Ron Upshaw: McKinley’s name change might be part of a bigger plan

President Barack Obama is just beginning with a campaign to rename federally recognized places.

At least, that’s what the White House’s decision to rename North America’s tallest mountain leads KIRO Radio’s Ron Upshaw to believe.

Alaska’s Mount McKinley, now Denali, was a test to see how the public reacted to the name change, Ron believes. It’s a start, but Obama is going to take the idea further.

“I think he went to his advisers who said [they] can’t come out of the gate and change the name of an Army base,” Ron said as an example. “Let’s do a test project.”

That’s why the White House went ahead with a name change in a location without a large population, Ron speculated. It was also a good move to irritate Sarah Palin and Republicans, Don O’Neill quipped.

But changing the name of North America’s tallest mountain is part of a larger plan of changing the names of other locations and buildings, Ron says.

“Paying tribute to the people who were here before us is going to be the new political correctness,” Ron said.

It might not be so much political correctness, as it is doing the right thing, Don said. White people have been deciding what to name things, instead of honoring those who were first here, he added. However, not everyone calls landmarks by their federally recognized names; take Mount Rainier, for example, which many climbers refer to as Tahoma or Tacoma, he continued.

The battle over names will go well beyond mountains. Ron believes places that recognize or bolster Confederate history could be slated for new names and there’s even the potential for removing landmarks.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you go to Charleston and they’re renaming X, Y and Z,” Ron said.

It wouldn’t be far off from the actions taken by organizations and various governments to remove the Confederate flag, which was, in part, prompted by a massacre that left nine black people dead.