After Discovery, State Quietly Moves to Purge N-word From Official Documents
In the remote meadows and forests of upstate New York, state environmental scientists have made a disturbing discovery: a road, a stream and a lake all bearing names using the most offensive racial word in the English language.
A vestige of a long-ago past, the n-word—fully spelled out—still lingers in environmental conservation laws classifying bodies of water.
"It was a shock to us. The term is very offensive," said Scott Stoner, a research scientist for the state Department of Environmental Conservation. "These are not regulations that get looked at often, but somebody discovered it."
Mr. Stoner said a regional researcher alerted the agency about the racial epithet two years ago. Officials, he said, then did a computer search and found three other examples buried in regulatory indexes and a map.
This week, the state quietly moved to correct the problem. While it can't rename local roads and water bodies, the agency is finally scrubbing the n-word from its regulations.
Since it's technically a rule change, the deletions can't happen instantaneously but must first be proposed. The result is one of the more unusual rule changes announced in the official state register, the latest edition of which carries the headline: "Removing a Racially Offensive Term That Appears in the Regulations."
The agency proposed it as a "consensus rule," obviating the need for any public hearings. "DEC has determined that no person is likely to object to the adoption of the rule as written," the register states.
In the meantime, DEC zapped the word from regulations posted on its website. One of those instances, a little, narrow lake in the wooded wilderness of Hamilton County, is now referred to as "unnamed lake."
The required public-comment period still stands, which means the regulations won't officially be amended for another month and a half.
Since few people outside the agency ever noticed the slur, it never generated public outrage. That wasn't the case across the coast in northern California, where a cemetery containing several dozen headstones labeled with the racial term turned into a major controversy.
Despite the effort to purge the n-word from New York's official documents, the epithet showed up in a recent management plan report by the agency's division of lands and forests.
An offensively named road in the town of Danby in Tompkins County is cited in a report posted online in February. The agency was unaware of that until a reporter brought it to its attention on Thursday.
"The Department will take action to move forward in removing any offensive term from the Lands and Forests map in terms of how it is referenced," said Lori Severino, a spokeswoman for the agency, in a statement.
"DEC cannot and does not have the authority to rename roads, water bodies, or any other natural resources in the state," said Ms. Severino. "These are historical records and sometimes date back hundreds of years. We can, however, change or remove how they are referenced under DEC regulations and to strive to be proactive in those measures whenever possible."
The precise origin of the names is a mystery to even the most rooted locals.
"I'd like to say, 'Talk to one of the old folks around here,' but the trouble with that is I'm 83." said Tom Bissell, a local historian from Hamilton County.
The federal government began to strip the n-word from its topographic maps in the early 1960s. But within the more obscure reaches of cartographic bureaucracy, the n-word occasionally endures.
| | Then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and this house, which I have hallowed for my name, will I cast out of my sight; and Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all people: |
| | And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the LORD shall lead thee. |
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