Quick recap: a glacial erratic named for a scientist is being moved because a Black Student Union president did enough in-depth research to find that it was once given an offensive name, albeit not within the lifetime of pretty much anybody still living.
Here I rely on the dog that didn't bark. Newspapers have an interest in scandal. If the stone still had the name by snickering word-of-mouth, the paper would have gleefully reported on how racist UW students were, and the UW Flagelants would have done loud mea culpas. Crickets.
The press release was careful to assure us that "private or gift funds" are used. If this means non-earmarked or endowment fund money, that's a distinction without a difference, since that and tax money is one big pot. If this is earmarked money--who is paying for this? It might be interesting to ask them why.
On another UW story, the paper reports that UW has gotten 1000 doses of vaccine to start immunizing students and employees. Baldly stated like that it sound like somebody is cutting in line. It isn't until paragraph 3 that you learn that this is for UW-Hospital.
4 comments:
My understanding is that this rock was not called N-head as a specific proper name, but that the term n-head used to be used for large black rocks in general, and was used about this rock in print at least once. The problem, it would seem, is that some student used a word derived from a word that was already offensive then and is much more offensive now. The rock is almost an accidental bystander. If someone had called a student the n-word in 1925, would we be removing record and mention of the student at this point because people now were offended by the story and he reminded them of it?
Gnats in the camel soup much?
Must that one European species of butterfly be hunted to extinction because it once had a name translating to the N-word?
When this goes they will latch on something else to be enraged about. Being offended is their identity, and will persist no matter what the real situation is.
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