Dr. Hildebrandt
Source Analysis #1- Margaret Renkl: North American Birds Will No Longer Be Named for Racists
It’s not an easy task to take on to rename hundreds of birds. It would take a lot of care for the birds and their back round. Some names do have a truly deep history behind them. I think this article highlights that a lot of humans in the world, more so the United States are very ignorant to this fact. This source is important to us as we look at the wicked problem in the Gardens. No, we are not looking at the birds of North America but something I would say even more important that people don’t want to talk about. Before reading this article, I had no clue about some of these birds. Just like I was ignorant of this topic, people who supported the gardens are ignorant to the colonialism that taken place om those grounds. I think that it is very important for us to elaborate on our findings in the garden and educate the people around us, and advocate for those who didn’t have a voice back then, in the 1800’s. The argument of this article is basically that these birds were named after colonists, slave owners and people who are not deemed as “good” people as of now. And now with this information we can re-name those birds for the better. Because unfortunately we cannot change the past, but we can change and shape the future. So, I think we can learn a lot from this specific article but most of all we can be optimistic that we can take our problems that we are facing and use this as a motivation that if they can do it than we can do it as well.
Source analysis #1 – Kathryn Schulz: Categorizing Carl Linnaeus
As we know by now, through last semester that Carl Linnaeus is the “father of plant colonialism” and a Swedish botanist who formalized binomial nomenclature. What we know about botanists in the eighteenth century is that there were always three things. Rich, white and males, and what’s wrong with that? First off, the bias of those people is a big problem, and we are still going by those names and roles now in the gardens. Carl didn’t necessarily have a bad intent or an intent to hurt anyone, but I think the privilege of a white male in the 1700’s got in his way. Though it really helps botanists, so much that they still use it today. Carl Linnaeus has brought scientific racism to the forefront of botany. This article is really highlighting that Carl was not the perfect man that everyone thought he really was and gave him congratulations but also didn’t hold back the truth from the viewers either. I think the audience for this article is botanists, historians or students like us. In his studies and field of work he actually even categorized human populations into distinct races based on physical characteristics, perpetuating harmful stereotypes and reinforcing prejudiced views prevalent during his time. His legacy is very complex and almost bittersweet, as his scientific achievements also coexist with problematic racial propaganda he entertained.