Posted on 04/30/2003 6:49:24 AM PDT by berserker
Racially charged place names dot the map of North Carolina. A bill would require counties to find replacements
The names are jarring: Niggerskull Mountain, Nigger Head, Nigger Spring.
An effort is under way in the General Assembly to wipe from North Carolina's map those names and others using the racial epithet. "We want to get these off the record," said Rep. Alma Adams, a Greensboro Democrat. A bill Adams sponsored would require county commissioners to devise replacements by July 1 and send them to Secretary of State Elaine Marshall. Marshall would work with registrars of deeds, tax officials and planning officials to change the names.
The bill is headed for a vote of the full House after its unanimous endorsement from the House State Government Committee on Tuesday.
"I'm surprised, really, that this wasn't done before -- that this would still exist in our state," said Rep. Joni Bowie, a Greensboro Republican.
Six of the seven places listed in the bill with names containing the racial epithet are in Western North Carolina. All are listed in "The North Carolina Gazetteer," a definitive list of places and geographic features. Included in the bill are names for mountains in Haywood, Jackson and Clay counties, a spring in Haywood County, creeks in Union and Jackson counties and a bay in Currituck County.
Richard Starnes, an assistant professor of history at Western Carolina University who grew up in Asheville, said he has heard a mountain near his hometown called by its objectionable name as long as he can remember. Such names are probably found most often in western counties because the black population in there is small, he said.
"We have the lowest per capita amount of black folks in this part of the world," he said. "There was less pressure. To have something like that in Durham would be a lot different in terms of social and political names."
Public officials should move to change those names, he said, although the new monikers might not stick, at first.
"It's one of these difficult kinds of things to change from the top down," he said. "But I think for public officials to allow those kinds of place names to remain, then they're culpable in continuing the cycle of using derogatory labels for groups and citizens."
The move to change the North Carolina names comes as American Indians in the Western United States are pushing to rename mountains and creeks called "squaw." Squaw is a derogatory term for a woman in some Native American languages.
A high school in Buncombe County stopped calling women's sports teams the Squaws a few years ago, as a result of American Indians' objections. The athletes are now Lady Warriors.
Rep. Phil Haire, a Democrat who represents Haywood, Jackson and several other mountain counties, said he had not heard that people were offended by the names. "It's just what it's always been," he said. "I don't know that people consider it offensive or not offensive."
Even though some of the names are so established that they appear on maps, others may have fallen out of use. Rep. Rex Baker said he saw a map of Mount Jefferson State Park with one of the mountain names covered.
Bill D. Noland, the Haywood County commissioners' chairman, said he had never heard of an offensively named spring that is supposed to be in Haywood. And S. Paul O'Neal, commissioners' chairman in Currituck, said he had never heard of a similarly named bay in his county.
"I've never heard of it, and I live right on the sound," he said. "But if there are places with names such as that, then they certainly should not continue with that name. I would hope that we've moved beyond that."
Interesting...
Has anyone considered how humiliating and offending it must be for little Muslim or Jewish children to live in some city named for some Catholic saint?
Actually many other cities are named after some dead white guy, like Washington or Lincoln. This, no doubt, intimidates women and people of color. We should rename all of our cities using just numbers. This would avoid offending anyone and make it easier for GIS programmers.
Or maybe Crackerville?
And never mind all the Indian names!
Get rid of them all!
I guess this means that Chunky Gal Mountain will have to be renamed, too.
Those fat broads tend to be a little sensitive. :)
It's Chunky Gal Mountain.
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