UPDATE: HISD has voted unanimously to drop the offensive mascots, including the Lamar Redskins, so reports the Houston Chronicle.
—
As I noted on Monday, HISD is moving towards renaming offensive mascot names, most notably the Lamar Redskins, and will decide the matter unequivocally at a Board of Trustees meeting later tonight. But what I would like to talk about is the (albeit quieter) dispute over offensive school names, the most egregious of these being the Confederate officers honored: Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and John Reagan.
I wrote a Letter to the Editor of the Houston Chronicle on this topic and, much to my amazement, it was printed in yesterday morning’s paper. The astute will recall that, four and a half years ago, I first got into politics by fighting against HISD schools named after Confederates. I had developed a standard speech that I had delivered a few times during those years, lamenting the fact that that African-American students and other minorities would be forced to go to Jeff Davis High School, comparing the plight to me, a Jewish person, going to Adolf Eichmann Middle School.
Accordingly, I was heartened to see the Chronicle’s editorial board write this morning that “HISD should set a policy that prohibits discriminatory…school names.” The editorial, also brought to light the idea that the maltreatment of Native Americans or African-Americans, if applied to another group such as the Jews, would be obviously appalling, and that the same standards should be used for other groups. “Tradition is important, but it should not trump the values of an inclusive society,” the editorial said, just as how I had said “nostalgia and tradition can never be so strong as to allow discrimination in any form to survive.”
