San Francisco to strip Washington, Lincoln from school names https://news-yahoo-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/news.yahoo.com/amphtml/san-francisco-strip-washington-lincoln-170349867.html?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA=#aoh=16118121057555&csi=0&referrer=https://www.google.com&_tf=From %1$s&share=https://news.yahoo.com/san-francisco-strip-washington-lincoln-170349867.html
Hey EOC. What is your opinion of George Washington? What is your opinion of Abraham Lincoln? Just say it I'm genuinely interested. Is this happening because of something they did or is it because of their pigmentation? I worked in Sunnyvale (Hubble Space Telescope post shuttle deployment activation and flight operations at the Blue Cube) and spent some time in SF. I would be lying if I said I didn't like it there. SF had a good vibe up until about 2000 or so then it seemed to decay somewhat. My tailor had a little shop on Market St. so I would visit him and grab lunch or dinner down at the wharf. Never had a problem. I'm from LA, uptown (1st and Hope St.) and we always were impressed by the urbane nature of SF. Now its popular to call it a shit hole but I remember when it was a beautiful city on the bay and a place to make bank. My old man founded an insurance company which was sold to Transamerica.... twice. Yeah they bought it back at one point then sold it a second time to Transamerica later. Its tough to watch the place fall apart man. Transamerica was that iconic pointy building downtown.
Even Diane Feinstein had a school named after her and they are stripping away her name according to the article. In my District we have George Mason and Thomas Jefferson schools and the local government is pushing to change the names of those two schools. Another school named after a Confederate General was changed a year ago and a school with Lee in the title was changed to Liberty. So I have seen this happening even in my own backyard. My basic opinion is that Confederates were traitors to the Union and fought to keep slavery in the South....most things were named after Confederates by white movements to maintain Jim Crow and as retribution for losing out on their cheap labor. Most of it in the 1920s - 1950s when the KKK pushed for naming. Traitors like that do not deserve to have their names honored on schools and streets like they are American patriots. Their namings were not done for honor it was to insult and continue to attack the Blacks and this is evidenced by who pushed for it and when they went up or were named. I dont believe in elimination and Gettysberg is a wonderful museum for the Civil War and that is where confederate names and dates and artifacts belong, in museums for study. They should not be eliminated from history but studied as a part of history. However they (confederate traitors) should not receive the same honor as other Americans with naming rights. Confederacy is a history subject and should be covered in schools and museums but not honored as patriots the same was as those who fought for freedom or gave their life in the line of duty (schools are also named after local police heroes and soldiers). As for Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, I believe they were our two greatest political thinkers ever. Read George Washington's Farewell Address or Thomas Jefferson's writings. Brilliant political thinkers. I can quote GW all day and his political thoughts describe our current situation. He was the last quasi non-partisan president and then it went to shit with Adams and Jefferson. As people they were slave owners and flaming hypocrites and not personal heroes, but political ones. TJ was not only a womanizer but incurred huge debts in his life- was a degenerate in many ways. But visit Monticello and see everything he self taught himself. Brilliant thinker and renaissance man in many ways. Never reconciled the slavery and poor management of his estate with his thinking. Their writings and beliefs were ahead of their time, the practice of their beliefs were sadly reflective of their times. As with all our founding fathers, their words and beliefs were never supported fully by their actions and how they actually lived personally (slaves, poor, women, Natives....were property to them). As for their names on schools....kind of nuetral. Llike Mount Vernon and Monticello it is quite easy to praise the men for their accomplishments while clearly including the slavery history. If you ever go to Mount Vernon and Monticello, the museums do a wonderful job of making the slavery and important part of the education and it is quite fascinating in a good and bad way. Not sure what SFs beef is with Abrahama Lincoln.... I have spoken to some Black friends and understand the feeling of their kids going to a school named after TJ with his slavery background and how he treated them. Changing the name of the school by itself really does not bother me because their history is not being erased, just their name on a school. They are still a strong part of history, studied in schools, subject of their own home museum etc. Even the Civil War was covered over the course of 3 years in my son's history lessons in great detail (he had to know the Confed generals and people as well as the Union ones). It is no secret here I live in D.C. (I use to do work for the government in my previous life before going into private business and trading). This place is surrounded by these names and the only positive thing I have seen is removal of Confederate names. However I am within 1-2 hours of several battlefield museums where confeds are part of the history and not erased or cancelled as some mistakenly complain.
