Hmmm, I guess so. I’ll push to have my kids’ school named Benedict Arnold High School – he was true to his roots!
I live in SF, have for 30-some-odd years, and I call the place San Fran all the time, in conversation and on the return addresses of some of my correspondence. So far nobody’s scolded me for it to my face, perhaps because they know I don’t give a damn.
A duly elected school board legally voting to change the name of their school is not “mob behavior”. You’re free to disagree with their choice, but your not having the power to barge in there and stop what you personally consider their “irrational behavior” is not setting any kind of “bad precedent”.
Historical figures like Washington and Lincoln and Jefferson are not in any danger of getting “cancelled” or forgotten just because some people decide that a few schools these days don’t need to go on memorializing them.
I don’t agree simply because I don’t see statues, monuments, or naming things after people as a part of history*. The reason you choose to do these things is about honoring these people.
If it turns out that we get to a point where people find it offensive to include Washington or Lincoln as people to name things after, I would see that as a sign society as a whole had improved. It would mean that slavery is seen as so bad that it overwhelms the good they did, and thus those future people don’t want to honor them. It would suggest that racism was much decreased.
That said, I’m not too concerned that the mythology of America’s founding will ever really change in that manner unless America itself decreases. History seems to show that the “founders” and “important historical figures” don’t get snuffed out even as morality evolves. And I don’t see what’s happening now as any different in kind in why any other names fell out of favor, or statues removed, etc. It just feels difference because it’s in our culture, rather than looking over it in hindsight.
Sure, I may personally argue that a specific statue or place has importance to me, and say it shouldn’t be changed at that level, but the general concept? I really don’t have much problem with communities deciding on their own–unless, well, I think the community itself is evil (e.g. some klansmen want a statue).
*It does tell you about the history of the people who came up with the name, but not the people they’re naming them after.
It’s a reaction to mob behavior and it’s irrational. Sure, they have the right to do what they are doing just as the AP style guide has the right to make black a capital noun for their publications. It doesn’t mean it’s consistent or based on any grand moral principle. Really, renaming stuff after Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson etc. was all laughed off by the serious people as fear mongering and so-called slippery slope fallacy.
Some statues and names should be changed IMHO. What did Jefferson Davis do that was so great? or Nathan Bedford Forrest? Or Robert E. Lee?
Cite? I don’t remember anybody assuring us that nobody would ever want to rename something currently named after Lincoln, Washington or Jefferson. (In fact, I seem to recall that Jefferson in particular was considered a somewhat problematic figure, because of the whole Sally Hemings business, etc., well before the most recent surge of anti-Confederacy sentiment.)
Your feeble attempt at a “gotcha” is failing because none of the things you’re “fear mongering” about are issues of major concern. Your “slippery slope” is a kindergarten playground slide that lands the user a mere few feet from where they started.
There is nothing wrong with the US as a society deciding that we don’t want to honor slavery-endorsing Confederate insurrectionists with monuments and mementos. There’s also nothing wrong with some school boards deciding that they want to get out of the memorializing-prominent-public-figures-of-a-historically-racist-and-oppressive-society business altogether.
Nobody’s advocating to have Washington, Lincoln or Jefferson (or Confederate generals, for that matter) removed from the history books. Nobody’s trying to spread lies about them or have their descendants exiled or what have you. All that’s happening is that some school board members are saying that their municipality doesn’t need to idolize their memory with school buildings officially named for them.
That is not really such a big deal, unless you believe that the US needs a China-style civic quasi-religion of ceremonial worship of past leaders. I don’t think that’s necessary. I don’t think our American “lite” version of it is really pernicious, and I would be opposed to, say, the federal government decreeing that all memorialization of past leaders has to be abolished. But I don’t think that means that the San Francisco school board is doing anything wrong by deciding that they’d like their schools to have different names.
And if some conservative school district gets all bent out of shape about the San Francisco decision and decides to change the name of Butternut East High school to Abraham Lincoln High School, I don’t think they’ll be doing anything wrong either.
So why make such a drama out of this reasonable difference of opinion? Why you gotta be so divisive and polarizing, octopus?
As any true northern California native knows, the correct and only term for San Francisco is The City.
Virtually every country on earth has a foundation myth and honors a pantheon of founders.
Do you think there’s no real point to having national heroes? National values? A national identity?
Americans don’t have the common ethnic roots that keep most other nations together in an “imagined community.” Our identity is based on political ideals. That’s why, when it comes to national unity, American foundational symbols are important.
As if the parents who scammed their kids into Lowell are going to accept putting an unknown name on their projects kids’ college resumes.
So does Thomas Jefferson have to be that foundational symbol? Or does the Declaration of Independence, arguably a “purer” expression of political ideals than the guy(s) who wrote it, fulfill that role?
Even if those “foundational symbols” absolutely had to be past presidents, which they don’t really, we are in no danger of losing Washington, Lincoln or Jefferson as national symbols just because a few public schools in San Francisco are no longer named after them.
And now, acronyms are a “symptom of white supremacy culture.”
You can’t make this shit up.
Ted Lieu clearly agrees with you that this is stupid. As do I.
There are many reasons to loathe (and try to avoid) the overuse of acronyms but “white supremacy culture” is a long, long way down that list.
Wouldn’t that be wsc?
:big, innocent eyes:
Yup, me too. Hooray for unity!
Although I totally agree that removing acronyms, while not necessarily “anti-racist”, is a good idea. Making your programs and departments clearer to parents and students rather than obfuscating them behind acronyms is just common sense. And it is likely true that those most impacted by confusing acronyms are those that don’t have English as their primary language.
Aren’t most of these “acronyms” really initialisms?
It can be a consistent position. There can be three types of potential names, ones that should never be excluded for being “problematic”, ones that always should, and ones that are fuzzy enough that you’re okay with the locality choosing.
For instance, that’s my reason for supporting the resistance to new oil pipelines. If it brought substantial enough benefits for no environmental damage (for instance, if the company were to pay America billions of dollars a year in land leases, and would have built it somewhere else instead anyway, and there have never been major pipeline leaks in history), then it would be worth it, but since instead, it offers little benefit for an unknown amount of risk, I’m okay with the people whose land it crosses not being forced to have it on their land. (That’s before getting into the hypocrisy of using governmental eminent domain to impose your will upon peoples own property while claiming to be against the same thing when it takes the form of taxes).
Oh fuck that. We’re not retroactively imposing some “woke” cancel culture standard on the 18th century. Many of Washington and Jefferson’s contemporaries realized that slavery was evil, including the President who came in between them, John Adams. There are plenty of antislavery Founding Fathers who we could be celebrating.
Would you want people in the 23rd century to be putting up statues of Donald Trump and saying “Sure, he was a racist and a fascist, but people back in 2016 hadn’t yet realized that those were bad things to be, so it’s unfair to hold that against him”?
Having said that I won’t deny that Washington and Jefferson’s overall influence on the world was enormously positive. Drawing the line at “we’re not going to honor anyone who owned slaves” is a little less nuanced than I would personally prefer. But I’ll certainly take it over the position of “well, who cares, it was legal at the time so we can’t judge”.
San Francisco has always been a lightning rod for criticism by people who would never set foot in the place. If you don’t like this policy, you can vote out the school board members who made it at the next election. Oh, you’re not a San Francisco resident? Well, I guess you can bitch about it on a message board if you really can’t think of any better use of your time.
We used to have a saying when I lived there about this sort of RW RO; “If you can’t vote here, don’t emote here”.