The awful? Russia in Ukraine. Can't do anything about that. And personally the day has been - divorced from news - pretty relaxed. See future posts, delayed because... well, read them. They'll be getting posted.
The glimmer of good news comes from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. The Interior Department is working towards replacing all the place names using the offensive term "squaw", hereafter by their request to be referred to as "sq---" in future communications, with non offensive language. Witness that it has already been done in the Phoenix area in 2003 by renaming Sq--- Peak to Piestewa Peak, after Lori Piestewa, a Hopi US soldier serving in Iraq was killed. They noted several states have already banned sq--- in place names, just like the n-word has been removed, though embarrassingly recently. The necessary 60 day comment period is beginning, and they want to offer 5 alternative names in each of - can you believe it? - 660 places on the US maps.
They are looking for suggestions. One idea is to to change the offensive names of geographical features to that of a nearby feature. So "Sq--" River might become White River since it flows by White Mountain. (Those names are pulled completely out of a sleep-deprived hat. I have no knowledge of any such features with those names in likely combinations.) Another idea would be to put the actual name of an indigenous woman of note from that area on the feature. Or perhaps a name acknowledging an event which happened there. And on and on.
There is already a minor backlash from people who believe that sq--- is simply an Indian word for woman. In this confused state they imagine how forward thinking we already by honoring all these native women this way. It is in fact easily replaceable with what we delicately call "the c word", denigrating native women by reducing them to the single part of their anatomy that the men naming then found useful. Imagine, for example, if any landmark, road, bridge, county or state named after a famous white man had instead been named by an enemy who wanted the world to know that person was nothing, a disgrace, a vulgarity. Can you see the George Washington Bridge going by the moniker "Limp Dick Bridge"? Or saying, "I live in Drippy Dong County," and, "Our nation's capitol is Teeny Penie D.C.?"
Perhaps, if this goes through well, we can point to ourselves and justifiably claim we're starting to grow up as a culture. Just a bit.
Thank you, Secretary Haaland.
No comments:
Post a Comment