The Blog

2021-

2021-02-02 g
NAMELESS HERE FOR EVERMORE
“This is a bit of a joke. It’s almost like a parody of leftist activism,”

San Francisco to Strip Washington, Lincoln From School Names

For some San Francisco parents, the brush stroke was too broad

The names of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and other prominent figures including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California will be removed from 44 San Francisco public schools, a move that stirred debate Wednesday on whether the famously liberal city has taken the national reckoning on America’s racist past too far.

After months of controversy, the decision made by the San Francisco Board of Education in a 6-1 vote Tuesday night will strip the names of one-third of the city’s schools. The board approved a resolution to change school names that honored historical figures with direct or broad ties to slavery, oppression, racism or the “subjugation" of human beings.

In addition to Washington and Thomas Jefferson — former presidents with connections to slavery or oppression — the list includes naturalist John Muir, Spanish priest Junipero Serra, American revolution patriot Paul Revere and Francis Scott Key, composer of the “Star Spangled Banner."

Changing the name of Dianne Feinstein Elementary school, named for the Democratic senator and former mayor of San Francisco, has raised eyebrows. The trailblazing 87-year old’s star has dimmed in recent years with dismayed liberals joining calls for her retirement after she embraced Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham at the heated confirmation hearings on U.S. Supreme Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

Feinstein's spokesman Tom Mentzer said the senator had no comment.

The committee that selected the names included Feinstein because in 1984, while mayor, she replaced a vandalized Confederate flag that was part of a long-standing flag display in front of City Hall. When the flag was pulled down a second time, she did not replace it.

“I want to ensure people this in no way cancels or erases history,” San Francisco Board of Education president Gabriela Lopez said, commenting specifically about Feinstein and the wider group as well. “But it does shift from upholding them and honoring them, and these opportunities are a great way to have that conversation about our past and have an opportunity to uplift new voices.”

Lopez said the decision is timely and important and sends a strong message that goes beyond racism tied to slavery band condemns wider “racist symbols and white supremacy culture we see in our country.”

For some San Francisco parents, the brush stroke was too broad.

“This is a bit of a joke. It’s almost like a parody of leftist activism,” said Gerald Kanapathy, a father of two young children, including a kindergartner at a San Francisco school not on the list.

“I don’t particularly mind the notion that some of the schools need to be renamed. There are a lot of questionable choices out there,” he said. “But they sort of decided on this and pushed it through without much community input.”

A group called Families for San Francisco opposed the vote for similar reasons, calling it a “top-down process” in which a small group of people made the decision without consulting experts and the wider school community.

“We think it is very important for the community at large to be engaged to figure out who should be honored with public school names,” said Seeyew Mo, the group's executive director.

“We would like to have historical experts to provide historical context as we are evaluating people from the past with today’s sensibilities,” he said.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed called the move poorly timed given the pandemic that has kept the city’s schools closed since March.

“Our students are suffering, and we should be talking about getting them in classrooms, getting them mental health support and getting them the resources they need in this challenging time,” Breed said, adding that she supports the discussion of renaming schools but feels it should include parents, students and others and take place when classrooms reopen.

The renaming process was led by a committee created in 2018 that was set up to study the names of district schools, amid a national reckoning on racial injustice that followed deadly clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, ...

The committee was asked to identify schools named for people who were slave owners or had connections to slavery, colonization, exploitation of workers or others, and anyone who oppressed women, children, queer or transgender people. They also sought to change names of schools that honored anyone connected to human rights or environmental abuses or espoused racist or white supremacist beliefs.

The committee didn’t move forward until 2020, ultimately recommending the renaming of 44 school sites. (read more)

______________________

Permission is hereby granted to any and all to copy and paste any entry on this page and convey it electronically along with its URL,
______________________