My latest liherald.com column….
By Scott Brinton
Birds have fascinated me since I was a boy growing up in Yaphank, in Suffolk County, in the 1970s. My parents spread birdfeed on our slate-covered cement patio in winter, and we would sit — my mother, father, brother and I — and watch the show from our kitchen as cardinals and house sparrows and blue jays descended en masse, scurrying to snatch the feed out from under one another’s beaks. I kept a journal, counting the different birds that landed.
My wife and I continued the tradition with our two kids at our Merrick home, spending many Sunday morning breakfasts watching from our dining room as birds landed on our wooden deck, scampering for breakfast before it was depleted. At one point, we joined the National Audubon Society, among other environmental groups. Now I’m ashamed to say that I had signed us up for the society, despite believing deeply in its mission to protect and preserve birds.
The Audubon Society has done nothing nefarious. It is a top-rated nonprofit environmental organization with a worldwide reach. The trouble, I recently learned, is this: The organization’s namesake, John James Audubon (1785-1851), was an unabashed racist who owned slaves. On June 13, The Washington Post published an article that blew my mind — “The racist legacy many birds carry” — examining the racism that was pervasive among many 19th-century ornithologists and noting the slave-holding past of Audubon, the most famous of all bird lovers.
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