Recently an internet user stopped by my site to leave a comment on my rant on Minneapolis.  The comment wasn’t so much critical as it was a cheap shot at my “ignorance” as he put it.  The comment to me was laughable, and really wasn’t worth much of my time, as he completely missed the kind-of-subtle humor in my rant.  I resorted to a pokemon type- battle in my response to him, mainly for my own amusement.  However, I recently became perturbed by an article about a father being branded a pervert for taking photos of his own children playing in a park.  Long story short, a woman running an inflatable slide and a woman bystander thought the guy was a pedophile and was taking photos of children for his own sexual urges instead of an innocent family photo album. I don’t see anything wrong with the women being concerned, but when they are clearly proven wrong in front of their face, they refuse to believe the father and insist he is still a pervert.

Similar to the sovenouir hat I own.

Then today.  My roommate’s father was helping put in new windows in my room.  He saw my Russian souvenir hat I picked up at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin.  He turned to me and said, “What the hell is this?  Are you some kind of communist?”  I laughed and said it was just a souvenir.  It was clear he was disturbed, and later I asked his son what else he said.  Basically said I was crazy and messed up. …mmm, definitely wasn’t a compliment.  Guess he didn’t get the memo that the USSR ended in 1991.  I was a little upset, not because I was called something I’m not, but I could have had more fun with him by putting on a Borat impression of some sort.

So how does this all tie together?  Well, let’s look at user JS’s comment.

“Minneapolis doesn’t have a Greek meaning, or Swedish translation. It is what it was always meant to be.”

Your blatant ignorance of the Native American origins of that word strikes me as racist.

He quotes my post’s last sentence and accuses me of not researching the real origins of name Minneapolis.  I will admit that I didn’t research it.  Guilty as charged.  But what JS doesn’t know and failed to notice was that my question of “what does Minneapolis stand for?” was that of a rhetorical one.

Commenter JS stopped short of calling me a racist, but suggested strongly that I may be racists towards Native Americans.  Now, I have no idea how he devolved my rant on how much I hate the way Minneapolis does their business into a racist slur.  Also, he argues that not knowing the etymology of Minneapolis means I’m a racist.  To me, that is like saying I don’t know what amber bock is and that makes me a teetotaler.  His statement doesn’t make any sense, and I think he might know that.  That is why I didn’t want to donate more time than I needed in response to his argument.

But then I realized I would be missing out on an opportunity to out a race-baiter.  A race-baiter is simply someone who abuses the word racist in an effort to save the position they were defending.  In layman’s terms, he called me a racist because he was unable to contribute to any side of an argument.  I realized that I wasn’t do any better because I didn’t respond seriously.

So, after he made that comment.  I did google search the origin of Minneapolis.  I didn’t expect to find what I did, but I felt the sweet taste of vindication.  JS comment suggests a deep, Native American cultural name to Minneapolis, but he will be quite shocked to find out he is wrong.

Charles Hoag was the city of Minneapolis’s first school master, second Treasurer of Hennepin County and a classical scholar.

Look at this history.

Charles Hoag is said to have played a central role in the naming of the city of Minneapolis. … Hoag was thinking about Indianapolis and having been trying to form a word from Indian suffixes decided on the Greek “polis,” meaning city, joined with part of Minnehaha which was and is mistakenly thought to be Dakota for “laughing water” but really means something closer to “curling water” or “waterfall” (see Minnehaha Falls). The next morning he had an article published with Mr. Bowman’s help that proposed the name Minnehapolis, explaining that the “h” was silent.

source: Minnesota Historical Society via Wikipedia

Yes.  The name Minneapolis came not from Native Americans themselves, but from a white man who envied the name of Indianapolis, thus butchering a Native American word in the process.  Its funny, because Indiana is a politically incorrect word to describe Native Americans.

Clearly, JS himself was “blatantly ignorant” to the origin of the word Minneapolis.  I guess that might strike me as a hypocrite….or dare I say it, a racist?!?

And now for the cherry on top of this delicious sundae that JS has allowed me to make. I am of Native American descent.  I had a great-great-great grandmother who survived the Bad Axe Massacre, and was adopted by a group of white settlers. It is a story I wish to share and hope to transcribe from an old newspaper.  Sure, I may not be a modern day Native American, but I can tell JS that my grandmother was definitely around during the naming of Minneapolis, a time when her people were getting scalped and slaughtered.  A time when people like Charles Hoag robbed the Native Americans of their land and resources and the only way to show appreciation was to name a damn settlement after them.

So what did we learn today?  We learned that people are blinded by their own self-righteousness that they don’t realize how selfish and foolish they are being.  It’s time for people to quit viewing the world as communism and capitalism, friend or stranger, bad or good.