Canceling Diane Feinstein
WSJ 1/29/2021 OPINION – Until the San Francisco Unified School District board stripped Dianne Feinstein’s name from one of its public schools, we were unaware of the Senator’s service to the Confederacy. While the city’s mayor, she had replaced a vandalized Confederate flag that was part of a historical display outside City Hall. So now it’s goodbye to Dianne Feinstein Elementary School.
The Feinstein purge is among the banishments the board took Tuesday night when it voted 6-1 to rename 44 schools. The most absurd target is Abraham Lincoln, who waged the war that ended slavery. Also canceled were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Webster and Paul Revere.
The criteria used to come up with the list of villains is whether they had promoted slavery, genocide, the oppression of women or “otherwise significantly diminished the opportunities of those amongst us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
But a name on a school is not a declaration of perfection. And a society that rummages through history to hold those of the past to the woke standards of today will soon have no heroes to honor.
In a statement, Mayor London Breed said that while the naming of city schools is a conversation worth having, she cannot understand “why the School Board is advancing a plan to have all these schools renamed by April, when there isn’t a plan to have our kids back in the classroom.”
By that measure, some future school board should regard today’s school board as equally guilty of reducing opportunities, especially for the poor, for the way they’ve denied an education to children in the pandemic.
