Whether a cove at Lake Tahoe is named after Mark Twain or the man on the moon, we don’t have much of an opinion on that.
But what in the world has become of us as a nation when it comes to matter of race?
The story is this: For the second time in three years, an effort to name a cove at Lake Tahoe for Mark Twin has been scuttled because the native Americans in the region consider him a racist.
Darrell Cruz of the Washoe tribe wrote to the Nevada State Board on Geographic Names to say that “Samuel Clemens had racist views on the native people of this country and has captured those views in his literature. Therefore, we cannot support the notion of giving a place name in Lake Tahoe to Samuel Clemens.”
The idea was tabled raising the question of whether we’ve become so sensitive that we must must examine the racial attitudes of people long dead to determine whether they are worthy of naming rights today?
Well, stand by Carson City. If Mark Twain was a racist, then what of Kit Carson? We see a name change in your future. — SF
