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[deleted] OP t1_irz544s wrote

Reply to comment by thisisntmynametoday in What's your opinion on renaming Plantation Street because it's racist? by [deleted]

Nice that you've ignored everything I said otherwise so that you could add a snarky comment. To further spell out the glaringly obvious, however, let me repeat my comment with a clarification:

Hardly anyone lives on Central Street, now MLK, Jr., Blvd. There are thousands and thousands of people on Plantation. My apartment complex alone must have hundreds of people. Then there's the other apartment complex, and the people on Plantation Lane and Court, which are also supposed to be changed.

Maybe people just don't like changing street names in general, no? Again: Kilby Street had its name changed because it was perceived to be associated with crime. People didn't like that. People still don't like Crystal Park being called University Park. All of those things are very small compared to a very long street like Plantation.

>Quinsigamond Plantation was part of the Trans Atlantic Slave trade.

Source?

The area was called by the British Quinsigamond Plantation even before the Europeans settled here, and the land was purchased from the Nipmuc. It was abandoned for a first time by 1675, less than three years after 30 Europeans settled there.

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thisisntmynametoday t1_irz72an wrote

The British are Europeans. They were the colonists who settled here and added Plantation to the Nipmuc name Quinsigamond.

You can keep repeating the stuff you googled. Doesn’t mean you are correct.

If however you can produce the linguistic derivation of the word Plantation and show originated in the Algonquian languages, then maybe you have a point.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for that moment though.

Until then, the issue is the word Plantation.

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[deleted] OP t1_irz9fw8 wrote

>The British are Europeans.

Next you'll explain to me how the British live on an island just north of the European mainland.

>They were the colonists who settled here and added Plantation to the Nipmuc name Quinsigamond.

Let me try to explain this very clearly: before these British people, a subset of Europeans, settled on the land, they were already calling it Quinsigamond Plantation.

Does that help?

>If however you can produce the linguistic derivation of the word Plantation and show originated in the Algonquian languages, then maybe you have a point.

Never claimed there was any relationship to any Algonquin language, because there is not, and, even if there were, it would be irrelevant to the point, which is that the term "plantation" was being used (by the British, okay? And they are Europeans, despite their protestations) before they even settled there. Therefore, this means that the word "plantation" was applied to the area by someone well before there was slavery in the area, so it is impossible that the name is derived in any way from slavery. We also know that "plantation' was a term that was generally used for farms before the 1800s.

>Until then, the issue is the word Plantation.

People are connecting slavery to the word even though the word was clearly in use before any of the people who could have possibly brought slavery arrived in the area, and despite the fact that "plantation" meant any sort of farm-type area at the time it was first applied.

The issue is that some DEI type wants to stir up drama and cost the city tens of thousands of dollars, greatly increase residents, and just cause confusion because they want to retrofit their understanding of the word "plantation" ahistorically.

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thisisntmynametoday t1_irzb9qq wrote

While you’re at it, Google Indian Slavery in New England. And English plantations in the Caribbean.

See if any of that happened before English settlements in Quinsigamond.

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[deleted] OP t1_irzbq53 wrote

None of it has anything to do with the specific use of the word "plantation." which simply meant "farm" when it was introduced here. If you're honest, you have to admit that your argument isn't with the term "plantation,' but with any name associated with the settlers, which is, pretty much, most of the non-Native American names. So why not just be honest and say you want to rename the most of the city?

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thisisntmynametoday t1_irzau38 wrote

Where do you think the colonists who started the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Plymouth Colony came from?

I’ll wait while you Google it.

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[deleted] OP t1_irzbl5w wrote

You're stretching and stretching to somehow connect "Plantation" to slavery. Your argument is, essentially, "the word 'Plantation' is connected to the people who settled the area, so it's therefore connected to slavery and must be changed." Guess what? So is "Worcester" and so is "Pilgrim" and so is "Puritan" and so are a million other names around here.

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thisisntmynametoday t1_irzdgs6 wrote

Your original argument is that Plantation shouldn’t be an offensive name here in Worcester, thanks to five minutes of googling that introduced you to the words Quinsigamond Plantation.

I’ve pointed out the main flaw in your argument, namely that English colonists here in Worcester and Massachusetts actively enslaved Nipmuc people, (also Pequots, Narragansetts, Wampanoags, etc.) They were sold to large sugar plantations in the Caribbean.

So sure, a Pilgrim called his farm a plantation, and you, the amateur Google historian thinks that was harmless, not one of the ‘bad plantations’. But that same Pilgrim also stole that land and either killed or enslaved the original inhabitants, or waited for them to die from an imported European disease so he could have that ‘plantation.’

You can’t understand history from 5 minutes of Google searches. Read some books instead.

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[deleted] OP t1_irzfhsw wrote

>You can’t understand history from 5 minutes of Google searches. Read some books instead.

Maybe you should read something besides A People's History of the United States. I assure you; it would be illuminating.

