The names of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and other prominent figures, including California Senator Dianne Feinstein, will be removed from 44 public schools in San Francisco, a move that sparked Wednesday’s debate over whether the famous liberal city should accept America’s national settlement. ‘s racist past too far. .
The San Francisco Board of Education’s decision in a 6-1 vote Tuesday night affects one-third of the city’s schools and comes nearly three years after the council began considering the idea. The approved resolution calls for the removal of names that have honored historical figures with direct or broad ties to slavery, oppression, racism or the “subjugation” of people.
In addition to mr. Washington and Thomas Jefferson – former presidents who own slaves – include the naturalist John Muir, the Spanish priest Junipero Serra, the American revolutionary patriot Paul Revere and Francis Scott Key, composer of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’.
The change of name from Dianne Feinstein Elementary School, named after the Democratic senator and former mayor of San Francisco, raised eyebrows. The groundbreaking 87-year-old star has faded over the past few years, with upset liberals joining her retirement last year after embracing Republican Senator Lindsey Graham at the end of heated confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Feinstein’s spokesman Tom Mentzer said the senator had not commented.
The committee that chose the names included Feinstein on the list because, as mayor, in 1984 she replaced a vandalized flag of the Confederacy that was part of a years-long flag display in front of City Hall. When the flag was pulled down a second time, she did not replace it.
“I want to assure people that it can in no way cancel or erase history,” said Gabriela Lopez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education, and also specifically commented on Feinstein and the wider group. “But it’s shifting from maintaining and respecting it, and these opportunities are a great way to have that conversation about our past and get the opportunity to raise new voices.”
Lopez said the decision is timely and important and sends a strong message that goes beyond racism linked to slavery and condemns wider “racist symbols and white supremacist culture we see in our country.”
For some parents in San Francisco, the brushstroke was too wide.
“It’s 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 kindergartener at a San Francisco school who is not on the list. is not.
“I do not particularly care about the idea that some of the schools need to be renamed. There are a lot of dubious choices out there,” he said. “But they decided on this and pushed it through without much common input.”
Jeff Chiu / AP
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’s very important for the community at large to be involved in determining who should be honored with public school names,” said Seeyew Mo, executive director of the group.
“We want historical experts to provide historical context as we evaluate people from the past with the sensitivity of today,” he said.
The mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, who is black, calls the move poorly scheduled, given the coronavirus pandemic that has kept the city’s schools closed since March.
“Our students are suffering, and we need to talk about getting them into classrooms, getting mental health support and giving them the resources they need in this challenging time,” Breed said. should include parents, students and others and should take place when classrooms reopen.
The renaming process was led by a committee set up in 2018 to study the names of district schools amid a national calculation of racial injustice that followed a fatal collision during a white supremacy in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The committee was asked to identify schools named after people who were slave owners or associated with slavery, colonization, exploitation of workers or others, and anyone who oppressed women, children, queer or transgender people. They also tried to change the names of schools that honor everyone who is related to human rights or environmental abuse or who advocate racist or white supremacist beliefs.
Lopez said the schools have until April to propose new names, which the council will vote on, and the renaming could take several years. ‘
Historian Harold Holzer has warned against what he calls “danger of excess” if the country takes a wreck ball to its past.
“I think there is a danger in applying 21st century moral standards to historical figures from a century or two ago,” he said. “We expect everyone to be perfect. We expect everyone to be enlightened. But an enlightened person of 1865 is not the same as an enlightened person of 2021.”
Holzer disagrees with the renaming of Abraham Lincoln High School, which according to the San Francisco Committee was due to the treatment of Native Americans during his reign.
In the midst of the Civil War in 1863, Mr. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves in the Confederacy.
“No one deserves more credit for the destruction of slavery,” said Holzer, a Lincoln Scholar and director of Hunter College’s Roosevelt House of Public Policy Institute. “Lincoln is much more liberating than he is an abuser on the subject of racial justice.”