Pushing back against wokeism - Byron York

[Geee]

Washington Examiner

PUSHING BACK AGAINST WOKEISM. Many conservatives believe that leftist activists are on a rampage through American institutions — schools, businesses, the justice system, cultural establishments, arts and entertainment, nearly every aspect of life — trashing norms and valued traditions as they go. Now we see, in San Francisco, California, of all places, a spirited pushback.

The triggering event happened a year ago, in January 2021, during the height of the pandemic. With schools closed and parents struggling to educate their children, the San Francisco school board devoted an enormous amount of time and energy to changing the names of schools named after American historical figures. The board voted to strip the names from 44 schools — schools named after George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Herbert Hoover, Paul Revere, James A. Garfield, Francis Scott Key, William McKinley, Daniel Webster, Robert Louis Stevenson, Junipero Serra (the Spanish priest who founded missions across California), William Cullen Bryant, and others. The board also voted to change the name of Roosevelt Middle School, even though no one knew whether it was named after Theodore Roosevelt or Franklin Delano Roosevelt. If the targeted president was in fact Theodore Roosevelt, the San Francisco board scored a hat trick of sorts — canceling all four U.S. presidents depicted on Mount Rushmore.

The board even decided to change the name of Dianne Feinstein Elementary School, named after the current California Democratic senator, because in 1984, when Feinstein was mayor of San Francisco, a history exhibit called "Pavilion of American Flags," which had been in place since the 1960s, included a Confederate flag. Feinstein later apologized after a radical protester tore down the flag. The school board's School Names Advisory Committee chair said: "Dianne Feinstein chose to fly a flag that is the iconography of domestic racism, white avarice and inhumanity toward black and indigenous people at City Hall. She still has time to dedicate the rest of her life to the upliftment of black, first nations and other people of color. She hasn't thus far, so her apology simply wasn't convincing."