By Todd Brady
Vice President for University Ministries, Union University

Some of society’s half-baked thinking has been exposed and mocked recently by conservative pundit, Jesse Kelly.

Last week, Kelly tweeted “Yale University was named for Elihu Yale. Not just a man who had slaves. An actual slave trader. I call on @Yale to change it’s [sic] name immediately and strip the name of Yale from every building, piece of paper, and merchandise. Otherwise, they hate black people. #CancelYale.” A mere six hours after he posted this, his tweet had been retweeted some 17,000 times and liked nearly 40,000 times.

Of course, Kelly’s tweet is sarcastic. It came as calls are being made by some who are wanting certain monuments of people who owned slaves to be removed.

Others jumped on his rhetorical bandwagon by saying that anyone with “Yale” in his biography is a racist and that Yale’s faculty is complicit by their participation in this “historically racist institution.”  One person said, “Every person with a degree from Yale should be canceled. They should be forced to resign from public office. Resign from all Boards. Be disbarred. Lose their professional certifications. Lose judgeships.” [Read more…]