The names of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and other prominent figures, including California Senator Dianne Feinstein, will be removed from San Francisco’s 44 public schools, a move that sparked debate Wednesday about whether the famous liberal city has had too much considering the American racist past. .
The San Francisco Board of Education decision in a 6-1 vote Tuesday night affects a third of the city’s schools and came nearly three years after the board began considering the idea. The approved resolution calls for the elimination of names that honor historical figures with direct or broad links to slavery, oppression, racism or the “subjugation” of human beings.
In addition to Mr. Washington and Thomas Jefferson – former presidents who owned slaves – the list includes naturalist John Muir, Spanish priest Junipero Serra, American Revolutionary patriot Paul Revere, and Francis Scott Key, composer of the Star Spangled Banner.
Changing the name of Dianne Feinstein Elementary School, named after Democratic Senator and former mayor of San Francisco, has raised eyebrows. The 87-year-old star has been overshadowed in recent years, with dismayed Liberals joining her retirement last year after embracing Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham at the end of confirmation hearings for to U.S. Supreme Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
Feinstein spokesman Tom Mentzer said the senator had no comment.
The committee that selected the names included Feinstein on the list because as mayor in 1984 she replaced a vandalized Confederate flag that was part of a former flag display in front of City Hall. When the flag was lowered for the second time, she did not replace it.
“I want to ensure that people don’t cancel or erase history,” said San Francisco Board of Education president Gabriela Lopez, who commented specifically about Feinstein and the group at large. “But it’s about defending and honoring them, and these opportunities are a great way to keep this conversation going about our past and have a chance to raise new voices.”
Lopez said the decision is timely and important and sends a strong message that goes beyond slavery-related racism and condemns the “racist symbols and culture of white supremacy we see in our country.”
For some San Francisco parents, the brushstroke was too broad.
“This is a bit of a joke. It’s almost like a parody of left-wing activism,” said Gerald Kanapathy, a father of two young children, including a kindergarten at a San Francisco school not listed in the list.
“I don’t particularly care about the idea of changing the names of some of the schools. There are a lot of questionable options,” he said. “But they decided and pushed for it without too much input from the community.”
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 school community at large.
“We think it’s very important for the general community to commit to finding out who should be honored with public school names,” said Seeyew Mo, the group’s executive director.
“We would like to have historical experts to provide historical context, as we are evaluating people from the past with current sensitivity,” he said.
The mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, who is black, said the measure had no time, given the coronavirus pandemic that has kept schools in the city closed since March.
“Our students are suffering and we should talk about bringing them to the classrooms, getting mental health help and getting the resources they need at this difficult time,” said Breed, who added that he supports the discussion on the name change of the schools, but that being must include parents, students and others and take place when classrooms are reopened.
The name change process was led by a committee set up in 2018 to study district school names amid a national calculation on racial injustice that followed a deadly clash at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville , Virginia.
The committee was asked to identify schools that had owned slaves or had connections to slavery, colonization, labor or other exploitation, and anyone who oppressed women, children, queers, or transgender people. They also tried to change the names of schools that honored anyone related to human rights or environmental abuse or that advocated white racist or supremacist beliefs.
Lopez said schools have until April to suggest new names, which will be voted on by the board, and that the real name change “may take a couple of years.”
Historian Harold Holzer warned of what he called “a danger of excess” if the country carries a shattering ball into its past.
“I think there is a danger in applying 21st century moral norms to historical figures from a century or two ago,” he said. “We hope everyone is perfect. We hope everyone is enlightened. But an enlightened person from 1865 is not the same as an enlightened person from 2021.”
Holzer disagrees with the renaming of Abraham Lincoln High School, which the San Francisco committee said is due to the treatment of Native Americans during his administration.
In the midst of the Civil War in 1863, Mr. Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Emancipation which freed the slaves from the Confederacy.
“No one deserves more credit for the destruction of slavery,” said Holzer, a Lincoln scholar and director of the Roosevelt House Institute of Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. “Lincoln is much more liberating than an aggressor when it comes to racial justice.”