notageek

At some point when I wasn’t paying attention, someone who perhaps hadn’t noticed that the local government has an abject lack of money to throw at deserving causes got the bright idea that Eugene-Springfield should honour its local African-American community by renaming a street that runs through both cities after Martin Luther King, Jr.

Uh.

The current name (Centennial Boulevard) apparently has a good bit of history behind it that has to do with the settling of Eugene-Springfield. History alone doesn’t make it right; I’d probably be pissed if the city council wouldn’t push through a motion to change the name of Chinaman Laundry Chinkfest Alley, but Centennial Boulevard is in insult to no one.

Unless you mean that there are no streets named after prominent people of colour. There’s a lot of numbered streets and quite a few named after presidents and local historical figures. I can’t think of any street names offhand that are from women or people of colour, but then it never occurred to me to be offended that a mostly white town wouldn’t have street names of Moy, Wu and Chao.

Unless E-S hasn’t been a mostly white town for most of its history, in which case there must have been leaders of the local community of colour. If we have to go renaming things, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to rename after local figures? Every goddamn city has a feature named after MLK. Let’s honour someone else. Someone else famous, even.

Conversely, if Eugene’s demographics have changed significantly in the last twenty years, why should major, early-established roads reflect that recent change rather than history? We’re throwing up subdivisions all over; let’s give their beige-box-lined streets little black-kid names instead of “Charlotte” and “Deertrail”.

But anyway, the city council caved to, among other people, an annoying real estate agent known mainly for outrageous hats. Who happens to be black. And now instead of addressing the very real racism that exists in our smarmily complacent little city, we are going to slap a famous name-brand band-aid over the deal, and at least part of the Black community is going to pretend to be happy.

I suppose the African-American residents who fought for the change will drive along that street and feel proud they accomplished “something”. “Something”, in this case, is a pittance tossed to the Black community, a convenient veneer of multiculturalism, the cost of changing all those goddamn street signs, maps and addresses and the animosity of everyone who really gives a fuck. Congratulations! Tools. House. No, they will not.

Because there is nothing else for the house to be full of. Its tasteful, quiet rooms are populated by understated decorating schemes and appropriately decorative objects. Umbrella stands. Coffee tables. Little rock fountains. Pictures of her.

If it were a larger presence, or a house of smaller rooms, it might be suffocating, but it merely washes over and wraps around, nearly here but not enough. I cannot condemn the grief that accompanies it, but neither can I comprehend it. Its rituals are not of or for me.

The grief lies on a table–cold and jellied, tough and gristled. I can neither touch it nor ignore it.

Hi, my name is Persi M. Mon and I’m a hypocritical pedant.

Item: use of “they” as a gender-neutral generic bothers me
Item: use of “he” as a gender-neutral generic also bothers me
Item: I am an evil feminist hellbent on destroying the English language

Point: a significant proportion of humans aren’t male. Masculine generic doesn’t properly apply to those people.
Counterpoint: Yes it does, they’re just too dumb to realise it.
Alt counterpoint: The gender-neutral generic just happens to be the same as the masculine; it’s a quirk of English and not sexist.

Point: It may be “traditional”, but I still don’t think it properly conveys the genericity of the situation with respect to sex of the subject.
Counterpoint: Fine, you bloody feminist. Destroy the bleeding language! Kill the men! When you’re living in your tofu-munching utopia you’ll be tired of hairy-legged women and the absence of men will be your own undoing!
Alt counterpoint: Sorry, but that’s just English. Masculine generic will have to do. Also, stop using “with respect to” outside of math proofs.

Point: I don’t like the sound of “they” as a third-person singular pronoun.
Counterpoint: Who cares what the “rules” are? I believe in changing language, and an evolving English! Except when I disagree!
Alt counterpoint: Yeah, it can be pretty ugly. OTOH, in spoken English it’s not as noticeable. Moreover, it’s an existing word, and avoids making up pronouns like “zie” and “em”.

Point: I’m not sure that using “zie” or “em” would be entirely appropriate either. Some of those pronoun sets are used by persons who identify as neither female nor male; in this light such pronouns are third-gendered as much as masculine prounes are masculine-gendered, and using them for persons of unspecified gender is equally inappropriate. AFAICT.
Counterpoint: Why the hell not? You pinko commie PC liberals made the words up, so use ‘em!
Counterpoint: That’s a very big contortion to avoid stepping on very few people’s toes. It’s also a distinction most cisgendered straight people won’t even recognize.

Point: Sometimes I pluralise a generic situation to avoid use of what I consider gender-specific pronouns.
Counterpoint: You filthy feminazi!
Alt counterpoint: That’s acceptable to most people, but isn’t feasible in all situations.

Point: Yes, I know. When I can’t properly obfuscate gender by pluralisation, I usually alternate between masculine and feminine for example subjects.
Counterpoint: Clearly, you are a terrorist, and you are trying to confuse the great American People.
Alt counterpoint: Sometimes writers get sloppy and don’t edit properly, resulting in an example subject referred to as both feminine and masculine.

Point: That’s a stupid objection.
Counterpoint: Like you’d listen to reason!
Alt counterpoint: Maybe. But most people don’t care about the masculine generic anyway. Also, you’re overriding your previous concerns about non-male non-female persons. Hypocrite.

Point: Pretty much.

Hello! Hi! I am now installed outside the lovely city of Vancouver. By “lovely” I of course mean “bigger than any city I can actually remember living in”, which translates to “having a population > 1.5×10^4 people”. Which isn’t very difficult.

Today we tried to go to the Chinese Cultural Centre (yes, centre). Actually, we did go, but didn’t find much there except a gift shop and a Chinese garden with insane admission prices. Instead, we wandered around Vancouver’s Chinatown and, yes, went shopping. We now have mangoes, loong an and a jade ring. At some point there was also a glass of bubble tea, but I made it disappear. I’m good at that.

In conclusion, bubble tea is funny.

That’s all. I blame theantix.