As I perused Facebook yesterday, I noticed posts declaring outrage over Google’s doodle.
Instead of Easter, Cesar Chavez was honored on the search engine’s home page.
Cesar Chavez was an American civil rights activist who nonviolently organized farmers into a union named the National Farm Workers Association.
His contributions to the Hispanic community and the labor movement gained national support. He was not a guy who ought to be dismissed.
The belief that Google should have made a doodle for Easter is preposterous.
Does anyone really think that Google, a website used by billions of people of different ethnicities and religious beliefs, would put up a picture of Jesus rising out of one of the O’s? At most, they would have tossed in a couple of eggs and an Easter bunny.
If we look back to former doodles on this spring holiday, there has only been one that was Easter-themed. It was 13 years ago.
Besides March 31 being Easter, yesterday was also Chavez’s birthday; last year, it was named Cesar Chavez Day by the White House.
When Barack Obama declared a day that could possibly land on Easter to be Cesar Chavez Day, he said it would be an opportunity for Americans to “observe this day with appropriate service, community and education programs.”
Sounds pretty Christian to me.
Google is not the type of company to appeal to one’s religious beliefs, but it is one that will honor a man whom all people can call a hero.
Easter is meant to be a day of reflection, so why not reflect on how to better ourselves as people within our community?
I think both Cesar Chavez and Jesus would have my back on this one.
Phil McCausland is an English senior from Carlisle, Pa. Follow him on Twitter @PhillMcCausland.
