San Francisco Renaming Abraham Lincoln School Because Black and Native Lives Didn’t Matter to Him
“Lincoln, like the presidents before him and most after, did not show through policy or rhetoric that Black lives ever mattered to them outside of human capital and as casualties of wealth building.”
The San Francisco Unified School District targeted 44 schools for possible name changes back in October. The list included Abraham Lincoln. Dianne Feinstein, Herbert Hoover, and others.
The school district voted this week to rename Abraham Lincoln school due to his comments about black people and “the majority of his policies proved to be detrimental to [Native Americans].”
A lot of people prop up Abraham Lincoln as a hero because he kept the country together and ended slavery.
Warning: Unsavory thoughts and facts about Lincoln are up next, but stick with me. I have a point to it!
Glorified Lincoln
The renaming committee has legit reasons for speaking out against Lincoln.
Lincoln was a tyrant. For example, he shut down 300 newspapers and ordered the military to occupy the New York World newspaper because of something “wicked and traitorously printed and published.”
Lincoln did not agree with slavery, but blacks were only equal to whites when it came to natural rights. Lincoln once said:
“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and Black races. … There is a physical difference between the white and Black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
Oh, Lincoln wanted to ship blacks to other countries:
They found an order from Mr Lincoln in June 1863 authorising a British colonial agent, John Hodge, to recruit freed slaves to be sent to colonies in what are now the countries of Guyana and Belize.
“Hodge reported back to a British minister that Lincoln said it was his ‘honest desire’ that this emigration went ahead,” said Mr Page, a historian at Oxford University.
The plan came despite an earlier test shipment of about 450 freed slaves to Haiti resulting in disaster. The former slaves were struck by smallpox and starvation, and survivors had to be rescued.
Mr Lincoln also considered sending freed slaves to what is now Panama, to construct a canal — decades before work began on the modern canal there in 1904.
Are you still with me? OK, good.
We all talk about Andrew Jackson (rightfully), but history tends to gloss over Lincoln’s treatment of Native Americans:
For instance, the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 helped precipitate the construction of the transcontinental railroad, which led to the significant loss of land and natural resources, as well as the loss of lifestyle and culture, for many tribal people. In addition, rampant corruption in the Indian Office, the precursor of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, continued unabated throughout Lincoln’s term and well beyond. In many cases, government-appointed Indian agents outright stole resources that were supposed to go to the tribes.
In other cases, the Lincoln administration simply continued to implement discriminatory and damaging policies, like placing Indians on reservations. Beginning in 1863, the Lincoln administration oversaw the removal of the Navajos and the Mescalero Apaches from the New Mexico Territory, forcing the Navajo to march 450 miles to Bosque Redondo—a brutal journey. Eventually, more than 2,000 died before a treaty was signed.
Several massacres of Indians also occurred under Lincoln’s watch. For example, the Dakota War in Minnesota in 1862 led to the hanging of thirty-eight Indian men—303 Indian men had been sentenced to hang, but the others were spared by Lincoln’s pardon. The Sand Creek Massacre in southeastern Colorado in 1864 also resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Cheyenne and Arapaho.
Cancel Culture SUCKS
The renaming committee used Lincoln’s treatment of Native Americans as the main reason to strip his name from the school.
But they did not miss Lincoln’s feelings on blacks. From The San Francisco Chronicle:
“Uprooting the problematic names and symbols that currently clutter buildings, streets, throughout the city is a worthy endeavor,” said Jeremiah Jeffries, chairman of the renaming committee and a first-grade teacher in San Francisco. “Only good can come from the public being reflective and intentional about the power of our words, names and rhetoric within our public institutions.”
—
“The history of Lincoln and Native Americans is complicated, not nearly as well known as that of the Civil War and slavery,” he said. “Lincoln, like the presidents before him and most after, did not show through policy or rhetoric that Black lives ever mattered to them outside of human capital and as casualties of wealth building.”
