Author Topic: Name decolonization  (Read 3023 times)

90sRetroFan

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #15 on: February 25, 2021, 09:16:31 pm »
Good moves:

https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/471090/port-elizabeth-to-gqeberha-more-name-changes-will-come-minister/

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Arts and Culture minister Nathi Mthetwa has announced a number of name changes in the Eastern Cape, including the city of Port Elizabeth which will now be known as Gqeberha.
...
Old name    New name    
Port Elizabeth International Airport    Chief Dawid Stuurman International Airport    
Port Elizabeth    Gqeberha    
Uitenhage    Kariega    
East London Airport    King Phalo Airport    
Berlin    Ntabozuko    
MaClear Town    Nqanqarhu    
King William’s Town    Qonce

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The change has been criticised by the opposition Democratic Alliance which says that it will query the costs involved for the name change.

“It is important to interrogate whether the public, especially those residents living in these towns and cities, was given adequate and reasonable time to make their voices heard on the issue. Was the process advertised in due time and were every voice considered?

Were the colonized given the opportunity to make their voices heard during the colonial-era naming? No. So **** YOU.

My issue is when they are going to rename the entire country:

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The South African Geographical Names Council (SAGNC) provides for the transformation of South Africa’s naming landscape

Do they realize how stupid it sounds to use the colonial name "South Africa" for an organization supposedly dedicated to decolonizing names?

Related:

https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-02-25-east-london-to-be-renamed-soon-and-its-likely-to-be-gompo/



https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-02-24-gqeberha-the-origins-of-the-renaming-of-port-elizabeth/

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“We preceded this area for 1,000 years before anyone moved here. When we drive here we want to feel home, that we’re in Africa, and this name change would do that,” he said.

No, you are not in "Africa"! This is Africa:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa_(Roman_province)

Using "Africa" to refer to a place thousands of miles away from the actual Africa and which the Romans didn't even know existed when they named the actual Africa, just because it is on the same side of the Mediterranean, is Eurocentrism. Stop it! (And stop driving too!)

90sRetroFan

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #16 on: March 25, 2021, 10:53:10 pm »
Every renaming is an improvement even if minor:

https://www.progress-index.com/story/news/2021/03/25/virginia-state-university-removes-names-people-racist-ties/6995283002/

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ETRICK — Virginia State University said Thursday it will change the names on four campus buildings honoring people "whose past beliefs are not consistent with the beliefs and legacy" of the historically Black college.

Gone from those buildings are the names Byrd Hall, Eggleston Hall, Trinkle Hall and Vawter Hall.

guest5

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #17 on: March 30, 2021, 11:46:09 pm »
Floridians Spew Racist Nonsense in School Name Fight
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Florida residents tried to fight the name change of Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville, in a local meeting befitting Parks and Rec.

90sRetroFan

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #18 on: April 09, 2021, 11:53:39 pm »
https://wvva.com/2021/04/09/alexandria-renames-2-schools-that-had-names-tied-to-racism/

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ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — The Alexandria City Public Schools in northern Virginia has renamed two schools whose previous names had ties to racism. The Washington Post reported Thursday that the school system renamed its flagship high school as well as an elementary school. The high school was named after T.C. Williams. He was a racist former superintendent who sought to prevent integration in the 1950s and claimed that Black and white students learn differently. The school will be named Alexandria City High School. Matthew Maury Elementary School was named for a Confederate naval officer. It will become Naomi L. Brooks Elementary School. The name honors a beloved Alexandria teacher who died in 2020.

rp

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #19 on: April 16, 2021, 10:49:46 pm »
Should we really retain the name "America" given that it was named after the eponymous Westerner Amerigo Vespucci?
« Last Edit: June 08, 2021, 10:59:18 pm by rp »

90sRetroFan

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #20 on: April 16, 2021, 11:10:32 pm »
JAM used to promote the following etymology:

https://nz.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071213135331AAbthHF

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The Scandinvian word "OMMERIKA" means the farthest away place. Lumber found( in Iceland or Greenland) in an old ship can be dated way before Columbus and Amerigo. Since it was 250 miles to land in North America and way farther to Europe it can be concluded that the wood came from the North American Continent. SO, THE VIKINGS were here first and the sailors LINGO at the time referred to a land they called 'OMMERIKA".

