Susie King Taylor, née Baker, was a black teacher and nurse, literate, famous among other things for teaching former slaves to read and write. And now a square is named after her in Savannah, Georgia.
I know about Susie King Taylor from this evening’s AP newsletter. However, without clicking on the link to read the full release, I would not have learned her name.
And this, frankly, ticks me off. This is how progressivism works nowadays. Her identity is secondary to her race. Oh, but we are ever so careful to defy commonsense rules of grammar and capitalize the word “Black”!
When virtue signaling becomes more important than respect, when emphasizing race becomes more important than working towards a post-racial society in which we are judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character… How would I even know the content of Susie King Taylor’s character if her name is actually omitted from the shortened press release that appeared in the newsletter?
The elegant lady in this picture is not “a Black woman”. She has a name. Her name is Susie King Taylor, née Baker. Her identity is not defined by the pigmentation of her skin anymore than by the color of her hair or her eyes. It is defined by what she did. That is, if we respect her as a person, as a human being, as opposed to using her memory as a mere prop in the culture wars.