In reading Rep. Michael Rice’s informative opinion piece (“State name linked to heritage,” July 23) relating to a 2010 voter referendum on whether to delete the words “and Providence Plantations” from the official name of our state, it became clear to me that I will vote for the change, if given the opportunity. I take his historical review of our founding as accurate, and I do not ascribe any connection between Roger Williams’ use of “Plantations” and slavery when Williams founded this British colony in 1636. But that is just the beginning of the discussion.
Mr. Rice notes, though I think he understates it, some Rhode Islanders’ shameful leading roles in the slave trade. But there is more to the story, and context is important. The slave trade didn’t just happen in Rhode Island because a few immoral businessmen figured out how to make money selling human beings. Slaves weren’t just bought and sold here, just passing through Rhode Island – they were bought, sold, kept and forced to work Rhode Island’s farms, too. In 1755, 11 percent of Rhode Island’s population was slaves (see www.projo.com/ extra/2006/slavery/day1/). Rhode Island Colonial and later state government officially allowed the slave trade as a legal business until it was outlawed in 1787; that was 11 years after Thomas Jefferson and company wrote perhaps the most powerful words in the history of mankind: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” But as powerful as those words are, their promise proved empty to generations of slaves and their descendants, including Jefferson’s (and women were overlooked, too). Given this additional glimpse into Rhode Island history, it is certainly understandable that some people would conflate the words “Providence Plantations” with the image of the Civil War-era southern farming/slavery economic system, and take offense that the term is part of the name of the state; a daily reminder of that image.
I admit the additional words do not provoke outrage in me. I suppose that’s because most of my family only arrived here from Ireland – as passengers, not cargo – around 1900. I simply don’t have the same frame of reference other Rhode Islanders do. But I can understand and sympathize with those whose ancestors were brought here against their will and were property. For them, the use of “Providence Plantations” in official matters must gnaw. On every state government memo, letter and envelope, the reminder is there; it is repeated every morning in every courtroom; in the legislature, it is on every journal – at all the points where government touches its citizens, that reminder is there.
This brings us to the point where Mr. Rice’s argument really falls apart. He attempts in his piece to draw an analogy between the debate over the term “plantations” and the swastika. He argues that the swastika was a religious symbol for thousands of years before the Nazi party “hijacked” it; but, he says, Buddhists still use the swastika as a religious symbol today, despite the horrific new meaning of that symbol. But the analogy fails. Again, context is important. The swastika’s symbolism for Buddhists existed before the Nazis; Buddhists never adopted the Nazi context for the symbol; and the symbol remains current to their religious practice today as it was before the Nazis. But “Providence Plantations” has no currency, no present context, in 21st-century Rhode Island. We are not small, separate, isolated British farming colonies. “Providence Plantations” has no more current context for us than “Colony” does. We have no current “long-distance relationship with the British crown.” It is simply an anachronism.
Weighed against the understandably offensive image of slavery conjured by the term, I’ll vote to delete the anachronism. We certainly should remember our “rich history” as Mr. Rice describes it – that should mean we remember the good, the bad and the ugly; but we need not be chained to it.
I will vote in favor of keeping the name "Rhode Island and Providence Plantations."
Enoch Powell Was Right
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