Students in the Houston Independent School District, the largest public school system in Texas and the 7th-largest in the entire country, will now suffer under a policy banning mascots a small minority of people find offensive.
The school board approved the ban by a vote of 7-0 on Thursday, reports local CBS affiliate KHOU. One board member abstained.
Affected mascots include Redskins, Indians, Warriors and Rebels.
Specifically, four schools will now have to change their longstanding names: the Westbury High School Rebels, the Welch Middle School Warriors, the Lamar High School Redskins and the Hamilton Middle School Indians.
Officials at those schools will now have to submit mascot names that are acceptable under the district’s new policy. If approved, the new names will go into effect at the start of the 2014-2015 academic year.
School district superintendent Terry Grier proposed the politically-correct policy change. He pulled exactly the same stunt at his old job in a school district in North Carolina.
“The time has come for the Houston Independent School District — the most vibrantly diverse school district in the nation — to acknowledge that some decisions made generations ago need to be reconsidered,” Grier wrote in December, according to the Houston Chronicle. “Traditions are important. But respect for cultural difference and sensitivities matters more.”
The Chronicle also claims that the policy change aligns Houston’s public schools with other school districts around the country which have similarly banned mascots. However, the newspaper fails to name one single school district.
Earlier this month, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker chose a strategy that doesn’t fit the Chronicle’s national narrative at all. He signed an Indian mascot bill that will make it harder for politically correct meddlers to force public schools around the state to change their mascots, logos and team names. (RELATED: In Wisconsin, Big Chief Walker signs new Indian mascot bill)
In a letter to state tribal leaders, Walker explained that he doesn’t much care for certain mascot names himself. At the same time, he pointed out that a previous law allowing a single complainer to instigate a review process and then a name change flouted the First Amendment rights of everybody else.
“If the state bans speech that is offensive to some, where does it stop?” he wrote. “A person or persons’ right to speak does not end just because what they say or how they say it is offensive.”
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