While I hope we can ultimately get back to calling it Atlantis, this is too esoteric for now. With short-medium term propaganda in mind, I consider it crucial for leftists to own the name "America".

rp

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #21 on: April 16, 2021, 11:24:47 pm »
"JAM used to promote the following etymology"
Is this true? Or is it simply for propaganda purposes?
« Last Edit: April 16, 2021, 11:34:51 pm by rp »

90sRetroFan

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #22 on: April 17, 2021, 12:26:44 am »
I haven't researched it myself.

90sRetroFan

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #23 on: April 27, 2021, 11:29:02 pm »
https://richmond.com/news/local/education/william-mary-renames-three-buildings-history-department-that-honored-confederate-supporters/article_7f81121e-8b13-5ec1-bcf4-e6829141892b.html

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WILLIAMSBURG — The College of William & Mary has renamed three buildings and a department that currently honor supporters of the Confederacy, the school’s latest move in a yearslong process to shed references to men who supported the Confederacy, enslavement and racism.
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But one member of the board and the university’s student government president criticized the university for not removing every name that honors an enslaver and not moving fast enough.

“I’m going to have a problem with racism on this campus until we eliminate all of it, and I don’t think we’re eliminating all of it,” Brian Woolfolk told his fellow board members.

Colleges across Virginia have made similar decisions removing building names, plaques and statues that honor members of the Confederacy and those who endorsed Jim Crow policies or segregation. In the past year, Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia State University and James Madison University have renamed buildings on their campuses.
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So far, William & Mary has identified 51 former employees or board members who were slave owners. Many of their names still appear on university streets, awards, plaques and buildings, said Anthony Joseph, the school’s student government president, who is Black. The university opted not to change the name of Ewell Hall, named for former university president and Confederate officer Benjamin Ewell. Rowe called his story complex and redemptive.

Joseph told the board of visitors on Friday that there was more work to be done and that the university needed to “work faster.”

“Don’t allow the shadow of our past to continue to grow,” he told the board.

Brian Woolfolk, a member of the board of visitors who is Black, echoed those sentiments. He said there are portraits and sculptures of slaveholders that haven’t been addressed, and he questioned why the university wasn’t confronting the problem in its entirety.

This is the correct attitude.

90sRetroFan

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #24 on: April 29, 2021, 10:30:53 pm »
https://www.economist.com/asia/2021/04/24/australias-colonial-names-are-being-replaced-by-aboriginal-ones

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Ayers Rock, a monolith in the continent’s red centre, was given a dual name, Uluru, in 1993. Few Australians now call it by its European moniker. A Mount **** and seven ****’s Creeks stained maps in Queensland until 2017. But recent protests against racial discrimination have invigorated calls to blot out offensive names. Some politicians are sympathetic.

The legacies of various colonial baddies are under scrutiny. The King Leopold Ranges in Western Australia, named after a Belgian ruler, have become the Wunaamin-Miliwundi mountains. The name of John Batman, a founder of Melbourne who hunted and shot Aboriginals, has been removed from a park (now Gumbri, meaning “white dove”).

Benjamin Boyd, a Scottish settler who trafficked slaves from Pacific islands, is next in line for a reckoning. An Aboriginal group in New South Wales wants to scratch out Boydtown as well as a national park named after him.

About Boyd:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Boyd

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Benjamin Boyd (21 August 1801 – 15 October 1851)[1] was a Scottish entrepreneur who became a major shipowner, banker, grazier, politician and slaver, exploiting South Sea Islander labour in the colony of New South Wales.[2]

Boyd became one of the largest landholders and graziers of the Colony of New South Wales before suffering financial difficulties and becoming bankrupt. Boyd briefly tried his luck on the Californian goldfields before being purportedly murdered on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.[2] Many of his business ventures involved blackbirding, the practice of enslaving South Sea Islanders.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbirding

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Blackbirding involves the coercion of people through deception or kidnapping to work as slaves or poorly paid labourers in countries distant to their native land. The term has been most commonly applied to the large-scale taking of people indigenous to the numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean during the 19th and 20th centuries. These blackbirded people were called Kanakas or South Sea Islanders. They were taken from places such as the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Niue, Easter Island, Gilbert Islands, Tuvalu and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago amongst others.

The owners, captains and crew of the ships involved in the acquisition of these labourers were termed blackbirders. The demand for this kind of cheap labour principally came from European colonists in New South Wales, Queensland, Samoa, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tahiti and Hawaii, as well as plantations in Peru, Mexico and Guatemala.
...
Examples of blackbirding outside the South Pacific include the early days of the pearling industry in Western Australia at Nickol Bay and Broome, where Aboriginal Australians were blackbirded from the surrounding areas.[5]

Maybe we should start a separate topic on this phenomenon in the Colonial Era forum?

