A State by Any Other Name Smells the Same

Excuse me Billy, I abuse the language or the notion of what language should convey. I follow in the podding of others.

The state of Rhode Island is not the correct name for the state. It's "The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation." It's changing its name to Rhode Island. I guess that makes sense. It's the name used on maps and every day conversation.

Yet, the reason for the change is stupid.

The word plantation supposedly offends some individuals because of its supposedly racist connotations. There are no racist connotations to the word, a 17th century word for settlement. It's not the idealized plantation seen in Panorama in Gone with the Wind, a place where an African slave had no more value than a pig in a pen.

Roger Williams, a minister and linguist, founded the New England settlement after being thrown out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Massachusetts). He purchased the land from the indigenous tribe of the region. He founded the settlement on the very principles upon which the country was founded with one exception--that colony made slavery illegal more than two centuries before the U.S. In his thinking, providence was Divine Providence and plantation was settlement. It's actually a wonderful notion.

Context matters, even though one Rhode Island politician thinks not, his reasoning for supporting the resolution to change the name. Using his logic, than using the N-word shouldn't matter. Its negative meaning comes from the context in which it was used. Otherwise it is just a two syllables.

And it's not context alone. Simple definitions should apply. The word plantation has meaning(s), a settlement, land under cultivation, a large farm tended to by resident workers. None have anything to do with slavery.

Take those definitions and put them in the South, and that context gives the word an additional meaning. Context does add meaning.

The word is not in the South but the North. A free state that was the first colony to abolish slavery, and that sent thousands of men to fight for the Union.

Words do not offend. Their context (definition and usage) offends. I, however, can do nothing about an individual's ignorance. With the ubiquity of smartphones and other devices, people should have no problem checking definitions. For example, they should discover that the word niggardly has nothing to do with the N-word. It's etymologically unrelated. Even with that information readily available in any dictionary, a student heard her professor say niggardly. She saw a classmate write the N-word in her notes. The first student brought charges against a professor for using it. Here's the kicker. The university, a place of learning, said the professor was insensitive.

I did not know the man. As a professor, I felt for him. He was lecturing. The word described his intention (miserly, in case you didn't look it up, derived an Old Norse word several centuries before the use of the N-word). An individual, especially a teacher, should be sensitive to offending another, but there was no offense intended or uttered. It was taken because two college students' vocabulary was limited. They were in college. They were there to learn. They choose not to.

And contrary to pop wisdom, euphony is not meaning. Cool does not mean lower than the expected mean temperature. Dynamite does not mean to blow up. Phat does not mean overweight. It depends on context. Hell, the word love depends on context. When your mom says it, it means one thing. When your partner whispers it in your ear, it means something entirely different.

Context is everything.

Let's move on from this bullshit.

We waste time talking about the euphony of the language and eats up the time we should be talking about the solutions to injustice and inequity--more complex issues we as states and as a nation must resolve.