Snopes Swats Down Latest Wingnut Meme

Snopes has responded to the latest crackpot meme sweeping Teabagistan. They write:



Shortly after President Obama announced in August 2015 that he planned to rename Alaska’s Mount McKinley, the highest mountain peak in North America at 20,237 feet, back to “Denali” (the name by which it had been known prior to 1917) in federal nomenclature, a meme started to spread on Facebook claiming that the mountain’s new name was a “Kenyan word” for black power. This simply isn’t true. First, there is no “Kenyan word” for anything. That African country (home of President Obama’s paternal lineage) has two official languages: English and Swahili. Second, “Denali” does not mean “black power” in either English or Swahili. The word for black in Swahili is “mweusi” and the word for power is “nguvu.” There’s also no definition for “Denali” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary that mentions such an etymology or meaning. In the indigenous Athabaskan language of western North America, however, “Denali” does have a meaning. Alaskans have been using the word “Denali,” which means “the great one,” as a name for Mount McKinley for centuries. The state of Alaska has also been officially using the name Denali for Mount McKinley since 1975

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