Princeton University scholar Allen Guelzo had a great point:
If an offensive racial opinion “is the only yardstick that we use to measure people today, they will have to pull down monuments to everybody from before 1950,” Guelzo said.
Is this how we handle it from now on? I go a little further than Guezlo. How about 1970? I mean, the Civil Rights Act didn’t happen until 1964.
I’m happy people have acknowledged the real history of Lincoln and others.
But at what cost?
Everyone and everything will offend at least one person. Should we just number the schools? Name them after trees? Wait, maple might offend someone who hates Canada.
Next thing you know we will end up in a world portrayed in the school play in South Park’s first Christmas episode.
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Comments
Maybe they can rename the schools after some paragon of black “virtue” like Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe? Its time to end public schooling in America.
The overwhelming scientific belief was that blacks / individuals of african descent were intellectually inferior to whites / individuals of european descent.
Abe’s belief during the 1800’s was the norm.
Believing in contemporary science is no excuse to the Wokerati.
Abe could have been the most woke person ever born and he still wouldn’t be good enough for them.
It’s not about actual beliefs and attitudes and actions. It’s about the power to coerce people into doing what they’re told. Today it’s about name changes. Tomorrow it will be about reparations. The next day, it will be something else.
To be honest, I suspect it’s because he was named “Abraham” and not, say, “Ibrahim”.
If only those emigration plans had come to full fruition….what might have been for a more promising USA
When you don’t know history you shouldn’t be teaching it.
Marxists always re-write history as history is one of their weapons.
DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGT….OMFG
I guess the nearly 600,000 northerners who died, were wounded, captured or went missing didn’t count either.
Some, Select Color Lives Matter. It’ a diversitist belief under the Pro-Choice quasi-religion (“ethics”) of the Progressive Church/Synagogue/Mosque/Temple/Chamber/Clinic/Office.
I submit that it’s not at all too far-fetched to presume that the vile Dhimmi-crats will propose Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Yasser Arafat and Ruhollah Khomeini to comprise the pool of potential replacement names for these schools.
i can’t say i disagree with their observations, nor the comments made in the article. like most men lincoln had many flaws. he often acted more like an dictator than a president.
but, one’s life should not be judged by words spoken or letters written. these don’t give the whole picture and become easy targets and low hanging fruit. you must weigh the good with the bad and decide if one’s actions were justified, given the circumstances presented.
you could look at a Rembrandt and find flaws with which to criticize. but, if you step back and view the entire work, it becomes a masterpiece!
I agree completely.
Seems to me that many are on a socially-approved, at least by some, power trip to erase history. It wasn’t that long ago that a Muslim group began that crusade.
If one cannot rewrite history, it is apparently more efficient to simply remove the objectionable symbols and instructional materials of it. This is of course the route of a lazy and/or uninformed mind. Forced removal requires no discussion, which takes no education or *informed* effort.
History is replete with the power-hungry and ignorant who have caused great damage.
I doubt that Lincoln wrote “white” with a small w but “black” with a large b, as you quoted him as writing.
“Should we just number the schools?” Well that’s what they do in China. Our new masters may put us on that system.
Just try naming a shool PS 187 in a “neighborhood of color”. The screaming would start quickly. A “187” is a homicide in Police-Speak in, I think, either Los Angeles, or California.
Schools in NYC had numbers early in the last century. You know, back when NYC was a city of can-do, of manufacturing, of commerce. Not the communist hell hole it is today.
“I doubt that Lincoln wrote ‘white’ with a small w but ‘black’ with a large b, as you quoted him as writing.”
I’m glad I’m not the only one who saw that. Given the point being made (?) in the post, one would think that kowtowing to the NewRacism™ language rules would be avoided. But apparently not.
And these mental midgets are proud to walk around in their Che shirts.
Obviously these idiots never paid attention to the history books – the ones that tell the truth, not the distorted views that they teach to kids these days.