In 1917, the United States officially named the tallest mountain in the country after president William Mckinley, a man who had never been there or ever visited Alaska.
According to lore, a gold seeker came down from the mountain and thought it should be named after the presidential candidate from Ohio who favored the gold standard for U.S. currency.
And in 1492, Christopher Columbus, who mistakenly thought he had discovered a part of India or the coast of China, called the inhabitants he found in the new continent Indians.
Both were mistaken.
For years, they, and the government of Alaska, fought o rename it to its original name. Predictably, the Ohio congressional delegation prevented them from doing it. Today, President Barack Obama corrected that accidental naming and returned it to its Athabascan name.
Just today, a student at Texas Southmost College said that one of his teachers told the class that she didn't believe that the people that have been here for more than 20,000 years should be called Native Americans because they are believed to have been from Asia before they came over on the land bridges.
Now, the people of the United States have chosen to call themselves Americans, even though that is the name of the entire continent, not just the area sandwiched between Mexico and Canada,
So does she think we should call them undocumented Asians? And if America was mistakenly named after map Italian maker Americo Vespucci, are we mistaken in calling this land America, and therefore, U.S. residents Americans?
We can understand why the governor and congressional delegation from Ohio may be resisting the name change announced by President Obama. After all, if you represent a state without mountains (Campbell Hill at 1,550 feet above sea level) you'd want the highest peak in North America ( 20,237 feet above sea level) to bear the name of one of your native (Did I just say that?) sons.
Some of this stuff is just provincial.
But sometimes it is dangerous.
Take, for example, the remarks of another TSC instructor telling students that AIDS was the result of black Africans eating monkey meat which was infected with HIV who then engaged in sexual relations.Now, we know that monkey meat has nothing to do with the transmittal of the HIV virus between human beings. A more likely suspect would be the unsanitary conditions that facilitate the interchange of bodily fluids and the lack of condoms and other safety measures that prevent the spread of the deadly disease.
So why are these instructors allowed to promulgate these myths? To stimulate debate? To foster discussion? Academic freedom?
Columbus was ignorant, as was the gold prospector and Ohio delegation who want Denali named after Mckinley. who was killed by an anarchist. But the anarchy of assumptions that are passed on to local students as facts amounts to intellectual anarchy as well.
6 comments:
I hate math.
I thought Denali was a GMC family SUV.
Denali is the appropriate name, the name given to the mountain by the people who lived in Alaska. The Inuit are very proud people. They don't want to be called "Eskimos". Visit Alaska, see the majesty of Denali and enjoy the culture of the Inuit and of the hardy people who have populated that great state.
You are right about how aids is spread within the international population after it burned it's way through Africa where it first appeared in the human population. The question is how did it get into the human population. There is a strong likelihood that it crossed over from the simian population, perhaps chimps, which are (and continue to be) hunted for food. The thinking is that a hunter, butchering an animal, became infected through a cut which allowed for transfer of the virus. He was patient Zero. He probably spread it sexually and the rest is history. That TSC instructor was giving good information. It isn't racist, it isn't demeaning it is just the way it is.
The entire United States Code Title 25 which contains all the Federal law regarding native Americans call them Indians.
Is that Da Mayor disguised as a Chimp ?
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