For Trump, Racism and Homophobia are Features, Not Bugs: "Monkeypox" Edition

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Donald Trump has a penchant for bestowing and changing names--from "Little Marco" to the "Gulf of America." Some of Trump's statements and actions regarding names are merely childish or petty, but many reflect darker motives. Often those darker motives are obviously just racist. Consider a few examples. Trump threatened to block funding for a new stadium for the Washington Commanders if they didn't return to using an offensive logo and term for Native Americans as their name. He signed an executive order pronouncing that Denali should once again be called Mt. McKinley. And, as the headline of an article published by the Equal Justice Initiative aptly put it, Trump's Defense Department renamed "army bases to honor Southern insurrectionists who sought to preserve slavery."

Sometimes, however, there is no obvious group hatred in Trump's naming choices. For example, Trump's one-time nickname for Ron DeSantis--Ron DeSanctimonious--was merely a bit of not-so-clever wordplay. His other nickname for DeSantis, "Meatball Ron," was arguably a reference to DeSantis's Italian-American heritage, but probably was meant to refer only to the shape of the Florida governor's face.

Likewise, "Little Marco" does not obviously play on any stereotypes of Latino men. True, it's not exactly fair. Marco Rubio is 5'9", which is well within the average range. But then, Trump may have thought that Rubio was small in heart or character. If so, Rubio's willingness as Secretary of State to carry out and forcefully defend Trump policies that he almost certainly would have opposed in earlier times does suggest that Trump was onto something.

There are, to be sure, some ambiguous Trump-bestowed monikers. In calling Senator Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas," Trump was mostly trying to ridicule her one-time claim to have Native ancestry. At the same time, however, using a famous Native woman's name as a slur is disrespectful to Native Americans in general and to the Pamunkey Tribe in particular. Trump's use of this particular nickname for Warren at best reflected callousness to the history, traditions, and feelings of Native Americans, even if it wasn't deliberately racist in the way that some of his other name-based actions have been.

Thus we come to the latest bit of name-changing/name-calling by Trump and his administration. The Centers for Disease Control has started calling mpox "monkeypox" again. Why? So far as I'm aware, there has been no official announcement. Nonetheless, it's not difficult to guess what is going on here.

As a recent NPR story noted, the change in name from monkeypox in 2022 was occasioned by two factors. First, "monkeypox" was a misleading name, insofar as it implied that monkeys are the natural reservoir for the disease. They're not. The disease was given that name because monkeys were the experimental subjects to whom the disease was given by the Danish researchers who first studied it.

Second, many people deemed the name offensive and a source of potential stigma. As the NPR story explains:

The term "monkey" has a long history of being used as a racist and dehumanizing slur against Black people. [One researcher and doctor who treats patients with mpox] says the name also played into problematic narratives that associate the LGBTQ+ community with bestiality since the name prompted false assumptions that people got the virus by having sex with monkeys.

And there we have it. The Trump/RFK Jr. CDC changed the name back to "monkeypox" because of its association with racism and homophobia, not merely despite that association. As the NPR story makes clear, there is no good scientific reason to use the term "monkeypox," and the divergence from the international standard of "mpox" will only cause confusion. Nonetheless, it was worth changing the name for this administration because doing so enables the expression and encouragement of hate.

Indeed, I've discovered further evidence for the foregoing conclusion. If you go to the CDC "Monkeypox" page linked above, you will find a number of links, including the following:

Clicking on the first of those links takes the reader to a page that does indeed provide information for healthcare professionals. Because the change is so new, as of when I'm writing this blog post, the page to which I am directed still refers to "mpox."

Clicking on the second of those links produces a message saying that the page has moved but also provides the new URL, and that URL is active. The information there also still refers to "mpox."

However, clicking on the last link I've copied above produces a message that says: "The page you're looking for was not found." Not moved. Eliminated. Why? Presumably because Trump, RFK Jr., and the anti-woke warriors they employ are not interested in reducing stigma in mpox communication or in community engagement. They want to increase stigma.

As it turns out, the anti-woke warriors haven't fully scrubbed the CDC website, so by doing a little digging, I was able to find the archived page to which the link formerly pointed. That archived page promotes vaccination, recognizes discrimination as a source of health disparities, and cautions: "People can get mpox through specific behaviors, regardless of an individual’s race/ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or other characteristics." Or as the Trump/RFK Jr. team would say: woke, woke, woke.

Renaming mpox as "monkeypox" probably shouldn't make a list of the fifty worst things that Trump has done in just the last week. Nonetheless, it provides a window on the pettiness, opposition to facts, racism, and homophobia that are, for this administration, features, not bugs.

-- Michael C. Dorf