I am troubled by the Midland School Board’s move to rename Legacy High School back to Lee. The board is meeting this evening and it feels like it’s a done deal.
The school was established in 1961 and named after Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, as a protest against new federal laws banning segregation. In 2020, the name was finally changed to Legacy High School, in a move that many celebrated as cutting ties once and for all with the Confederate names and symbols. But now, five years later, a few new school board members are changing it back. The proposal is to name the school Midland Lee High School, instead of Robert E. Lee High School. A vote on the matter is scheduled for tonight.
I won’t respond here to this group’s claim that the name won’t be tied to the Confederate General, but only to our high school, exclusively the school’s history and nothing else. That is an insult to the intelligence of everyone who hears it.
I do want to address the other thing I’ve heard several times over the past couple of months: This move to rename the high school after Lee is not racially motivated, the African Americans in our community don’t see it as racist, Black people in Midland are not offended, they don’t really care. My question for the board is: Who would they complain to?
What if a middle-aged Black man drives past Lee High School every day on his way to and from work? Maybe his children go to this school. He sees Lee stickers on the back of every other pickup in Midland County. He sees Confederate flags flying out the back of some of those trucks and in front of some of the houses and ranches they belong to. He sees that name “Lee” and the history it represents every day. In the newspaper and on TV, on the sides of helmets and across the fronts of jerseys, on the wall of our restaurants and the sides of our buildings–every single day. If he hated that name and the symbols associated with it, if he found the name and the symbols to be an affront to his dignity and a source of deep pain, who would he complain to?
Oh, I see, you’re trying to put yourself in his shoes.
Yes. Yes, I am.
Shouldn’t we all be doing that? As a Christian speaking to mostly, I think, fellow Christians, isn’t that exactly what our Lord Jesus did? Isn’t that our calling as disciples of Christ, to empathize, to sympathize to walk alongside and understand?
Minorities–by the very definition of the word in conjunction with the broken ways of our world–African Americans, Hispanics, minorities, generally speaking, do not experience an equal status. In this country, because of past history and current structures and a thousand other complicating factors, minorities do not have the same opportunities. The playing field is not level. In our city, African Americans make up less than eight-percent of the population. They are marginalized. Who would they complain to? What could they possibly say? What power do they have? What choice do they have?
But they have complained. They have expressed their disgust with the name. They do speak often about what that name communicates to them.
My question for Christians who want to change the name back to Lee is: If you know how African Americans read that name, if you know the name and the symbols associated with it make minorities feel vulnerable and oppressed, why would you insist? Why would you fight with your words and your good name for a mascot or a logo that you know causes deep pain?
Scripture says be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. In that same Romans 12 context, the Bible says live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, it says, but be willing to associate with people of low position, people who don’t enjoy the same status or numbers or power. Christians treat others the way we want to be treated. We love our neighbors as ourselves. Christians who are seeking the attitude, or the mind, of Christ, the Bible says, consider the needs of others more important than their own.
Slippery slope arguments about erasing history and heritage are completely missing the point. The question for Christians is: Will you identify with the city that’s fading away or with the enduring city that’s coming? Will you love your neighbor more than you love a school name or a flag? Will you love your neighbor more than you love the history and heritage of the South? Will you love the African American men and women of our community more than you love the faded words on your 25-year-old diploma?
We’re known for a lot of things here in Midland. We are known as a people of great generosity. We go out of our way to sacrifice to help others, to give to others, to take care of others, to make others feel loved and like they belong. Can’t we apply those same guiding values and principles to how we name our high school? For the sake of others?
Minorities have a much different experience and viewpoint about life in our city than we do. Our Lord would try to put himself in their shoes. Actually, he did.
Peace,
Allan
There is another way to view this.
To be offended is a choice. I will never be offended because I choose not to be offended. Such a choice is something I have control over.
The offence “suffered” with regard to the naming of the school is not caused by the name. It is not caused by four board members. It is not caused by Midland voters. There would be no offence without someone choosing to be offended. Offence is caused by a choice made when someone decides to be offended.
Maybe when Jesus says “turn the other cheek” or “go a second mile” he means that when someone acts in such a way that could be taken as being offensive, instead choose not to be.
I agree with the gist of your statement here as it relates to Christians. Yes, we should turn the other cheek and go the second mile. Yes, if we’re truly following Jesus, we would lay down our own freedoms and personal rights and refuse to be offended. I agree.
But the point I’m making is that Christians don’t need to be the ones causing the offense. Disciples of Jesus should not be the ones causing the pain or the suffering. I don’t know if the African Americans in Midland who are hurt by the name change are Christians or not–my message is not to them. My questions are not for them. My questions are for the Christians in Midland who are insisting on and fighting for a name they know causes deep pain and grief to others who are not like them. I don’t hold non-Christians to Christian standards of behavior. I do expect more out of my fellow disciples.
Our views remain divergent. I am in my 78th year. I have never offended anyone. My motive has been to do what I thought was good for me at the time. My intention was never to harm others. That they felt offended was their choice.
What is true for me is true for others. No one does evil intentionally. Those voting with the majority on the Lee issue feel just as morally justified as does yourself. We all are simply always doing our best.
I would assume that if you learned your actions were unintentionally causing harm to others, you would change those actions so as not to hurt or offend. If you don’t change your behavior, the harm you do to others becomes intentional.
When you know better, do better.
You are not bound to this because you are not a disciple of Jesus. I don’t expect it from you. I have come to expect you to only think of yourself. Christians do not behave that way. So you’re off the hook. Still, it seems like common human decency to care a little.