90sRetroFan

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #25 on: May 02, 2021, 12:44:01 am »
https://thelensnola.org/2021/04/23/opsb-approves-20-school-buildings-to-be-renamed-including-mcdonogh-35/

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The Orleans Parish School Board approved a list of 20 school campuses to be renamed at its Thursday meeting — because they were found to be named for a slave owner, separatist or segregationist and must be renamed under a board policy passed last year.
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“These kids, white, black, whatever…DO NOT want the name of a white supremacist BRANDED across their backs, their chests not one more day,” Terrie wrote.

The same goes for teachers, Grant replied. “Some of which have made clear that they are leaving the school because of this. Our teachers should not have to walk through the doors or wear an ID tag with the name of a white supremacist on it.”

Exactly.

90sRetroFan

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #26 on: May 25, 2021, 10:09:59 pm »
Now we are building momentum!

https://nypost.com/2021/05/22/columbus-haters-rename-street-for-murderous-haitian-emperor/

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Some of the city’s biggest elected Christopher Columbus haters spearheaded an effort in the City Council to rename a Brooklyn street after Haitian emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines — who is infamous for a brutal massacre of thousands of white settlers in 1804.

In 2018, then-City Councilman Jumaane Williams and Councilwoman Inez Barron celebrated the addition of Dessalines’ name to the corner of Rogers and Newkirk avenues in Flatbush.

“Jean-Jacques Dessalines was a revolutionary who fought for his people and overthrew an oppressive regime who brutally enslaved and persecuted the Haitian people,” Williams, now the city’s Public Advocate, said triumphantly at the time.

“This was not something that was done in the usual manner and passed with ease. This was a fight and a struggle,” said Barron amid the jubilation of Brooklyn’s local Haitian community.

Of course, renaming a street after a hero means nothing unless people bother to actually model themselves after the hero.

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/firearms/

90sRetroFan

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #27 on: June 06, 2021, 09:52:29 pm »
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hundreds-places-racist-names-dot-110006766.html

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More than 1,000 towns, lakes, streams, creeks and mountain peaks across the U.S. still bear racist names, according to a federal board under the Department of the Interior.

Why it matters: The legacies of sites with names such as Squaw Lake, Minn., and Dead Negro Spring in Oklahoma endure, even amid a national push to remove Confederate monuments and change designations of public buildings named for racists.
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By the numbers: The database maintained by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names shows there are 799 sites that contain the word "squaw" — a derogatory term for Native American women.

    It also shows 621 places with the word "negro" in them, including Big Negro Creek in Warren, Ill. — and Negro Foot, Va., an unincorporated community said to have been named in reference to an enslaved person whose foot was amputated to prevent escape.

    Twenty-nine places contain the word "Chinaman" — an offensive term describing Chinese American men. There's Chinaman Hat in Wasco County, Ore., and Chinamans Canyon in Las Animas County, Colo.

    There are 82 places with the word "redman" (an offensive term for Native Americans), seven places with the term "darkey" (an offensive term for Black Americans), and 11 places with "redskin."

    New Mexico is home to a reservoir called Wetback Tank, while there are 12 places around the country with the term "greaser." Both are epithets used to describe Mexican Americans.

    Five places are named "Anna," which once meant "Ain’t No (N-words) Allowed" to Black travelers since some were sundown towns — places Black people weren't allowed after dark.

90sRetroFan

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #28 on: June 08, 2021, 10:11:46 pm »
https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/education/2021/06/01/duval-school-board-votes-to-change-6-confederate-tied-schools-including-lee/7493301002/

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“Keeping the names of Confederate generals in our children's schools is a slap in the face to every African American that attends these schools," Wells Todd of Take’Em Down Jax said. "Those that oppose the names being changed are acknowledging their support for the Confederacy and all that it stood for."
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The school board voted to rename the following schools:

    Joseph Finegan Elementary to Anchor Academy
    Stonewall Jackson Elementary to Hidden Oaks Elementary School
    Jefferson Davis Middle to Charger Academy
    Kirby-Smith Middle to Springfield Middle School
    J.E.B. Stuart Middle to Westside Middle School
    Robert E. Lee High to Riverside High School
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“The School Board’s decision to rename six schools in Jacksonville is a giant step forward in righting a racist ideology. We don’t need schools named in honor of slave-holding Generals,” he said. “That our children had to go to schools that were named to honor a disgraceful past was an injustice. The School Board’s vote tonight rejects those ideas and is a victory for Jacksonville.”

