My husband had some training yesterday. According to him, it was at the former White School, now owned by OSF in an urban area of Peoria. He tells me that the students who used to go to White School had a mascot...the White Knights.
Is this true? A public school that served a large African American population...The White Knights???
And people around here wonder why the minority community thinks the rest of us are cluess....
The White Knights of White School...good grief.
**updated...well, a friend confirmed that they were the White Knights but that the neighborhood wasn't predominately Black back in the day. Where there SOME Black kids that went there? I'm assuming so. Therefore, my disbelief still stands! (Although, seeing as the Pekin had the "Pekin Chinks" until the 1980s, how surprised should I REALLY be?)
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5 comments:
Yes, they had some Black kids at White School. Put remember school segregation was still in effect in Peoria up through 1976.
Andy, a very interesting post thanks for writing it!
With a school name of White, what mascot would have sounded appropriate? I mean, White Warriors? White Leprechauns? White Cougars? Was their nickname the Knights, or the White Knights? I guess they could have been the White Scarlett Knights (ala Rutgers). I'm not picking a fight and I get where you are going, but this is likely not equivalent to the Pekin Chinks, where the nickname itself is racist.
How about not using White ANYTHING. Cougars, Panthers...at some point "White Knights" had to have become a bit of an issue. While I'm sure the INTENT was not to be racially questionable, someone, somewhere must've realized the double meaning.
I don't totally disagree. But the school itself is called "White School". Maybe that is the problem, but my point is that anything that came after the word white (the school's name) would probably sound racist. Was the school's official nickname the White Knights or just the Knights?
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