A recall vote on Feb. 15 saw three members of San Fransisco’s Board of Ed. removed from their positions, each by majorities of over 70% of those who cast a ballot. One of the Board’s initiatives clearly disturbing to the public was the proposed renaming of more than 40 of the city’s schools based on the “logic” of Critical Race Theory. Perhaps the most contentious of the changes in question was the removal of Abraham Lincoln’s name from a local high school. This is no place for a thorough examination of Lincoln’s views and accomplishments, but even a cursory survey of his history shows he was a good man clearly devoted to improving the plight of Blacks within America. His sin as seen by our postmodern “progressives” is that he did not share every one of their 21st Century convictions. It is a valuation based on a crass disregard for historical context. It is a valuation sustained by a complete lack of moral and intellectual integrity. While slavery continued to be practiced throughout the rest of the world in the 19th Century, the Brits banished it from the Commonwealth in 1833 while Lincoln would engage in a devastating Civil War some 30 years later in pursuit of the same goal. Yet according to the selective and brazenly simplistic narrative endorsed by the contemporary Left, all people of White, Western European extraction ought to be ashamed of their “colonialist” history.
The second issue impacting the electoral decision to reconfigure San Fransisco’s School Board was it’s apparent intention to make entry to various select schools dependent on a lottery rather than the marks and merits of those seeking admission. This particularly inflamed the city’s Chinese community which saw it as an attempt to arbitrarily equalize the number of Black students admitted to prestigious institutions such as Lowell High School even though their marks were clearly inferior to those of their Oriental rivals.
President of San Fransisco’s Board of Supervisors, Shamann Walton, a Black man not happy with the result of the recall election, attributed it to those of “conservative values” as if that alone explained its injustice…..i.e., to be a “conservative” is to be a racist, a fascist, a chauvinist, blah, blah, blah.
The president of the School Board, Gabriela Lopez, obviously a woman of Hispanic ethnicity and one of the three removed from her position, attributed the vote to White supremacists within the city.
Allison Collins, a Black woman who suffered the same fate, acknowledged the impact of San Fransisco’s Chinese population yet said it had obviously succumbed to “White supremacist thinking.” Apparently if you opt for merit or achievement over ethnicity, you are a White supremacist, whatever the color of your skin!
Honest appraisals of the ethnicity of those who overwhelmingly voted to change the direction of San Fransisco’s Leftist school board indicate it was a diverse group certainly not dominated by White Western Europeans. Yet so bereft of legitimate moral and intellectual arguments are those on the Left that when 70% of the population votes against their “equity” initiatives, they inevitably invoke the scourge of White racism in an effort to simply banish any substantial discussion of the real issues at hand.
It’s the sort of logic Hitler used in launching his attempt to eradicate the Jews!