Reformed States Of America

This is my take on C. Etzel Pearcy's 38 states map, with new names based strictly on geography and Indigenous American culture, and the incorporation of all five currently inhabited US territories as three new states.

For those who don't know, C. Etzel Pearcy was a geography professor at California State University, Los Angeles. A few decades ago, he created a proposal to redesign the American state borders, as the current ones are rather archaic and problematic. They were designed with westward expansion and geographic isolation in mind, with no regard for population centers or increasing mobility. Hence, not only do we waste resources on running too many states (sorry Wyoming, but your existence amounts to a cheap congressional handicap in favor of conservatives), we also have major cities straddling state borders and a few over bloated states that may as well be their own countries (California, Texas, New York, etc). Pearcy's map reduces the number from 50 to 38, and places borders in the least densely populated areas of the country. Each new state has its own major populace, and political power amongst all states is more balanced.

I find Pearcy's concerns rational and his proposal brilliant, though they were rather limited in scope. He didn't address the fact that Guam, the Marianas, Samoa, the Virgins, and Puerto Rico are all kept as unrepresented alien subjects due to the racist imperialism that dominated American politics at the time of incorporation. It's bad enough that northern Mexico, the Philippines, and Cuba could have been democratically integrated but weren't. It's absolutely unacceptable for the US government to treat the inhabitants of its own territories as second class humans just because they're not white enough.

On that subject, I think the US owes itself the debt of being more open about the genocide of Indigenous America. It is a great shame of this nation to have committed the most totally effective ethnic cleansing in modern history, even though a shocking number of people today (especially in power) would deny that it was even ethically dubious. With this in mind, I tossed out most of Pearcy's ideas for new state names and replaced them with as many latinized indigenous names as I could reliably match.

I know the chances of a reorganization like this are slim at best, but what chance it does have of happening relies firstly on the propagation of the meme. So here's me, breaking my hiatus for a piece of sufficient quality and a message of sufficient importance.

Please share your thoughts on this map or state reorganization in general.