Just took a trip on the Amtrak Southwest Chief. It goes through Navajo & Pueblo reservations, in AZ & NM. Therefore I assume the name “chief” is a “tribute” to Native Americans . If I am correct, why no PC uproar , the kind that made Stanford drop Indians, & St. John’s drop Redmen, & continues to demand removal of names Braves, Indians, Redskins, & oh yes, Chiefs?
My question is not whether the names should be changed, but why I haven’t heard about the Amtrak Chief before. (Maybe because nobody knows or cares about Amtrak?)
The bulk of the Southwest Chief’s route is former Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe territory (now BNSF). Prior to Amtrak, several of ATSF’s hottest passenger trains had “Chief” monikers, of which “Super Chief” was the best-known. Thus the name of the Amtrak train is mainly a tribute to the former operator of the service.
As to why no one has made the name an issue, the OP has already named one reason; others, IMO, are that hardly anyone considers “Chief” a pejorative term, and that it refers to an inanimate object rather than a group of people.
Useless trivia: in Zimbabwe, the only place one is likely to see the word “Rhodesia” displayed in public is on the side of passenger carriages at the National Railway Museum. For railfans, history trumps PC.
Thank you. I think though, that the KC Chiefs,maybe because they do or did have an Indian mascot, were in the same category as Redskins, Braves & Indians.