Neighbor News
Quit the Slander: Scotch Plains is not a Racist Town
Using a small handful of incidents to label an entire town "racist" does only harm towards progress and change.
Like virtually everyone in town, I was disgusted and appalled to find Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School vandalized by racist and anti-Semitic graffiti over the weekend. Having graduated from it under four months ago, I can attest to the character of the students there, and know that the overwhelming majority equally condemns what occurred. However, that is not my point for writing this. I’m using this opportunity to respond to the absurd and divisive allegations on this website and beyond that Scotch Plains is some sort of a “racist town” and to present my own rebuttal: cut it out.
Not only are these allegations as far from the truth as possible, but they serve as an insult to our town’s history. Scotch Plains has been the home to the Shady Rest Country Club for 97 years, the first in the nation to be owned by African Americans, a rather remarkable feat in that era given the nationwide racial discrimination at the time. Flip through any old yearbook, even well before the Civil Rights Era, and you’ll find that our schools were proudly integrated. White and Black families have lived next to each other for well over a century, more recently joined by people of other cultures and ethnicities as well. Any supposed hidden racism in this town is smothered out by the tolerance and acceptance that the vast majority of residents share for each other.
The author of a previous article on this site cites opposition voiced by some of Scotch Plains’ residents to overdevelopment and “affordable housing” as some sort of concrete proof of this town being racist. While there may ultimately be a few people who are against additional development because it may result in more people of color moving into the town, the overwhelming majority of people here are instead bothered by the fact that Scotch Plains’ colonial past is being replaced by a sea of McMansions, the additional taxes that will be levied on the town’s residents because of the increased population, and the worry that our already overcrowded schools would be unable to hold hundreds of more students. If you want to boil down such a complex issue to fuel your divisive and false narrative, please exit stage left until you educate yourself on the topic.
