained blackface. (They really enjoyed that gag, didn’t they?) Community pulled an episode that had Ken Jeong, not in blackface but darkening his skin to portray a “dark elf” in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. The most outlandish announcement was Hulu pulling an episode of Golden Girls — not because of blackface or even skin darkening, but mud masks. Really.
These incidents are insulting on multiple levels. Worst of all is the frivolous-to-the-point-of-patronizing idea that this represents some sort of racial progress. You asked for police reform, and…we’ll stop calling a football game a “civil war” and claim that’s an “important action in recognition that Black Lives Matter.”
There’s no telling how much further down this rabbit hole of panic we’re going to go, but each new story is an insight into how dumb these culture-makers think the general public is. This is something worth remembering for the next cancellation coming out of the universities or the entertainment industry.