Our beautiful, Evergreen state is home to dozens of places with racist geographic names. For the first time ever, someone is trying to identify them all so that they can be renamed. It’s an important, belated undertaking that had drawn no volunteers until State Sen. Pramila Jayapal, D-Seattle, stepped up to the plate recently. Jayapal’s list so far identifies 36 places, and her office believes at least 48 such places exist here, MyNorthwest.com reported.
The names, most commonly used for creeks, rivers, mountains, include “coon,” “Jim Crow,” “negro,” “chinaman,” “redman,” and “squaw” — which is the most commonly used offensive name in the state and the country, according to Japayl. Snohomish County is home to “Coon Creek,” according to a list and map compiled by the Washington State Senate Democratic Caucus.
In January, Jayapal wrote to Commissioner Peter Goldmark, head of the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, requesting they review and coordinate the renaming of places that bear names accepted as ethnically or racially offensive.
“No injustice should be below our notice, so while some of these creeks or lakes may be in remote places, they stand as a constant reminder of times when women, Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans and others were thought of and treated as less than a whole and autonomous person,” Japayl told MyNorthwest.com. “It is pretty incredible that in 2016 we still have dozens of racist and offensive place names on record in our state.”
It does seem incredible. Especially since 2007, through a series of bills, the state has worked to scour our laws and statutes of language that can be construed as discriminatory, and change it to make it “gender neutral.” Changes included common sense gender neutral descriptors as “firefighters,” “clergy” and “police officers.” (Instead of firemen, etc.) And then it went further, making more dubious changes, such as “ombuds” for “ombudsman.” So hopefully the legislators who sought the changes to the language in our laws will bring the same fervor to Sen. Jayapal’s project. Offensive public place names are more detrimental than whether “omsbudsman” can be construed as discriminatory.
Jayapal plans to ask the state’s 29 confederated tribes for input on the name-changing effort and for any suggestions of new names to replace offensive titles. Jaypal’s first success was in 2015, when the U.S. Board of Geographic Names unanimously voted to change the name of a lake in the North Cascades from Coon Lake to Howard Lake in honor of Wilson Howard, an African American prospector who lived in the area in the 1890s.
Anyone can report a name or request to initiate a change of name by filling out a form and delivering it to the Washington State Committee on Geographic Names.
Noting that these names wouldn’t be used in conversation today, Jayapal said, “Instead of clinging to relics of an intolerant past, let’s rename these places so they celebrate the people and cultures that made Washington into the wonderful place it is today.”
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