"Why don't they go ahead and change the name of the White House to the West House. They want to do away with the heritage of White Settlement and destroy the history of White Settlement"
About this Quote
It lands like a joke, but it isnt trying to be funny. Alan Price reaches for a cheap pun - White House to West House - to frame a local dispute as a national emergency: rename one thing and soon the whole country will be renamed out from under you. The intent is defensive and preemptive. Before anyone can argue about whether a place name honoring "White Settlement" is worth keeping, he collapses the issue into a broader grievance about "heritage" being under attack.
The subtext is doing most of the work. "Heritage" sounds neutral; it also quietly launders what "White Settlement" signals in plain language. By insisting that changing a name "destroys history", Price treats words on signs as if they are the history itself, not a decision about which story gets civic honor. That move flips the power dynamic: the group historically centered by the name becomes the injured party, positioned as victims of an overreaching cultural purge.
Context matters because the quote is built for a familiar American feedback loop. Local renaming debates - often tied to reckonings over race, colonization, or segregation-era commemorations - become symbolic proxy wars about identity. Price speaks in that register: not policy, not nuance, just the emotional charge of loss. As a musician, he leans into a chorus-friendly grievance, the kind you can chant at a meeting or repost online. The rhetorical trick is immediacy: if a name can be changed, your place in the story can be changed. That fear, not the pun, is the point.
The subtext is doing most of the work. "Heritage" sounds neutral; it also quietly launders what "White Settlement" signals in plain language. By insisting that changing a name "destroys history", Price treats words on signs as if they are the history itself, not a decision about which story gets civic honor. That move flips the power dynamic: the group historically centered by the name becomes the injured party, positioned as victims of an overreaching cultural purge.
Context matters because the quote is built for a familiar American feedback loop. Local renaming debates - often tied to reckonings over race, colonization, or segregation-era commemorations - become symbolic proxy wars about identity. Price speaks in that register: not policy, not nuance, just the emotional charge of loss. As a musician, he leans into a chorus-friendly grievance, the kind you can chant at a meeting or repost online. The rhetorical trick is immediacy: if a name can be changed, your place in the story can be changed. That fear, not the pun, is the point.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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