I’m going to have a little fun with this one while still making the necessary points.

Ok for any of you who don’t know Cornell announced a BIPOC rock climbing course. I didn’t know what BIPOC was but it stands for black, indigenous people of color. As Chris Plante said today, it’s redundant. People of color includes blacks and indigenous people. They got criticized because it was racist to exclude whites and so they said it was open to anyone but the emphasis was on BIPOC. The reason they gave is those folks are underrepresented in rock climbing.

First, and this is serious, there is absolutely no one stopping any minority from going to a hill or cliff and climbing it. And there are plenty of places that you can go to get instruction if you want.

Which brings me to my next point. Maybe blacks are smarter than we are and racist Cornell is trying to kill them off. Rock climbing is extremely dangerous!!

Now for you who aren’t familiar with rock climbing I would suggest that you watch the movie “Free Solo “. It’s about Alex Honnold, the first and only person to free solo El Capitan. Free solo means you climb on your own with no ropes or anything. It’s just you alone with no safety net at all. If you slip you die!

I first became aware of Alex when he was on an episode of Running Wild with Bear Grylls And then a couple weeks ago his move was on and I recorded it. Watch it. About the first two thirds of it deals with his training but one short segment goes through kind of a litany of the best free climbers in the world and than one by one the screen says he fell to his death on such and such mountain.

The last 20 minutes is the actual climb of El Cap. If you watch it, it will scare the crap out of you.

Now I realize that most rock climbing is not free solo but none of it is safe. So back to my question, is Cornell trying to help or kill people of color?