Robert Miller, the president of Santa Barbara City College’s Board of Trustees, decided to scrap the Pledge from board meetings because, according to him, it’s “steeped in expressions of nativism and white nationalism,” reported Campus Reform.
In an email, Miller said “our flag is a powerful symbol of freedom and our system of government, but I prefer to pledge allegiance to our constitution, instead of a physical object.”
I’m not sure if the esteemed president is aware that, like the flag, the U.S. Constitution is also a physical object. Miller continues, saying he “object[s] to the phrase ‘one nation under God’” and whines about how, despite the First Amendment forbidding laws establishing religion, the phrase was added to the Pledge anyways.
So the vast majority of Americans do believe in God — about 70 percent believe in the Christian one — but if you don’t, just don’t say that part! It doesn’t mean you have to ruin the pledge for everyone by banning it.
Miller also told Celeste that he has “discovered that the Pledge of Allegiance has a history steeped in expressions of nativism and white nationalism.” He says the author “wrote it in reaction to the increasing numbers of immigrants entering the United States” and “expressed concern about the ‘races which we cannot assimilate without a lowering of our racial standard.’”
But the Pledge of Allegiance itself, as the Board of Trustees president seems to acknowledge with another quote, isn’t xenophobic or nativist.
Now after one of my correspondents over at Campus Reform covered the ban on Monday, Miller reversed his decision, saying that the Board would recite the pledge for now, but may discuss it at a later date.
Uh huh, that’s probably code for “I’ll ban it again when the media pressure dies down.”
