Dont hit the Nazi he might get mad.
Should be up to the indigenous people. They more then anyone know about backlash and if the majority want it they should get what they want for a change. Even if a small victory.
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Well they call one place Alemagne, another Alemania, another Alemahna, another Almanya, another Elmaniya, another Almaniya, and another Almania
Kinda glad they didn’t take over the world.
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In case you don’t all know, this intersects with Clovis’s academic and professional careers and he’s surely been exposed to all kinds of people’s perspectives on this like thousands of times or something spanning decades.
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This begins to sound a lot like “let’s do nothing and hope the problem goes away on its own”…the problem being the complainers.
Changing names, changing team names/mascots/street names, taking down statues, etc all raise awareness about very real issues.
People aren’t going to change without an impetus. You may not like the form the impetus comes in, but without it, nothing changes.
Let’s stop attacking the people trying to make changes just because we don’t like the form it comes in or because we don’t think what they are doing really matters. It does matter because it gets things rolling for real change.
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Not an indigenous place name, but I see in 2015 France got around to renaming the town called “Death to Jews”. Also in 2015 Spain renamed its town called “Jew-Killer Camp”.
I think the issue of changing obviously racist names, the the redskins, is distinct from an example like Denali or Uluru.
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I used to work in a bar where Mark Olive was a patron. He is super nice, really friendly and a totally genuine guy. Was one of my favourite customers.
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It’s very common in Canada to start public events by acknowledging the First Nation whose land you are standing on.
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Let’s look at two examples, the Redskins were debating whether to change their name to the warrior, bullets or some other shit. I think they could largely keep their brand intact but change the name to warriors, however, they knew this name was racist as shit and were called to change it 20 years ago. They should change the name because its clearly racist and they shouldn’t keep a ‘native’ name because they have shown to be incapable of being sensitive so may as well just change to something neutral. The Seminoles are using the historic name of a tribe with that tribes permission. However, instead of educate people about natives or show reverence to their namesake, they have a whitedude on a horse wearing ‘red face’ makeup in front of a crowd of people yelling scalp’em. My point here is both context and the literal name are important.
Regarding whether its just gesturing, these people’s land is now our responsibility and we can only help preserve their customs as much as can be done now. Doing the tomahawk chop aint it. There’s not always a clear answer as it seems unlikely that North and South America would have ‘native names’ but that doesn’t relieve us of the obligation to try to be mindful of such issues and take action when its clear that it should be done. I’d be ok with every city in America named Columbus to be renamed.
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But American cities named Columbus are almost totally divorced from the historical figure. No one thinks of Christopher Columbus when they mention Columbus, Ohio. And people are attached to that name not because it is named for a genocidal explorer, but rather because it is their home and that’s what they’ve always called it.
Hypothetically, if the ‘main’ street in your town was named ‘Hitler Avenue’ would you want it renamed?
And saying its a small thing ignores history and part of the reason for the fight. There is long history in the US, Australia and Canada of stripping people of their language many times through forced reeducation camps. Renaming things back to indigenous names is a part of reclaiming a part of that culture which was taken.
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Thinking about this a little more.
When i take the approach of “you should consider thinking about x some more” you are right, of course I’m expressing a strongly held opinion.
The idea, rightly or wrongly, is that this is softer and less confrontational than “I think you are a little bit racist/sexist” even if that’s what I obviously mean.
However. It comes from a place where I assume we are all a bit sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc, and we should all be more introspective on our problematic behaviour. And generally be open to requests to do so. I certainly see many posters (for example Cuse recently) going through that work when challenged.
That all said. I can see that it can come off pretty smug and patronising. I’ll try and be more direct from now on.
Mostly we don‘t but I guess that is because most of those words are based on Germanic tribes (just like England and France btw). Germany=/= what the Romans called Germania, but most people don‘t even realize that.
„Niemcy“ is slightly offensive, as it is based on the word „dumb“ afaik, as the original Slavs used that word for people who did not speak their language, but most people in Germany do Not know that. I have no idea about that Latvian or Lithuanian term.
edit:
Something else on the topic of this thread:
We have a simliar situatio with the names of formerly German cities in Eastern Europe. Mostly when I talk to other German people I just use the German names, as it is easier to tell what city we are talking about. As the major ones are oftne just “sound adjusted” that seems fine. I sometimes try to say “Wrocław”, but that is mostly because I have been their and the pronounciation is easier.
I do realize that calling “Szczecin” Stettin, can seem like trying to reappropriate it as a German city, but it is mostly because the pronounciation seems more familiar. Just like I call “Warszawa” “Warschau” and most Americans call it “Warsaw” I guess.
Things get a little more complicated for cities that have totally different names. There I try to use the current name when I talk about the city in general and use the German name when talking about its German history e.g. it would seem very odd to say that Kant lived in Kaliningrad, when the person the city is named for today was born more than 70 years after Kant died.
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Thanks for the thoughtful replies, this is probably a good time to lay out why I’m slightly hostile to this sort of thing (meaning policing of language).
Firstly, I think everyone has their cost/benefit analysis here. For example, if the argument was “we have to rename all the streets in Melbourne named after white people to Aboriginal names”, like you can sort of see the argument there, but you’d be like “well hold on, that would cost a ton and be confusing as hell, how much benefit is there here actually?”.
To go to the benefit side first, I am more skeptical than most people that language policing actually does anything. Uluru has been the primary name of the place since 2002 out of “respect” for the traditional owners, but this “respect” did not translate into actually stopping people climbing the thing, as indigenous people there have always wanted, until 2019. There you clearly see the way language is divorced from real-world progress on issues. I don’t really think it does much and I’m not convinced that indigenous people in general would give a toss if I sometimes use “Ayers Rock” instead of “Uluru” in conversation (as opposed to giving a toss about what it is officially called). I’m open to changing my mind on this, like if several indigenous people told me it really mattered to them, I’d try to be more careful with my speech.
