What’s in a name?

So, they’re going to take Woodrow Wilson’s name off a building at Princeton…

That’s just the latest thing I’ve seen where the push to remove the names of racists and racist-leaning folks off of public venues. You know, if that’s what people want to do to… well, I don’t actually know how to finish that sentence. What is it that taking Woodrow Wilson’s name off of a building at Princeton or changing the name of John Wayne Airport is going to accomplish? No, really, I’m legitimately asking, because I can’t figure it out.

Don’t get me wrong… I am 100 percent on board with the idea that racism is still running rampant in the United States, but do people really think that taking someone’s name off a building or a tearing down a monument is going to solve the problem.

It’s just pandering.

I can’t actually say how changing “District of Columbia” to Douglass Commonwealth” helps. Maybe it does. What I know is that it doesn’t actually address any of the issues that the Black Lives Matter is trying to address. It doesn’t do one single thing to confront the reality that Black people are being killed by the police at a much higher rate of occurance than with any other race.

What all of this, from Aunt Jemimah to editing instances of black-face out of TV shows, comes across as is “See, Black people? See? We care! Look what all we are doing.

To which I imagine many Black people are responding, “Yes, you are doing EVERYTHING except address the concerns we actually have!”