Aside from Christmas, no other holiday in America is more triggering to an SJW than Thanksgiving, which has been falsely maligned as a celebration of genocide rather than a day of collective gratitude for the providence that God has shown this nation throughout its short history. Nowhere is the anti-Thanksgiving sentiment worse than on university campuses.
According to Campus Reform, the University of Oregon orchestrated a whole event this year aimed at “decolonizing” Thanksgiving, which the school decried as (you guessed it) a celebration of “ongoing genocide.” The event page for “Thanks But No Thanks-giving” described the holiday as a “foundationally” corrupt gathering that celebrates the decimation of Native peoples.
“Millions of families gather together every year to celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States. Many Americans do not grow up thinking much of the history behind the holiday,” the event description states. “The main messages are that of gratitude, food, and family; however, Thanksgiving is, foundationally speaking, a celebration of the ongoing genocide against native peoples and cultures across the globe.”
Former UO graduate Brian Kotka told Campus Reform that the event is reductive, putting a magnifying glass on the bad parts of American history while ignoring the good parts.
“While it’s important for universities to acknowledge the bad parts of American history, UO often bashes or overlooks the great things about our country in the process,” Kotka said. “Despite not being perfect, there are a lot of great things about America and its traditions, and OU has to acknowledge that to become as inclusive as it likes to think it is.”
Not all students felt the same way as Kotka about the event. In fact, a recent video posted by Campus Reform revealed that many UO students agreed that Thanksgiving has some bad connotations.
“There’s definitely a racist history to Thanksgiving and that should probably definitely be addressed more in education,” one student told Campus Reform. Another student said, “The whole concept with, like, taking land and assigning a value to it through cost is, like, it was different through European cultures.”
Other students agreed that Thanksgiving is inherently “racist.” Others said the holiday should be changed to a day of celebrating Native Americans. They all either neglect or are ignorant of the fact that the hero of Thanksgiving, Squanto, was a Native American (a Catholic one at that).
“It doesn’t have to be not celebrated, but if we can change it to instead of feeding ourselves maybe feeding the natives or donating to natives,” one student suggested. “Do we really need a giant feast?”
The University of Oregon was not the only campus to target the beloved American holiday. Over at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts, the school library declared Thanksgiving a “#NationalDayOfMourning.” A professor at St. Mary’s College also created a toolkit for people to “decolonize” and “de-romanticize” Thanksgiving.
“Stereotypical and racist portrayals of Native peoples fill U.S. elementary schools each November as students encounter historically-inaccurate portrayals of Native peoples in arts & crafts, books, and lessons about a shared Thanksgiving meal, and songs and plays with hand-crafted headdresses and vests,” the professor who created the toolkit argued. “But these activities are problematic because they depict Native peoples in an ahistorical way and perpetuate myths about colonial encounters.”
PragerU addressed all of the objections to Thanksgiving in a video last year hosted by Michael Medved. Take a look: