What's in a name? Columnist George Will's recent column "The Sensitivity Sweepstakes" reviewed the art of political correctness and the extremes to which it went in 2020. It's worth a read. To cite just a couple of his examples, in case you can't access the column: the curious notion that Ulysses S. Grant, the military genius who was most responsible for defeating the rebel Confederate States of America, should not be honored because he owned a handful of slaves; or that a lecturer in a university class who read to his students the "Letter from Birmingham" whose author (a guy named Martin Luther King, Jr.) used "the n-word" ought to be fired.
There are many difficult decisions to be made in this country as we consider the implications of deeply rooted racism, or of other past sins. But I would agree with Will that some of the demands being made now are laughable.
I would agree that huge numbers of statues to Confederate heroes must be removed, with some possibly to be parked in a museum somewhere. Most of those appeared years after the Civil War, after Union forces won the war, but Northern politicians lost the peace. A tragedy, but what can we do? We can take down those statues. But reason cautions me against de-naming anything that glorifies or commemorates someone strictly on the basis that he owned slaves. How can we possibly decree, from our position 150 years after the fact, that prominent individuals and national leaders should not have shared the customs, mores, and attitudes of their time?
Well, all these matters are being dealt with now, and not all will end up without some people's reputations being injured or destroyed rather needlessly. (Aside: Another telling example cited by Will was in Great Britain: zealots were decreeing that the name of something (was it a town? a museum? I forget.) must be changed; when it was pointed out the person it was named for was NOT the same person to whose moral turpitude the zealots were objecting, they insisted it must be changed anyway, "to avoid confusion." Far be it from them to concern themselves with facts or reality when their high moral credentials are at stake.
Again, these things will be worked out in coming years, in various ways. But in the meantime, changing the past can be an annoying and even costly process for those living in the now. Here in Arlington, Virginia, "Lee Highway" (named after you-know-who) runs within a couple of miles of my house, and for miles out into the Virginia countryside. Its name is being changed soon, at least here in Arlington, but I lay money on two things: (1) locals, if only from habit, will keep on referring to it by its old name for years, and (2) hundreds of thousands of dollars will be spent by government and business to alter street signs, business addresses, and such.
There is a practical way to avoid all this nuisance and cost? Lee Highway has another designation: U.S. Rte. 29. That has a pleasant, unifying, apolitical ring, doesn't it? Why can't we just refrain from having to name every human structure, and many natural ones, for some broken-down Highway Commissioner, pious priest, a Superintendent of Schools who just did his job, or even a twice-impeached President? [Be forewarned, those requests for naming things "Trump" are coming, and many will be approved, and later we'll need to change them.]
I am much in favor of numerical names, or those representing natural features. New York City already does this with its elementary schools, e.g. P.S. 329, and there is a school not far from where I live known as "Lemon Road School." Those are great names.