Amerika

It is a somewhat curious name for an academic building on an old, traditional university campus, but the fine and perspicacious Board of Visitors at Wake Forest University felt that it no longer had any choice. They want a university left to visit that isn’t a smoking debris field.

They considered other names that turned out to be were racially insensitive and the natives were growing restless. Zulu #BLM war drums sounded in the distant gloaming.

It only took Wake Forest University 19 days to decide a new name it had given one of its buildings needed to be canceled. In defense of Wake Forest, the new name chosen for the building was really, really dumb. On May 7, Wake Forest University announced it would rename its Wingate Hall to “May 7, 1860 Hall” to mark the date it sold 16 slaves about 161 years ago. “May 7, 1860, is the date Wake Forest sold at auction 16 human beings that a slave-owning benefactor bequeathed to the institution through his estate. By renaming this building, the University acknowledges participation in slavery, recognizes this aspect of its history and remembers those who labored at the institution against their will,” the university said in a news release at the time.

So rather than just asking the complainers which of their ancestors lived in bondage, and how much of a bakshish per each genetically verified distant former slave descendant they would be willing to accept to shut their yaps and resume studying for finals, the University bravely run away. Now we get naming a building after a former University President who paid the domestic help about what your average Full Professor pays the graduate teaching assistants would rub some folks the wrong way. It was insulting. It was fairly mean.

Demanding universities used to do that to all the undergrads. It was part of the curriculum. It’s how you get the requisite three credits for being properly humbled. That way, fewer wayward King Richards represented the university and its ideals to the rest of the unsuspecting world. You get that on the syllabus when you model your education system after things that people did in Prussia.

Washington Manly Wingate was the fourth president of Wake Forest University who held the title from 1853 to 1862, according to the university; after the Civil War, “Wingate contributed to the success of Wake Forest while actively promoting the institution of slavery.”

So a newer, more woke, and more progressive name had to be selected. The Rainbows, Skittles, and Gerbils LGBTQ Lecture Hall looked ungainly on professional stationary. Marquis De Sade Performance Art Center might have really put the demon into the young, aspiring deacons. The university had to examine the truth. What did #BLM members really want?

The answer was plain and obvious. They wanted humiliated, dispossessed, and dead White people. They wanted that a whole heck of a lot more than the opportunity to write more papers and solve difficult Physics problems. But they still had to be handed degrees, and mind you White Folk keep the student load debt to a minimum. Plus, the university needed a location to hold their racially-segregated, #BLM, special graduation ceremony. The “Death To All Honkeys” Center at Wake Forest University may the only name available that meet all special woke criteria.

Tags: black lives matter, slavery, wake forest, woke