WSMV is reporting that a group of black pastors down in Columbia would like to see the name of Negro Creek Road changed and, of course, the white people who live along the road don’t want to see it changed, because there’s nothing wrong with it and they have black friends.
Negro Creek Road is a rural, two-and-a-half mile stretch in Maury County just west of Interstate 65. It’s named after a nearby creek where two slave children are rumored to have drowned in the 1800s.“It’s just ridiculous,” said Rick’s wife Pam Howard. “We would have to change our address on everything we have, the bank, employment, his social security, 911 will have to change everything.”
Let’s talk frankly, Nashville. We all know that creek and that road are not really named “Negro Creek.” I could spend an hour digging around finding documentary proof, but it doesn’t matter. You know it and I know it and it’s stupid to pretend otherwise. At some point, someone in some position of authority got embarrassed by the original name and it got changed officially to “Negro Creek.” I would be willing to bet you all the money in my purse that the name hasn’t been changed unofficially, and if a white person with a sufficiently asshole air about him that allowed him to pass as a good old boy went down there and asked the people on that road where they lived, that white person would hear the real name.
The fact that we all know this and yet we have to give these cruel yahoos airtime in which we treat their “Oh, but this might slightly inconvenience me and no one really minds the name of it except those busybodies” stance like it has any merit and isn’t based on the secret thrill they get from having a reason to use a phrase all the time that they know — and we know — stands in for a racial slur drives me nuts. Why do they get to feign innocence?
This should go without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway. If we take the rumor for why the road and the creek have that name at face value as reported by WSMV — which is using the words “rumored to have drowned” to slide right by the part of the rumor that suggests something more than an accident — at the very least, two children died in that creek and the community’s response to those children’s deaths was to give the creek and the road that ugly, evil name. It’s not a commemoration of those children. It’s a big old knee-slapping "fuck you" to the people who lost those kids. They didn’t call it "Jack and Jill Creek," after all. They called it “subhuman garbage creek,” but shortened into that familiar slur.
Changing the name of the creek and the road from “nigger” to “negro” and then everyone knowing that the pronunciation hasn’t completely changed doesn’t lessen the insult. From where I’m sitting, it adds to it, because now, everyone still knows it’s got a racial slur for a name, at least in some circles, but politeness and civility require us to pretend like “Negro Creek” is innocent and non-offensive and that we don’t see what’s happening here.
So, the people who live on Negro Creek Road want to have their racist cake and eat it, too. They want to live on a road with a racial slur intended as an insult of dead children for a name and they want people to treat them like we don’t know they’re fighting to keep a racial slur intended as an insult of dead children as the name of their road.
No.
It doesn’t matter how many black friends you have or how many black coworkers you have. You fight to keep a racial slur directed against dead children as the name of your road, then you’re a racist and it’s insulting and ridiculous to expect the rest of us to pretend otherwise.
