OPINION:
As part of Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada, which the administration claims is not a trade war, the president has signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America.” This follows his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
These childish antics help no one, but Mr. Trump is not alone in changing names for political and woke purposes.
There is a long road in Northern Virginia that, for years, was called the Lee Highway. It passes through Arlington and Fairfax counties. Arlington County politicians decided they did not like Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, for whom the highway is named, so they changed it to Langston Boulevard, honoring John Mercer Langston, an abolitionist, a lawyer and the first Black person elected to Congress from Virginia.
Although that might be considered admirable, the silly part is that once Langston Boulevard crosses into Fairfax County, it becomes Lee Highway again. Did Fairfax not receive the memo? Some GPS systems still show Lee Highway in Arlington County, while newer cars with updated GPS show Langston Boulevard.
It gets sillier. Columbus Day is now “Indigenous Peoples Day,” though my calendar app has both. New York State Senate bill S9316 would change “mother” and “father” to “non-gestational and gestational parent.”
Several Army forts had their names changed during the Biden administration. Fort Bragg became Fort Liberty. Fort Benning was changed to Fort Moore. Fort Hood was changed to Fort Cavazos. The original namesakes were said to have been associated with the Confederate South. The Department of War, formerly known as the Department of Defense and, before that, the War Department, restored the historical names of nine U.S. Army installations by rededicating them to military service members who share the same last names as the original Confederate namesakes.
Do not get me started on statues.
We then have the Washington Commanders — formerly the Redskins — though some Indigenous people said they thought the previous name was a “tribute to resilience and warrior traditions.”
The Cleveland Indians became the Guardians, though the Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Chiefs, Chicago Blackhawks and Florida State Seminoles kept their names. Redskins suggested skin color. The others got a pass.
Then there was Aunt Jemima, who was a real person. Nancy Green was her name. Born into slavery in Kentucky, she moved to Chicago, where she became the face of the pancake recipe many of us have eaten for years. “Her face on the box, that image on the box, was probably the one way that households were integrated,” Sherry Williams, president of the Bronzeville Historical Society in Chicago, told ABC News. Green’s image was removed by later owners of the brand, apparently because they thought Green’s actual face portrayed a stereotypical “Mammy.”
It was a similar story with “Uncle Ben’s Rice.” In the 1940s, food entrepreneur Gordon Harwell and his partners put the image of an elderly Black man dressed in a bow tie on the product’s box, “an image said to have been based on a Chicago maitre d’hotel named Frank Brown.” The title “Uncle” was used instead of “Mr.” because of racial customs in the American South. Still, the image apparently was thought to look more like “Uncle Tom.”
There are many more examples of this virtue signaling. Land O’ Lakes butter removed the American Indian image but kept the land. A felon is now supposed to be referred to as a “justice-involved person” or a similar term. An illegal alien is now an “undocumented noncitizen,” though the Trump administration stubbornly refrains. Some believe the left cannot define a woman.
Some may recall the old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” That may depend on the words and what they mean at any given moment.
• Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book, “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (Humanix Books).
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