When I read the news that the White House would change the name of North America’s highest peak, I was elated. And thankful. Mt. McKinley will now be Denali. Outstanding!

The article was posted under the headline on Yahoo!’s frontpage:

Obama renames North America’s highest peak
The president’s action is a symbolic gesture to Alaska Natives on the eve of his historic visit to Alaska. Wades into decades-old conflict »

'Symbolic gestures reveal our true character.' Click To Tweet

My elation was tempered by the phrase “symbolic gesture,” which I initially found insulting. Thanks to craven politics and an era of deep cynicism, we have come to recognize symbolic gestures as empty and unimportant.

But ask native peoples about the importance of their names. Ask them how they feel when we mock them with football team mascots. There is power in these names.

Then look at how the opponents of such a “symbolic gesture” get twisted into a ball of rage. How comfortable whites get all pissy about the Washington Football team and rage about political correctness and how this is representative of how awful things are and how hard it is to be a white person in America and blah blah blah. Suddenly that mere “symbolic gesture” transforms into a representation of tyranny.

So yeah, this is a pretty freakin’ awesome symbolic gesture. Because symbolic gestures have power and actually are important.

This is particularly true when the source of said symbolic gesture is the President. Presidents use symbolic gestures to not only set policy in a bureaucratic sense, but to move the conversation. Symbolic gestures are as important for what they are, a President visiting Ground Zero on 9/11, and when they don’t actually arrive, like a plane flying over New Orleans.

Symbolic gestures reveal our true character. And this symbolic gesture represents what I demand from every person and every president of the United States: respect for the dignity of every human being. Respect for all, but most especially, most importantly for those who have been beaten and abused and tortured and ghettoized and left to die. People who have been cheated and swindled and lied to and backstabbed from before there was a country here.

Because it is presidents who have lied and murdered and ransomed Native Americans. It is presidents of universities who have abandoned promises of scholarships and government officials who have broken treaties and military men who have forced native populations off of their land: lands that they owned and named and built traditions on.

I expect the President to at least treat all the people of this country with dignity. And actually prove it. Often with deeply resonant and symbolic gestures. Because this is how we are pushed into doing the right thing. How we all make better choices and learn to respect the dignity of others.

As Rev. Dr. Sharon Watkins described the church’s response to race:

“If we can’t say Black Lives Matter then we don’t mean All Lives Matter.”

So we don’t get to sit in our ivory towers and our fixer-uppers and rail about all the nastiness in the world and then nitpick about attempts to find dignity. We don’t get to be dicks just because we’ve always been dicks. Or because we think it is a dick move to call out people for being dicks. Or more to the point, for simply saying

My life matters.

My people matter.

Or in the case of Denali, our people have been here 10,000 years, and we named this mountain centuries before you got here. Your claim of a century’s tradition is nothing. Because this is ours, not yours.

See for yourself. Jordan Klepper took a Daily Show crew to investigate the intense “debate” a couple of months ago.

 

Or it could be that simple and the message is one that applies to all of us. Not just Ohio.

Don’t be a dick.