Why do so many place in Texas have ‘N*gro’ in their name?

By Jacob Kim

Rowland High School

There was a law in Texas in 1991, which passed the law to remove the word ‘N*gro’ from the name of places. Only one place, which was listed in the law, has been renamed in 30 years. This issue has been brought up this year by NPR. In the past couple years, the U.S. has been experiencing many issues with racial inequality. Rodney Ellis, a Harris County commissioner, knew that the names haven’t been changed for a long time and wants Texas to replace ‘N*gro’ for the rest of the places. If those names are changed, people will feel less attacked and more united because the racial names are gone.

There were reasons why Texas hardly changed the places’ names with ‘N*gro’ in it. Most of the time it was because everytime proposals for new names were shown, they all got rejected. The board believed that the new names would have no relevance to the geography of the places. The word ‘N*gro’ has a terrifying backstory. The people were horribly mistreated, including being slaves in terrible conditions. Kyle Min, an 11th grader from Los Alamitos High, says “I believe it is important to remove these racist words. By leaving them alone, it normalizes those words, which can be extremely dangerous, especially to younger posterity.” As you can see, Kyle clearly believes that in order for the U.S. to be united, people can’t let these racial issues continue. Lois Chun, a 9th grader from Cypress High, says, “I definitely think that they should be removed and it really shouldn’t be up for question either. This isn’t the 1800’s or anything like that and to have racial slurs in names is racist and shouldn’t be allowed. To have racial words in the name would be accepting a world where racism would be normal again.” Just like Kyle Min, Lois believes that the racial names need to be changed. The names also would represent how bad of a country the U.S. is for having places having a racist name. The places need to be renamed!

Overall, having several places in Texas having ‘N*gro’ in their name is a big issue throughout the world. I honestly believe that those names need to be replaced because if they’re not, the U.S. won’t be on the path to being all united without any racial issues. Everybody reading this editorial should be motivated to help Texas change all the racial names immediately.