How to Rename a Place
Examine a detailed map of pretty much any part of the United States and you can find scars left by racism. A reservoir in New Mexico is named Wetback Tank. Mulatto Bayou, in Louisiana, is one of several places using that slur. A half-dozen, from Florida to Colorado, include “Redskin”; Oregon has a Dead Injun Creek. Hundreds of place names include “Negro” or “Squaw,” among other, similarly offensive names.
Some have been updated, but only recently. Squaw Tits, a pair of pinnacles southwest of Phoenix, Arizona, has since last year been Isanaklesh Peaks. Louisiana’s Dead Negro Branch was renamed Alexander Branch, after a late local civil-rights leader. Mulatto Mountain, North Carolina, became Simone Mountain, honoring the great Black pianist and singer (and Old North State native) Nina Simone.
The new names are the work of the Board on Geographic Names, a little-known federal body with the remarkable power to literally remake the map. Founded in 1890, it is an Ocean’s 11 of civil servants: subject-matter experts from across the government—including the Pentagon and the Postal Service, the Commerce Department and the CIA—who have come together not to conduct a heist but to approve official names of lakes, mountains, and valleys on government documents.
“I think it is quite esoteric,” Representative Al Green of Texas told me over the summer. “It is known to few, has much power, and exercises that with a lot of deliberation.”
[John McWhorter: Racist is a tough little word]
Usually, the public eye is far from the BGN, a member of the class of government bodies whose work you could go a lifetime without thinking about, even though it’s all around you. But the board now finds itself in the middle of the fiery national debate over racism and language. In recent years, the BGN has spent more of its time reconsidering offensive names than doing anything else, but the process typically takes months and is reactive by design,
