There is a great deal of difference between idolizing someone and worshipping them, their word accepted as gospel truth and their authority unquestioned.
I wouldnt support any mortal being in that category. But you know that is not what we are talking about here, we are talking about naming a school after a Great American like Washington, honoring their memory. They dont actually install altars to Geo Wash at a school named after him.
Hell, they named a school after my great grandfather as he donated the land for it. Even tho doubtless he was a man of his time, with all the foibles and bad habits, his gift made him worthy of honor. Since he was a lumberjack, served with the Union and became moderately wealthy in the lumber trade, the family tradition is that he swore like a drunken sailor. There is no altar to him at that school either, just FYI. He was honored for his generosity not worshipped.
Idolizing no longer means worship, it means “admire, revere, or love greatly”. I admire the Founding fathers greatly, warts and all. They were human will all that entails, but still great men.
Then part of admiring-not-worshipping means we should acknowledge his flaws. For example, the fact that he owned many slaves and treated them by the standards of the time - ie, with much cruelty, barely providing them enough to subsist on while demanding that they work for their entire lives, from sunrise to sunset.
Personally, I think we can recognize this while also recognizing Washington’s role in founding this nation. I’m not particularly opposed to naming a school after him, or putting up his statue.
But I DO expect the fact that he (and the other founding fathers) were slaveholders to be taught in schools. I also expect the details of exactly how brutal chattel slavery in the New World was to be taught. And if that makes some of the kids (or the teachers) start to question whether they like going to a school named for a slaveholder, as it apparently has, I don’t have a good answer to the question, “how is it appropriate for a kid to go to a school named for a man who believes that this kid is not human - that his place is out in the fields doing labor, not in a classroom - and who would be horrified at the presence of black children in the same room as the white ones?”. So I’m not going to try and stop them from changing the name, even if it doesn’t bother me personally, because I don’t have that experience. Instead, I’m glad we are listening to what people who aren’t white are saying, and taking their opinion into consideration.
Ahem. Gandhi. (It’s spelled the way it’s pronounced.)
But yes just for example. Gandhi was a sex predator. King was a womanizer. Obama killed innocents with drones. Einstein was an absolute asshole to his wives.
So let’s not idolize any of them. I would be fine not naming things after them.
Sure, a lot of the world accepted slavery, but the standards were already changing, like in the north of the USA (what do you think the northern states compromised mostly about?) and other places back then.
The African slaves’ legal status was unclear until the 1772 Somersett’s Case, when the fugitive slave James Somersett forced a decision by the courts. Somersett had escaped and his master, Charles Steuart, had him captured and imprisoned on board a ship, intending to ship him to Jamaica to be resold into slavery. While in London, Somersett had been baptised and three godparents issued a writ of habeas corpus . As a result, Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Court of the King’s Bench, had to judge whether Somersett’s abduction was lawful or not under English Common Law. No legislation had ever been passed to establish slavery in England. The case received national attention and five advocates supported the action on behalf of Somersett.
In his judgment of 22 June 1772, Mansfield held,
The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.[9].
– Moncreiff, Frederick Charles (2006). The Wit and Wisdom of the Bench and Bar . Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange. pp. 85–86.
So like DrDeth you are also missing a bit there, it is not as if back then things were not changing already regarding slavery.
Lincoln didn’t own slaves, but if a black kid asks “how is it appropriate for me to go to a school named after a man who would be horrified to see me in the same room as the white kids because he doesn’t consider me human?” I don’t have a good answer. Do you?
Then they will make a report to the Board of Education in January.
No names have been changed. No Board report has been made. Nobody in any position of actual power has actually recommended changing anything. A group of the most engaged citizens on this issue made a list of criteria and then applied it to existing names.
Before we blow too many gaskets about PC unpersoning run amok, maybe we should see what the actual community and elected folks in SF do with this list? Surely merely talking about it isn’t the end of the world, right?
Trust me, there have been things to come out of various school board committees in my district that would get the national press up in arms as well if they got wind of it.
I’m pretty sure “doesn’t consider me human” is correct with respect to Lincoln’s thinking. In fact one of his primary objections to slavery was that black slaves were very clearly human.
This quote, however, may be hard to explain to your black students who attend Lincoln Elementary:
Whether this disqualifies him from esteem or from having his name on a school building is a matter for serious debate, I think.