Time to rename Maverick Square?

Can anyone articulate an argument for keeping the name Maverick Square besides some version of the “our history is soooo steeped in white supremacy and the founders were so super racist that virtually everything with a European name in this country is a testament to African enslavement and it therefore would be inconvenient to hold a light up to that abhorrent history and re-evaluate the near-endless amount of current place names, so let’s just forget about it”?

Because that is the only argument that has been articulated here, at least 3 times. It doesn’t become any more compelling or less tenuous each time it is repackaged and posted.

We are renaming Royalston, Bellingham, Winthrop, Phipsburg, Stoughton, Shirley, Belchertown, too?

But that was never established. That the Dudleys allowed slavery is a different thing.

Get it right.

James Garner Square.
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Was he ever in Boston for anything? Any tie, however tenuous?

that I’d be accused of shitting on a sixth grader?

I’m not shitting on the kid, I’m shitting on the hypocrisy of everyone around the kid. If Eastie residents want this change, let them organically change it. Not because some Cambridge lefty consultant wants to impress the other parents at his kid’s school.

A school that got a review like this:

“...the school has below average results in how well it’s serving disadvantaged students”.

What did you quote that from?

Just about every "english" name in our state probably could be tied to something our 2021 woke selves would not like. We need to put the brakes on this before we get ahead of ourselves. At the rate we are going, in 2040, we'll be cancelling stuff from 2025. I mean its already happening.. the 2010s are looking not so woke these days. How soon are we going to get?

as another commenter noted, this argument wasn’t persuasive the first time, and it sure isn’t on the fiftyleventh time either.

At some point soon there will be line in the sand drawn, and we will just have to accept that there are things about our country's history that just don't bode well with modern times. It doesn't make it right or wrong.. its called "it is what it is". Make note of it, understand what it was, and don't let happen again.

that’s kinda where we are now, isn’t it?

But the family of that person is long gone, and so are the people they affected (in this case, slaves) are long gone also. So how does it make it any better? No one is around to care. The only people who care are people who 'want to feel good' about doing something and are far removed from the families. That's it. Nothing else. And nothing learned.

That's my big thing with all of this.. "What did we learn from this". Renaming a square doesn't teach us anything, except for bringing light to who ever's name we're going to remove. (and maybe shine light on who they were).

renaming a square doesn’t teach us anything, except for the lessons that so many Americans refuse to accept and btw are exactly the reason that people are pushing to rename things and knock down monuments

But the family of that person is long gone, and so are the people they affected (in this case, slaves) are long gone also. So how does it make it any better? No one is around to care. The only people who care are people who 'want to feel good' about doing something and are far removed from the families. That's it. Nothing else. And nothing learned.

yet here we are in the year of our lord, 2021, with “anglo-saxon heritage” caucuses in our national government.

WHich means in 20 years, people are going to look at some of these renamed squares in the same manner we looked at the previous names....

WHO??????

(meaning, the reasoning for the name or history behind the name is long forgotten)

yet some people, namely this young sixth grader, did actually research the history of local monuments and were disgusted at their findings.

Bottom Line - Name the squares whatever you want. I don't care.. I don't see much of a learning point here, but go for it if it makes you and others happy.

i don’t care what the squares are named, but please don’t change the names.

personally, i find it very striking that the kids, who of course are learning history for the very first time, can see a problem with local monuments as odes to slave owners. to me, that’s the best reason to think critically about this discussion.

Bottom Line - Name the squares whatever you want. I don't care..

Yeah, that's nine paragraphs of "really don't care". I'm convinced.

Furthermore, let’s rename the square after the Africans that Maverick enslaved on Noodle Island! Oh? What’s that? We don’t know the names of these people because their names were literally ERASED from “our” history?

It’s interesting that so many of us were trained to think that Samuel Maverick is “our” history, but not the unnamed Africans he enslaved. And so many of us cry about “erasing” the names of enslavers—who clearly will remain in the historical record despite any renaming of street, squares, schools, etc—and never mention the millions of Americans intentionally erased from the historical records when European last names forcefully replaced their own names and they appear only on slave schedules as “male, 27” or “female, 15”.

If anyone is truly concerned about erasure, start with those already erased. What do we know about Native Americans who used the island for fishing before temporary occupant Samuel Maverick arrived? Or is that not part of “our” history?

An island? An Island?

I need a bigger family.

Where is this Island? This is getting interesting...