Again, you're going round and round, pushing away from the word "plantation" to anything connected to the original settlers who - and one doesn't need vast knowledge to learn this - mistreated the Native Americans, etc. That's because you know that in this context the word "plantation" isn't offensive or reminiscent of anything besides a farm, so you have to say, "Well, the people who gave it that name weren't so good." And, again, I point you to the fact that these very same people named essentially everything around us that doesn't have a Native name. You'll next want to change the name of Rice Square (a settler!), Worcester (named by settlers who conquered the land!), Pilgrim Street (the first settlers!), Puritan Ave (that's what the Pilgrim's were!), and so on. After all "the same Pilgrim" gave all these names. Why the fixation on Plantation Street?

EDIT: Fixed the name of the Zinn title.

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thisisntmynametoday t1_irzj7k1 wrote

Your original argument was that the name Plantation was harmless in the context of Worcester history.

I repeatedly demonstrated the problems with your assumptions based off of cursory Google searches. To do so, I pointed out historical events you hadn’t googled yet.

Now you keep moving the goalposts in an attempt to save face by saying I want to change lots of place names. I don’t. Your misdirection is not working.

If you would care to educate yourself about the colonial history of enslavement I recommend the following books I’ve read on the subject:

Our Beloved Kin - Lisa Brooks This Land Is Their Land - David Silverman The Other Slavery - Andrés Reséndez The Indian Slave Trade - Alan Gallay

And if you’re not inclined to read a book, Frank James’ article “A National Day of Mourning” might help get the points I’m making across in less time.

And for the record, it’s a People’s History of the United States, not a People’s History of America. If you had read that book, maybe you might not have shown your ignorance of colonial history on a public forum. Zinn does briefly cover Massachusetts colonial history in the first chapter.

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[deleted] OP t1_is0nrtm wrote

Whatever. You started off with "Quinsigamond Plantation was part of the trans-Atlantic slave trade," which implies that it was something more than just some outpost and was actually used for the slave trade. But then when I asked for a source, you started in with posts about, "Plantation isn't a Nipmuc word!" and went after a vagary in what I wrote, suggesting that I didn't know the British were Europeans or that the Europeans gave it the name, all trying to move away from the actual point, which was that the word "plantation" in this context had no connection to the slave plantations of the south and entirely pre-dates them.

Now you're telling me, "Oh, you should learn things, durr durr," in response to me pointing out that your logic leads to the word "plantation" being offensive only insofar as every single other colonial name is offensive.

And sorry I mis-named the book I read and found overly superficial decades ago while quickly typing at very odd hours this morning.

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thisisntmynametoday t1_is3571v wrote

This is the progress of your “not all plantations” argument. All of these points are demonstrably false, as outlined in many of the books I’ve posted previously.

❌ The area was called Quinsigamond Plantation even before the Europeans settled here. —> ❌Let me try to explain this very clearly: before these British people, a subset of Europeans, settled on the land, they were already calling it Quinsigamond Plantation. —> ❌Therefore, this means that the word "plantation" was applied to the area by someone well before there was slavery in the area, so it is impossible that the name is derived in any way from slavery. We also know that "plantation' was a term that was generally used for farms before the 1800s.

Actual history: The Europeans who settled here were English colonists from Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies. There was no previous use of the word Plantation in Quinsigamond prior to colonization here. The only people here were Nipmuc and other native tribes. They certainly weren’t using the word plantation.

Multiple tribes were attacked and sold into slavery by the colonists. The first mass sale of Pequots happened in 1637. Some were kept domestically, most were sold to sugar plantations in the Caribbean. Also, the first slave auction in the colonies happened in 1619 in Virginia. Plantations weren’t “just farms” until 1800, when things magically changed in your unsourced Wikipedia article.

Sources: Our Beloved Kin - Lisa Brooks This Land Is Their Land - David J. Silverman

This is a small symbolic change with minor implications. Manufacturing a ton of outrage and defending plantations illuminates the mindset of its proponents.

Ultimately we should work on larger structural changes to benefit people whose families have been damaged by slavery and plantations, but I’m pretty sure you aren’t ready for that conversation.

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[deleted] OP t1_is5xrqu wrote

Bro, it's obvious what the guy is saying: the British Europeans claimed the land and called it Quinsigamond Plantation before they had settlers there.

Why do you keep citing those books? They don't prove anything. The other commenter(s) is/are right. If you want to say "plantation" is a problem, it's not because of the reason that the school stated. They talked about the connotations of the word, which bring up antebellum slavery, but you're talking about the way colonists behaved toward Native Americans. The guy who said the logic of "plantation" also applies to many other names is right and you don't even respond to that. You just repeat what you said on a different comment.

What did the city councilor representing the district say yesterday at the meeting of the city council?

>He said that a name change would require the roughly 6,700 residents and 100 businesses on Plantation Street, Plantation Parkway and Plantation Terrace to change legal and identification documents, change official addresses and go through all sorts of other hassles at considerable expense...
>
>

“It just isn’t fair,’ Russell continued. “It could have been a moment for this community to come together — and hope it is in the future — but all this petition does is inconvenience people on Plantation Street and mobilize people into their respective political corners.”

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