Plus, given her religiosity and the age in which she was raised, it’s highly unlikely that she would believe that transwomen are women. So does she really deserve to be on the $20?
Leading to what? I mean, seriously, why do you care?
Well, okay, I guess, but: if plebiscite after plebiscite ends up with voters voting to so rename, are you in favor of letting the voters just keep on winning and then making another such demand, or are you in favor of stopping them?
I told you why I care. Lol. Nothing good comes from emulating Neville Chamberlain and working to appease the crazy. It only emboldens the crazy.
Well, if we are going to have direct democracy making changes or setting policy, I’m absolutely fine with it if we are going to be actually consistent in letting direct democracy have that power. I don’t think most want that. I think most want direct democracy when it coincides with their preferences and judicial activism when direct democracy or representative democracy does not coincide with their preferences. Funny how that works.
Renaming a school from Jefferson Elementary to Elementary McElementaryface will lead to, uh, the rise of Hitler?
And, your solution is, what? Banning school name changes? Requiring Federal approval before changing the name of a school or taking down a statue?
Just saw your latest post – if you’re going to make this thread that general, I’m out.
I assume places like Berkeley renamed the schools long ago.
Octopus is right. Appeasing hardcore identitarians only emboldens them. Militants tend to suffer from a psychological compulsion to outdo one another. Now that this measure has passed, I think it’s likely that similar measures will start passing in other districts. It may take some time, 20 or 30 years perhaps, but I wouldn’t be surprised if, at some point in the future, naming something after Lincoln will be considered an act of overt racism.
Well, at least you’re keeping this all in perspective.
Oh no! Other schools might be renamed too? How terrible!
Wait…why is this bad again? I mean, if you suffer from this psychological compulsion to keep names the same, it only emboldens the crazies who can’t handle change.
Granted, but I figured that some things are merely a matter for voters or elected officials, and some things are a matter for the courts no matter how a vote turns out — and I figured that stuff like whether to name a given school after Thomas Jefferson or Harriet Tubman, or whether to declare some day to be National Pickle Day, and so on, were clearly the former.
Don’t you?
How can this happen? I mean, these things are decided by local boards. The members of those boards are elected. I can see how, clearly, in the city of San Francisco enough board members could be elected that support what I see as overreach in avoiding problematic school names. But I fail to see how that could happen in other communities.
Or, put differently, while this action could embolden activists in other liberal communities whose majority endorse the idea that Lincoln should not be the namesake of an elementary school, how can that impact the school board of other locales whose population does not support that viewpoint?
I am reasonably confident that if the school board attempted the same in my district they would all be promptly voted out of office.
ETA: Although my local district is wise/lucky enough that schools are named for the town, the direction, or the street they are on - not historical figures. There is one that is a local historical figure - I suppose it’s possible someone will look up his racial views at some point and make a fuss.
If a name were akin to “Hitler High” or “Eichmann Elementary” then sure, change the name but “Lincoln”? That’s just silly.
Who you name your buildings after tells us a lot more about you than about the building or the person you named it after.
In very liberal Chapel Hill there was opposition to renaming a road to MLK road . The compromise was that the street signs also say in small print “historic airport road”
While I agree it’s likely “too far”, I don’t think it’s silly. It’s actually really hard to come up with objective criteria about historical figures. This committee tried, and ended up with criteria that included Lincoln. Without a “historical significance” countervailing criteria it’s not clear how you parse it to give Lincoln a pass but get rid of the more clearly objectionable names. It was probably easier just to jettison all of them and take their lumps.
They could have easily put in a “Presidents excluded from consideration” criteria. But they felt that their community wouldn’t support that. While I would disagree with that position in my local district it’s not really my place to tell SF what to name their schools.
I did a little research and found out that one of our Elementary schools is named after an old judge and school board president. I have no doubt that considering the era in which he lived he had some beliefs about homosexuality and race that would not meet the standards of today. If the local board decided to push for renaming I don’t think our community would support it but I’d be pretty pissed off if another town felt like they got to have a say.
Don’t you see? If you embolden those crazies they might invade Czechoslovakia!
Tearing down monuments of people like Washington and Lincoln, and renaming schools dedicated to them, is problematic because it suggests that people in power are unwilling or unable to think clearly about their own history. This is something which should be discouraged. Thinking clearly about one’s own history necessarily involves judging our ancestors by the standards of their day. Superimposing our own standards on them serves only to downplay their achievements. While Lincoln’s views on race weren’t as egalitarian as ours, they were certainly far superior to those of his contemporaries.
The people demanding these changes have shown no desire to take that into account. By removing his name from schools in their district, they’re helping to blur the important distinctions between him and less progressive historical figures. There aren’t many schools named after James Buchanan, or Andrew Johnson, and with good reason. The distinction between them and Lincoln is important. Now, in this district, the distinction is a little less obvious.
Does this decision matter in isolation? Not really. It’s one district in one city in one state. But the ahistorical way of thinking which led to this decision should be opposed. If it becomes widespread it will, in my opinion, have a profoundly negative impact on our ability to think about the past.
I don’t know, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. I imagine if we went back 30 years and asked people from San Francisco if it was offensive to name a school after Lincoln they probably would’ve laughed. So these things can creep up on you. That said, perhaps I should amend my statement to “naming something after Lincoln will be considered an act of overt racism in those districts”
“Thinking clearly about history” requires hero worship and monuments? 
I would argue exactly the opposite is true.