https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/many-north-american-birds-bear-names-with-racist-roots-that-s-beginning-to-change/ar-AAKSmhDQuote:
As the US continues to reassess its relationship to racism, offensive sports team and school names have changed. Up next? Bird names.
Take the Hammond's flycatcher, named for William Alexander Hammond, a former US surgeon general, said Jordan Rutter, co-founder of the initiative. Hammond, Rutter said, attempted to collect brains of killed Indigenous people for study, and also wrote that Black people were "little elevated in mental or physical faculties above the monkey of an organ grinder," as noted on the initiative's website.
Rutter said the initiative identified a list of 150 birds in North America named after people and that it is attempting to get those names changed. The effort goes beyond "just the window dressing of bird names," said Rutter. "We're really calling for a change in the process."
Last year, supporters of bird name changes saw one victory when the American Ornithological Society renamed McCown's longspur -- after Confederate Gen. John Porter McCown -- as the thick-billed longspur.
On Tuesday, there was another step forward. The AOS announced a new ad hoc committee that would make recommendations for guidelines on how to identify and change "harmful English bird names," according to a statement by the organization. The committee is set to have specific recommendations by early 2022.
Imagine being such a loser that this is what you wake up and decide is going to be your goal in life.
