Monday, August 06, 2007

Recently Greenville decided to rename Martin Luther King Jr. Street to 5th Street, since it actually is 5th Street for the part they didn't back in the day rename to Martin Luther King Jr. Street.

I was asked to sign a petition telling them NO, don't rename it back to something simple and consistent. Said the petition, Greenville's five(?) WHITE board members made the decision for the PREDOMINANTLY BLACK community at MKLJr.St. WE WILL NOT GO BACK!

I declined to sign. Because:
1. Simple is good.
2. Consistent is good.
3. The street name is not what's preventing segregation and the lot. That's not what street names are for. Street names are to help people find their way around. Therefore, see 1. and 2.

Not one of my reasons, but something to consider:
4. In one of the early Boondocks cartoon episodes (the only one I saw--they posted it free on Google Video. Yay!) MKL Jr. came back from the dead and saw that streets named MLK Jr. St. are not (generally) nice neighbourhoods. This, among a lot of other things displeased him greatly, and he called a crowd of blacks 'a bunch of ignorant niggers'. This displeased them.

What was formerly MLK Jr. St. in Greenville wasn't the worst neighbourhood in the city, but it wasn't exactly MLK's vision for the future. Maybe it's fitting because they still have the struggle he had (though it seems to be a largely different struggle these days). But, again, who cares? That's not what street names are for.

(Notice how I have not much to say in this post. I'm supposed to post on Mondays, so you get this dreck.)

No comments: