PC names - Grey Pine
- To: m*@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: PC names - Grey Pine
- From: D* W*
- Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 11:45:55 -0800
forwarded for Steve French steev@mail.monitor.net
Dear Medit-plants listers,
I think if best if these old, insulting names are retired. After all,
we're all trying to get along in this world, and the old colonial
put-downs are just not appropriate anymore.
We have an interesting one here in Northern California. Old name -
Digger Pine, Pinus sabiniana. It's native to the dry foothills of
Northern and Central California. It was given the name 'Digger' after
the indiginous people of California, called by the European settlers,
'Digger Indians'. They saw the locals digging in the earth with
sticks. The local indians left no huge stone cities or libraries or
evidence of large-scale warfare and other signs of 'civilization', so
the settlers thought they were beneath contempt. Now, however, we've
learned that the indians were loosening the soil, so bulbs could grow
more freely. It seems the indians had manipulated the entire
environment to suit human habitation. Instead of running around in
nature, as has been thought., they were living in a large garden of
their own making!
Pinus sabiniana has a greyish look, so now the preferred common name
is Grey Pine.
Steve French
Sebastopol, California
>
> > Words can also have a highly charged and emotive history. While many find
>> such neologisms as waitron, personhole cover, and vertically challenged
>> ludicrous rather than incendiary, perjoratives such as nigger and kaffir,
>> kike and coolie (among many disparagements in which English is
>> particularly rich) - even when used in historical context - are
>> indisputably highly offensive to many hundreds of millions whose legacy
>> includes centuries of colonialism, slavery, brutality, and
> > discrimination.
>>
