What is in the water in San Francisco? We have evidence that remote learning has caused a huge gap in achievement, but I guess that is not a priority.
First, the school board ordered 44 schools to change names. Second, a teacher cried about Bernie’s mittens. Now we have the art department declaring acronyms as racist.
I cannot tell if this is sarcasm, but Lyanne Melendez at ABC7News in Sam Francisco wrote “the Art Department has taken a bold move” by changing its name.
My goodness, I hope the “bold move” is sarcastic.
Anyway, the department insisted that “acronyms are a symptom of white supremacy.” They used to call it VAPA (Visual and Performing Arts).
Department Director Sam Bass announced the new name as SFUSD Arts Department.
So they remove an acronym and replaced it with another acronym even though “acronyms are a symptom of white supremacy culture.”
From ABC7News:
“It is a very simple step we can take to just be referred to as the SFUSD Arts Department for families to better understand who we are,” explained Sam Bass, Director of the SFUSD Arts Department.In a letter, he explains that acronyms are a symptom of white supremacy culture.”The use of so many acronyms within the educational field often tends to alienate those who may not speak English to understand the acronym,” he added.That’s based on a 1999 paper written by author Tema Okun titled “White Supremacy Culture.” Okun told me that, “Our culture perpetuates racism when things continue to be written down in a certain way.”But the San Francisco Unified School District uses so many acronyms on a daily basis that if you go to their website there’s a section on how to find what their acronyms or abbreviations mean.
I looked at Tema Okun’s essay. First off, Okun made the essay vague, which in turn makes it easy to scream white supremacy.
Second, the essay says, “make sure anything written can be clearly understood (avoid academic language, ‘buzz words, etc.).”
Guess what. I had to look up SFUSD. It stands for San Francisco Unified School District. I’m not used to seeing a “U” in an acronym for schools.
Everything is racist. Also, someone check San Francisco’s water supply.
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