Talk:Tacoma riot of 1885

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[edit] A Different Title For The Event?

Doesn't the title of this ugly chapter of local Seattle-Tacoma area (and general West Coast American) history need an update? I mean the title "Tacoma riot of 1885" white washes the racist nature of the event and the fact that an entire community was expelled from the Seattle-Tacoma area, first in Tacoma in 1885 and then in Seattle in 1886, on the basis on their nationality. It doesn't make clear that these riots were expressions of hate aimed at a people solely because of their nationality. I think a better title for this event might be the "Tacoma Anti-Chinese Riots And Chinese Expulsion 1885." There is a just published book by an author named Jean Pfaelzer about this ugly history titled "Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans." Perhaps one of the reasons why this history is largely forgotten is that we don't even properly name the events surrounding the driving out of Chinese immigrants from local communities across the West Coast.

I wanted to throw this out there to see what other people had to say about it before attempting to change the title of the historical event. --Chiefbromden 19:14, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Being an encyclopedia, "we" don't get to decide what the event is called. If you can find sources referring to the event as something else, then we can change it. But our ideas about the event can't have any effect on the naming of it, that would violate Wikipedia's policies. Murderbike (talk) 23:59, 31 December 2007 (UTC)