So that’s the benefit side. A lot of leftists put the cost side of the ledger at zero. Like just say Uluru instead of Ayers Rock, what’s the problem? The issue here is, well, to use an analogy, I’m interested in language and a minor grammar nit. If someone tells me I’m using a word incorrectly I’ll be like “oh ok, thanks, I’ve been wrong about the meaning all this time, interesting”. However, many/most people consider it very rude to be corrected like this. Where I’m going with this is:
There’s a general attitude on the left of interest in this stuff. If there’s a way you can be a bit nicer, a bit more inclusive with your speech, you want to know about it. Partly there’s a moral valence to this, like it’s good to want to improve as a person, but partly it’s just pure interest. We all nerd out over politics and discuss the ins and outs of policies and candidates, but most people find all that stuff a crashing bore. Chris Hayes put it like this:
The mere fact that you’re reading this article right now suggests that you not only think politics is important, but you actually like it. You read the paper and listen to political radio and talk about politics at parties. In other words, you view politics the way a lot of people view cooking or sports or opera: as a hobby. Most undecided voters, by contrast, seem to view politics the way I view laundry. While I understand that to be a functioning member of society I have to do my laundry, and I always eventually get it done, I’ll never do it before every last piece of clean clothing is dirty, as I find the entire business to be a chore. A significant number of undecided voters, I think, view politics in exactly this way: as a chore, a duty, something that must be done but is altogether unpleasant, and therefore something best put off for as long as possible.
What a lot of the left doesn’t seem to get is that for normal people, issues like what the proper name is for the big rock in the middle of the country are just a fucking annoyance. They may or may not care about the welfare of indigenous people, but divorced from those moral questions, they just hate having politics constantly intrude into their lives. They would rather not think about it where possible. The left constantly badgering people about their speech is alienating, especially for people who aren’t very well educated or just haven’t moved in circles where these things are discussed.
The other thing is that filling the discourse with questions of language crowds out discussion of more substantive issues. People frequently deny this but it seems really obvious to me. It’s a deliberate strategy on the right in the US to fill the discourse with an avalanche of culture-war bullshit so that people talk less about why inequality is so high, or why real wages haven’t budged in decades. They do all the “war on Christmas” and “ohnoes another migrant caravan” stuff because it works. There’s only so much time people have to devote to political discourse, if you can fill it with ephemera then other issues do get sidelined.
To summarise, I think the cost of speech policing is a Left that is alienating to the poorly-educated and people who have little interest in politics, and a Left that is paralysed by these issues at the cost of being effective at getting people to talk about substantive issues. I think that’s exactly what you see when you look at the Left in general in the US, or let’s say the Greens in particular here (and I say that as a member of the Greens).
I push back on speech policing because where you see tangible benefit and no cost, I see probably zero benefit and substantial cumulative cost. What I ask myself when something like this comes up is “am I fairly sure this matters?”. When it comes to, say, misgendering trans people, the answer is “yes”. That’s hurtful to people. When it comes to Uluru/Ayers Rock in random conversation, the answer is definitely no. So I push back because then I think it’s just all cost and I want to avoid the Left becoming alienating and pedantic.
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No one thinks of Native Americans when they hear “Washington Redskins”, either. Bad argument for a name not needing to be changed.
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I always find this to be very jarring. I appreciate the sentiment but it feels very hollow to me. Like literally 0% of the people I know who frown thoughtfully at these acknowledgements think that Native Canadians have any land right entitlement to, say, their condo. Or the park where their kids play. Many if not most have literally never met a Native Canadian face to face. The acknowledgements are good, but where’s the beef?
To use another analogy, it’s arguably important that we all learn to constantly improve the safety of our driving. Unsafe driving can mean injury and death for people. We make laws against driving in very unsafe ways, for example too fast, on drugs, while looking at your phone, etc. I have also criticised people’s driving at times when I thought it was obviously dangerous, like I took a friend to task pretty sharply one time for overtaking on a country road in a spot where I thought he was well out of line. But if you got in a car and start saying to the driver “my dude, you should really have two hands on the wheel” or “yo, you didn’t come to a complete stop at that Stop sign” they are very quickly going to want to murder you. We all understand that it’s just rude to do this. We all understand that it’s rude to correct someone’s grammar in the middle of a conversation. I’m not sure why there is confusion around the idea that it’s rude to police speech unless you are convinced that real harm is clearly being done. I think there’s a section of the Left who are just like those nerds who delight in words and grammar and don’t understand that other people find it tiresome, and there’s also a section of the Left who have a desire to be performatively virtuous.
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This is very much en vogue in Australia, virtually any meeting or gathering you attend these days held by any sort of left-leaning organisation or any corporation concerned about their image will start with an acknowledgement of this kind. On the cost/benefit analysis, I think that is a spot where the cost is more or less zero. So even though I’m not convinced the benefit is large, like you say, why not.
The “why not” is because it creates the impression of meaningful progress where there has been none.
Gonna add to this lest people think I am opposing the acknowledgements. Like I said earlier in a vacuum I think they’re fine. But we dont live in a vacuum and we owe indigenous people more. An analogy would be opening all public gatherings in the US with an acknowledgment that black people have been treated unfairly in the US but simultaneously doing absolutely nothing about cops murdering them in the streets today. The acknowledgement is theoretically good in a vacuum but woefully, embarrassingly inadequate in context.