filed under City Hall | Rhody | evolution
What’s in a Name?
8:21PM ON
06/26/2009
BY
Kevin Reardon
I was checking out the old Internet today and I made my way to a weblog that rhymes with duffington coast. Right square in the middle of their politics page I noticed that Rhode Island had an article written about it. Apparently the Rhode Island House on Thursday voted on a referendum on taking the “and Providence Plantations” out of “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations”. It made it through the Senate on Friday. I am going to stay out of the PC/tradition argument, but since we have until 2010 for both sides to make their all too predictable cases about the situation, it will certainly be interesting to watch.
Here is the Projo article.
June 28th, 2009 at 2:20AM
wess Says:
Historically, the name originally combined the names of two previously separate settlements under a single charter. In modern parlance, it would be “Greater Newport and Greater Providence.” If there’s a good reason for dropping the second part, it’s that it’s hardly ever used anyway, and everyone here calls the big island Aquidneck, so there’s no confusion.
The term ‘plantation’ predates American slavery, and in fact America itself. It has no exact definition, but typically refers to a commercial monoculture. A modern large wheat farm is a kind of plantation, and so is a planted timber field. There remain many modern-day plantations in the U.S., many of which accurately use the term. It’s also used in some placenames (such as Plantation, Florida).
Rhode Island has much to answer for historically regarding slavery, but the use of the term ‘plantations’ in the name is not part of our history of slavery. It referred to the largely agrarian settlement that existed at the head of the bay at the time. And definitely not to slavery, because Roger Williams founded the settlement on several precepts one of which was abolition. That later Rhode Islanders took to slavery and the slave trade is a deeply regrettable but historically unrelated coincidence.
My problem with the attack on this part of our name is that besides being historically misplaced, it’s politically misplaced. It’s as if people honestly believe that by eradicating the word, we can eradicate the reality. We obviously cannot. But supposing that we somehow could, where should we stop? We can freely associate many different words, ideas, symbols, concepts, and other historical elements such as songs and other artworks with slavery. Slavery was, after all, a very big part of this nation’s history, and of this state’s as well. We could pick off one or another word or other thing here or there, but what would it change?
A symbol assigned to a thing, for any reason, is not the thing itself. The word ‘plantation’ has been used far more extensively than in context of slavery, and it never meant that in this state. To remove it is to take away a part of our heritage, and it would probably mollify some people, but it inadvertently invests a previously innocent usage with a powerful history it never possessed.
If we’re unable to separate the word from the history, then how can we ever process and overcome the scars of that history? We can take the word off the name, but we can’t kick a word out of the language, or the history of a language, or the language of history. So at that it becomes simply pointless, and wasteful.
Show me one shred of evidence connecting “Providence Plantations” with slavery, and I will support this change. Otherwise, I’d advise people to remember that words are only tools, not the actions of people who use them.
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