Tim, if you don't know that the word sq*** is a slur, you must be living under a rock. Basically every Native person and nearly any book about native topics will tell you that it's obviously offensive.
No one is harmed by removing obvious slurs from the landscape and Indians living in the area will not have to see a nasty racist (and sexist!) term on road signs or hiking trails--a clear net benefit to society.
I have mixed feelings about renamings but IMO removing nasty bigoted epithets from the landscape is a world of difference from even renaming a Jefferson Davis Blvd. or suchlike.
Who freaking cares about changing placenames. That's such a phony "fix", it's insulting. Instead, I'd improve the material lot of Indians in the present day by giving them more tools to deal with their problems.
Not something like this though.
Yes, I do believe that things like this can be in fact vetoed by the broader majority. That's how democracy ought to work.
Style is easier to effect than substance.
And it is a phony fix. If we replaced the Confederate monuments on Monument Ave. in Richmond, VA, and replaced them with Tupac Shakur, Malcolm X, MLK, Barack Obama, etc. how much of an effect would it have on the urban poor of Richmond, VA?
These renamings bring up the same principle; how does all of this concretely improve the lives of those one proposes to help?