Vice President of San Francisco School Board most recently in the news for push to rename schools for cultural sensitivity forced from leadership position for racist tweets. SF school board removes Alison Collins as vice president over racist tweets https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/San-Francisco-school-board-s-latest-crisis-16050404.php The San Francisco Board of Education has removed Alison Collins as its vice president after a vote of no-confidence Thursday, according to multiple reports. While she will no longer serve in a leadership role on the board, the 5-2 vote doesn't remove her from the school board despite calls for Collins to resign after controversial tweets she wrote in 2016 came to light. The vice president of San Francisco’s school board is under fire for tweets she wrote in 2016, saying that Asian Americans use “white supremacist” thinking to get ahead and were racist toward Black students. The tweets are at the center of a new crisis facing the scandal-plagued Board of Education, which has been sued, criticized and mocked over the past few months. Board member Alison Collins was the focus of a heated public meeting Tuesday evening attended online by more than 1,000 people, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Many callers demanded Collins step down, echoing calls by two board members and dozens of officials who have denounced the tweets as racist and anti-Asian. Mayor London Breed also joined the chorus, saying “our students and our API community deserve better." Collins told the meeting she wanted to again express her “sincere and heartfelt apologies.” In an earlier statement, she apologized for the hurt caused by the tweets, which critics have called a non-apology. The posts resurfaced last week amid a surge of violence and harassment against Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area and around the country. They are the latest embarrassment for San Francisco’s school board, which has prided itself on putting racial equity at the top of its agenda. In the midst of the pandemic, the school board faced national criticism for a plan to rename 44 of its schools — including one named for Abraham Lincoln and another for Sen. Dianne Feinstein — that it said honored people with discriminatory legacies. The plan was subsequently put on hold after an avalanche of criticism saying the board should focus on reopening schools, which are still closed despite the city's low transmission rates, rather than renaming them. The board also bowed to complaints that its process to select which schools should be renamed was flawed. The city of San Francisco then took the dramatic step of suing the board and the school district to force the reopening of schools. Under a plan recently negotiated with its labor unions, San Francisco plans to phase-in the reopening of elementary school classrooms in mid-April. The board has also faced criticism for a plan to end merit-based admissions to the city’s top public high school, Lowell, and use the same lottery-based system that admits students to other high schools. Collins was a strong proponent of Lowell High School dropping its merit-based admissions process, which she called racist. About 55% of Lowell students are Asian, even though Asians make up about 34% of the city's population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About 17% of students are white, 11% are Latino and just 2% are Black. The 2016 tweets were made public by a group of parents who have started an effort to recall three of the board’s seven members, including Collins. In the tweets, Collins, who is Black, wrote that she was looking to “combat anti-black racism in the Asian community at my daughters’ mostly Asian (American) school.” Many Asian Americans, she wrote, “believe they benefit from the ‘model minority’ BS’” and “use white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.‘” Near the end of the thread, Collins called for Asian Americans to speak out against President Donald Trump's policies, saying that her daughter stepped in to stop Asian American boys who were bullying a Latino student. “Don’t Asian Americans know they are on his list as well?” Collins wrote, using asterisks in place of a racial slur. “Do they think they won’t be deported? profiled? beaten? Being a house n****r is still being a n****r. You’re still considered ‘the help.’” The two school board members who have called on Collins to resign — Jenny Lam and Faauuga Moliga — are the board’s only Asian American or Pacific Islander members. The others have condemned the tweets but say they support a “restorative process.”
Confederate renaming was fine because no building ought to be named after losers. If we keep judging the past by our current ethical standards, we'll be renaming states soon. I'm guessing Abe was targeted because he really didn't see blacks as equals but didn't believe in slavery. I'm sure plenty abolitionists used the word "ni***r" back then too. Should they be targeted over such transgressions? We're better served by teaching kids that Washington was a founding father, a slave owner, and an Indian killer rather than sweep him under the carpet.
California joins the catch and release club... California’s top court ends cash bail https://www.latimes.com/california/...supreme-court-nixes-cash-bail-some-defendants
Good post. I don't know what to make of Jefferson. Too complex and too ambivalent about slavery. Washington is easier for me to admire. He ran a war in difficult circumstances and then set the best example of being the Executive we've seen. Lincoln also is easier for me to understand. Lincoln only emancipated the slaves when he perceived a military advantage in doing so. He said himself that he would have done anything to preserve the Union. He was single-minded in that regard. I think that one element of cancel culture is ignorance. What I mean by that is that I suspect there is a lack of discernment between the founders and some of the subsequent leaders. They are all cast together as "racist old white guys" when some of them were clearly not. I think Lincoln gets caught up in that. I lived for years in Chevy Chase on East-West Highway just off of Wisconsin. I loved the place and my cars rotted in the garage from neglect and non-use. Best train system of any city I've lived with a station about 400 feet from my place. Great ethnic restaurants (my favorites were Ethiopian, Italian, French). I pretty much had to be dragged from the place.
How long will it be before the lefterrhoids realize that Washington, DC was most likely named after George Washington and not Denzel Washington?