Racism in England? A Commentary,

by The Lawyers

 

Since The Lawyers stand squarely against racism and bigotry, we sat up and took notice of this quote from the BBC: “It’s hateful and bigoted.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/7467702.stm

 

What is hateful and bigoted in England? The speaker was a man named Andrew Tyler, the director of Animal Aid. Tyler was referring to a government project proposed by Liberal Democrat peer Lord Redesdale of Northumberland, England. Lord Redesdale has proposed a government program to trap, shoot and otherwise dispose of millions of invasive, non-native, grey squirrels (from North America) that are crowding out the native red squirrels. If the population of gray squirrels goes unchecked, according to Lord Redesdale, it will eventually drive the native English red squirrel to extinction. It is this proposal that Tyler decries as “hateful and bigoted.”

 

Tyler is right. This is more than game management. Here is the ugly truth about red squirrels: historically, red squirrels in England have managed to cultivate their cultural identity in part by defining themselves as somehow “better than” or “superior to” the North American Gray Squirrel. Red Squirrel nationalism is proudly racist, defining “A Pure Red Squirrel” as free from any “taint” of gray blood. Accordingly, red squirrels refuse to mate with gray squirrels.

 

Although these beliefs are loathsome to us, The Lawyers long ago learned there is just no reasoning with squirrels. But when the red squirrels successfully enlist the aid of the government to promote their own brand of racism, well, that is when The Lawyers step in. No government should ever classify animals based on an immutable characteristic like the color of their fur. Governments should be color blind. So we The Lawyers have grabbed our pocket sized US Constitutions and our thousands of pages of Civil Rights laws and will soon set sail to our mother country to teach them all we Americans have learned about tolerance.