The speed and vehemence of the single personal response that came in regard to my previous post leads me to suspect that it will be followed by others. I appreciate that it was not copied to Cavetex. Obviously a public debate about racism is inappropriate for Cavetex. Anyone else who wises to reply, please do so personally and I will answer you. My only public comment is:
1. I did not mean to treat this issue as a joke or insult anyone. Place names, old maps, and automated geographic information services are things cavers deal with, so this issue comes up in an academic or practical context, particularly in the south. To me, that makes it at least as relevant to caving as many of the discussions that occur on Cavetex.
2. As I said in my first post, there is a movement to change or remove such antique, racist place names. My experiment strongly suggested that two different states do this differently, and neither does it consistently. As a result, a search on these terms may bring confused results. The same thing would happen if the state of Texas attempted to change all place names containing the word "Indian."
3. To mention a word does not make a person a racist. To avoid certain words does not keep a person from being a racist. Randall Kennedy, a respected african-american academic has recently published a publically available book, solely on the history the word which I partly concealed with stars in my previous post. This book has been reviewed in the New York Times and on both public and network TV. A word search at Amazon will easily find this book.
4. None of this will stop hot feelings but again, please reply to me personally not to Cavetex, I will read your post.
Edward Sevcik University of Texas School of Information Austin, Texas
