Name game, blame game

Next year Rhode Islanders may get a chance to vote on truncating the name of our state. The state legislature has approved a proposal to allow a ballot referendum to change the state’s official name from “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” to “State of Rhode Island.” Proponents of the name change say the word “plantations” conjures up the state’s slave-holding and slave-trading history and is offensive to Rhode Island’s African American community. Opponents say that in the 17th century the word simply meant “colony” or “new settlement” and evolved to mean a place where people grew crops. They argue that changing the name dishonors the legacy of Roger Williams, who conceived of a place he called Providence as a “lively experiment," where people of all creeds could practice “soul-liberty” as they saw fit.

So what we have here is failure to communicate. In other words, a battle over semantics and symbolism. The irony is that after more than 200 years of whitewashing its history, Rhode Island’s recent track record on exposing its role in propagating the culture of slavery in America has been commendable – and likely led to the effort to de-Plantation itself.

Rhode Islanders should know more about their state's heritage of slavery. (In fact, I would argue that Rhode Island history should be an expanded and more in-depth part of the curricula throughout the state public school system.) I’m also for developing resources, creating programs in the arts and humanities and building memorials to keep the knowledge of our slave history alive as a cautionary tale. Slavery and the extermination and forced exile of the indigenous population of this country are America’s dual Original Sins.

And yet…getting rid of the word “plantations” seems to me to be the wrong message. Partly because proponents of the referendum are defining the word as something that it isn’t. Partly because the 1663 charter granted from Charles II that made the name official in the first place is so historic – its echoes would one day find eloquence as the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution – that it feels like taking a red pen to a sacred text. And partly because there’s just something so Rhode Island about being the smallest state with the longest name.

So here’s the thing: Don’t shorten the name. If you have to tinker, then lengthen it. How about: The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations Which Means Colony or New Settlement and is a Place to Grow Crops and Yet There Are Those Who Associate it with Slavery So Let’s Educate and Illuminate and Teach and Learn and Keep the Knowledge Coming People?

Too long? Then maybe I’ll be forced to go the Prince route. All I know is, if the referendum passes, I’ll be calling this The State Formerly Known As the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Until I get tired of writing all that and start using a symbol of an anchor in its place.

What are your feelings on the proposed ballot referendum that would shorten the name of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations to the State of Rhode Island?