Confederate-named Austin schools prompt heated talk among trustees (TX)

[struggle4progress]

Julie Chang
Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2015

The Austin school board on Monday decided that yet another one of its committees will take up the conversation about possibly changing the names of area schools named after Confederate figures.

Monday night was the first time the entire board has talked about what it will do, if anything, regarding the controversial names, which came under scrutiny during the summer. Although the two-hour discussion started out slow and ended with a rather small decision, some trustees comments to each other became heated, highlighting the racial tension on the board, trustee Jayme Mathias noted during the meeting.

Currently, five schools have Confederate references in their names or mascots ...

Trustee Ted Gordon said that although Austin tends to pride itself on being liberal, it is just “another southern town.” He and Mathias said that it was no coincidence that a majority of the schools that are now under scrutiny were named during the centennial of the Civil War. Gordon further pointed out that the white majority named the schools as a direct response to desegregation of schools during the 1950s ...

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local-education/confederate-named-schools-prompt-heated-discussion/npFLx/

[HassleCat]

1. That's the real problem

All this "southern heritage" talk is a smokescreen. The confederate battle flag became a big deal during school desegregation, and it was a time of naming things after confederate heroes. I'm not against a pubic building bearing the name of a confederate general, or whatever, but it's the origin and motive associated with the naming that interest me. If the grade school is named after Stonewall Jackson, there better be some connection that justifies the name. If I find out the name was changed in opposition to school desegregation, I'm showing up at a school board meeting and asking them to decide if they support segregated schools, or if they'd like to consider a different name.