http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2017/07/lynch_elementary_schools_will.html

Commentary by David Cohensteinberg

The national movement to change racially offensive names of buildings, sports teams and landmarks will soon touch a group of schools in southeast Portland. Lynch Meadows, Lynch Wood and Lynch View elementary schools will shed their “Lynch” before the upcoming school year in response to growing concern about the word’s racial connotations. The schools, part of the Centennial School District, were named for the Lynch family, which donated land over a century ago to build the first of the schools. But Centennial Superintendent Paul Coakley says many newer families coming into the district associate the name with America’s violent racial history.

I’m so excited that Portland is righting this wrong. This is definitely a step in the right direction. Yay Portland!

If we are going to have equality, we can’t honor white people with offensive last names who donate their land or money to the community. Especially if their last name is something terrible like Lynch. Ugh! I would speculate they probably earned that name, if you know what I mean.

How offensive it must be for a 1st or 2nd grader to walk through the doors of a school named “Lynch Wood Elementary.” Black children already have so many obstacles stacked against them. The last thing they need is to be traumatized even more by attending a school that brings back memories of slavery. Their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents were descendants of slaves that were kidnapped from Africa. Where they were kings. Then they were sold as farm equipment. And the ones that raped white women got lynched. Now you understand the evolution of how the word “Lynch” can be so insensitive to a 5-year-old black student who is just trying to learn his ABCs?

And people wonder why blacks have such low test scores. Or commit so much crime. Or burn down their community when an armed black criminal gets shot by a racist cop. What do you expect when they have to learn in such a hostile environment? Every time that 7-year-old black kid walks though the doors of “Lynch Meadows Elementary” it’s like a racist ghost from the past is calling him the “n word.” No child could learn under those circumstances.

The upcoming change is a new step in a movement that, in Oregon, has focused primarily on names insensitive to Native Americans. Several geographic landmarks whose names included the term ‘squaw’, now considered a slur against Native American women, have been renamed in recent years.

Oregon is setting the bar high. The rest of the racist country needs to pay attention and follow Oregon’s lead.

It’s bad enough that racist white people stole this land from the indians and killed all their buffalo. The indians were here first, so it was legally theirs. They didn’t migrate here from Asia, they organically grew out of the ground like corn. As a matter of fact, white people wouldn’t even have survived here if indians didn’t teach them how to grow corn. The indians were so much smarter than the pilgrims. An indian could walk so quietly that he could sneak up on a pilgrim in the middle of the night and scalp him while he was passed-out drunk.

It makes me so mad just to think about how we treated those peaceful indians. But at least in Oregon they don’t use the name “squaw” anymore. The next thing we need to do is let them live in teepees again so they can stop droughts with rain dances. And stop giving them cheap alcohol so they will do something besides sit at home and drink all day.

“There were an increasing amount of questions and some complaints from families of color around the name,” Coakley said. There is no connection between the Lynch family and the practice associated with the term, he said, but it’s still been “a disruption for some students.“

I don’t like the terminology “families of color.” The only color that matters is red. Blood is red and we all bleed red. Let’s not be divisive. The important thing to remember is that there is only one race. The human race.

I’m speculative about the Lynch families’ complicity in “the practice associated with the term.” You don’t get a name like that for no reason. Hell, for that matter, you don’t get rich enough to have extra land to donate to the community unless you profited off of slavery somehow. And anyone who had slaves hung a few for raping white women. There’s no doubt about that.

Centennial school district, established in 1976 at the very southeast edge of the city of Portland and extending into the west edge of Gresham, educates about 6,000 students, 55 percent of them non-white. The largest racial minority are Latino students, who make up 27 percent of enrollment. That is a significant change from a decade earlier, when the district was 84 percent white, according to the Centennial school district website. “Our diversity is increasing every year, with families coming in from Northeast Portland and out of state, so [the names] needed to be looked at,” said Coakley, who is African-American and grew up in the area.

I’m so excited to see diversity spreading into the suburbs. White people shouldn’t be able to congregate in white communities. That’s racist. Besides, schools with too many white kids are just boring. Diversity is our strength.

With a lower percentage of white kids in the school district that means there will be a better learning experience for the non-white students. Let’s face it, most white children are racist because of their parents. Racism is taught at home. And the only way to unlearn their parent’s racism is to expose them to non-whites. I think it would culturally enlightening for white kids to be forced to attend a 90% non-white school. I believe that is the solution to racism. The cure to hate if you will.