From ‘Respect Way’ to ‘Diversity Grove,’ Birmingham City Council has named six new streets after a jumble of woke buzzwords. The new names have been ridiculed online, with one commenter calling them a “total embarrassment.”
Birmingham City Council demolished the old Birmingham City University campus in 2018 to regenerate the Perry Barr area ahead of the 2022 Commonwealth Games. As well as developing infrastructure for the games, the council set to work building the first of 5,000 new homes.
And, in the spirit of democracy, they asked locals to submit names for the first six roads in the development, names that “captured the essence of Perry Barr and Birmingham as a whole.”
Whatever about the area, the names the council chose captured the essence of modern wokeness perfectly.
Birmingham city council have just released the road names and I hate them so much jfc pic.twitter.com/3x9jgbSqAk
The winners, announced on Tuesday, are ‘Equality Road’, ‘Inspire Avenue’, Destiny Road’, ‘Respect Way’, ‘Diversity Grove’ and ‘Humanity Close’
While the names might sound like they were cooked up by a gaggle of corporate diversity consultants, they were actually submitted by a woman from nearby Handsworth Wood, the Birmingham Mail reported. Labour Councillor Waseem Zaffar chaired the panel that chose her entry.
While Zaffar proudly declared that the woman’s entries “struck a chord with everyone on the panel,” they were ridiculed online. One commenter called the names “patronising beyond belief,” and a “total embarrassment to the good folk of Perry Barr and Birmingham.”
These new street names are completely vacuous with zero connection to the people, history or culture of Birmingham. Another über-Woke Labour initiative ? https://t.co/JmERvYhyAL
Birmingham now the #wokest of the #woke.Presumably the Birmingham City Council Offices are situated in Complete Arsehole Drive. https://t.co/Qnnr8LAxqI
The politicisation of our landscape continues. The utter meaningless banality of these new names speaks volumes about the new, hollow normal. Anyway, how’s about : Crass CloseCompliance CrescentWokeWash Way https://t.co/sflLxzJ7is
Others suggested the names were reminiscent of Ricky Gervais’ ‘The Office’ character, David Brent, and his cringe-inducing “political reggae” video, ‘Equality Street’. Even Brent’s own promotional Twitter account joined in the fun.
David Brent spoke and @BhamCityCouncil listened. Fact. pic.twitter.com/GtCMPV8s7Thttps://t.co/GNJn4O6ftU
Birmingham City Council isn’t the first local authority to immortalize the tenets of wokeness on its streets. As protests and riots consumed the US this summer, Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser renamed a section of street in front of the White House “Black Lives Matter Plaza.” Like in Birmingham, the move was ridiculed as a prime example of liberal virtue signalling, and the local BLM chapter even wrote it off as “performative and a distraction.”
Closer to Birmingham, London Mayor Sadiq Khan set up a commission earlier this year to look over the capital’s statues, road names and public spaces to purge them of outdated and “racist” names. The committee, he said, will focus on “increasing representation among Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, women, the LGBTQ+ community and disability groups.”
However, all of these woke crusades came long after New York unveiled the original social justice street name: the early-1990s “People With A.I.D.S. Plaza,” located just around the corner from City Hall.
https://t.co/wt5eP3ZQyapic.twitter.com/DfDoSiyqJ5
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