The new names genuinely sound better too.

90sRetroFan

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Re: Name decolonization
« Reply #29 on: June 11, 2021, 10:31:39 pm »
Let us not forget that we are still losing more often than we win:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/06/white-supremacy-washington-and-lee-robert.html

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White Supremacy Was on Trial at Washington and Lee University. It Won.

After the end of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee, the general who commanded the army of the Confederacy, was never tried, convicted, or sentenced for any crimes—not treason, not murder, not torture. Instead, he became president of Washington College, where he attracted students molded in his image, inspired by his lost cause, and motivated to maintain racial hierarchy. Under Lee’s leadership, his students would, among other things, form a KKK chapter and harass and assault Black school children. The board of trustees of Washington College honored this legacy when it decided to rename its institution Washington and Lee University.

Lee is the embodiment of white supremacy—he lived a life, as I previously argued, committed to racial subjugation and terror. He fought to enslave Black people—so the Confederate States of America could continue to profit on Black labor and Black pain while creating an anti-democratic state founded upon white supremacy. For this reason many stakeholders asked the current board of trustees of Washington and Lee University, where I am an assistant professor of law at the law school, to remove Lee as a namesake. After significant and critical national attention, Lee was finally put on trial at the place where his body is buried. Not guilty, the board of trustees announced on Friday. The vote was not even close—a supermajority of trustees (22 out of 28 trustees, or 78 percent) voted to retain Lee as a namesake. That vote, however, did more. It signaled that Washington and Lee University will continue to shine as a beacon of racism, hate, and privilege.

In response to the board’s decision, the university’s president released a statement. He declared that Lee’s name does not define the university or its stakeholders; rather, “we define it.” But we cannot engage in historical revisionism to redefine Lee’s name, nor should we. The board announced its commitment to “repudiating racism, racial injustice, and Confederate nostalgia.” But we cannot hope to make consequential change until we accept the truth of what Lee’s name means.

The jury at Washington and Lee harkens back to Jim Crow juries—white, male, privileged, and rigged. The jury, composed of 28 trustee members, was mostly white (25 trustees) and mostly male (23 trustees). Many of the witnesses supporting Lee were white, as were many of the big donors who threatened to withhold contributions if Lee’s name was removed. The outcome was never in doubt.

White supremacy has been put on trial before throughout our history. The outcomes in those trials was also predictable. The “Indian Removal Act” ensured white officials could never be found guilty of stealing Native land and committing genocide on the Trail of Tears. White insurrectionists in Wilmington, North Carolina, murdered Black residents, destroyed Black-owned businesses, and then ousted Wilmington’s anti-segregation, pro–equal rights government to insulate themselves against accountability. The United States Supreme Court sanctioned Japanese internment during World War II. An all-white, all-male jury found Emmett Till’s murderers not guilty after 67 minutes of deliberation. Los Angeles cops were acquitted of bludgeoning Rodney King after the jury watched the tape more than 30 times.

When our racial ghosts are on trial, we know the outcome. When truth and justice are on trial, we know the outcome. When our country is asked to reject a revisionist tissue of historical lies, we know the outcome. White supremacy wins. White supremacy remains adaptable, persistent, violent, and nearly undefeated.

It inspires an insurrection. It introduces 389 restrictive voting right bills in 48 states over the past six months. It forbids schools to give a true accounting of our history—a history of racial violence, from the Trail of Tears, to Black Wall Street, to extrajudicial killings including those of Emmett Till, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor. It allows Washington and Lee University to keep Lee as a namesake because it is safer to benefit from white supremacy than to summon the courage to even appear anti-racist.

Historical revisionism shelters white supremacy. It entrenches white supremacy. It emboldens white supremacy. We need truth and reconciliation in America. We must face our past head-on and acknowledge it for what it was: oppression and racial terror fueled by white supremacy. Only then can we start to reimagine our democratic institutions as more—more just, more fair, more equal. Only then will we build the capacity, the resolve, and the collective will to find white supremacy guilty.

Better yet, we could reimagine our institutions as more just and more fair via becoming non-democratic. Democracy is a Western system:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/western-democracy/

Democracy was what, as you yourself just described, delivered victory to white supremacy. So why are you continuing to trust it?