Dual-naming plans good, but big fix needed

What’s in a name? That question has turned into a boiling controversy in our county, as local leaders are faced with proposals, requests and demands that they erase Sir Francis Drake from our street signs and the high school that bear his name.

School officials last year essentially unilaterally decided to remove it and temporarily replace it with the San Anselmo school’s street number until a new name could be decided.

Town and county politicians facing the same issue were not as presumptuous in their approach.

They did not take down street signs. They have been involved in a multi-jurisdictional dialogue and debate that has led to multiple decisions.

The Fairfax Town Council voted to scrub Drake’s name from the boulevard, the main road in and out of town. Next door, the San Anselmo Town Council joined the Larkspur City Council in favoring adding a second name to their sections of the arterial.

County supervisors reached the same conclusion.

The Ross Town Council voted to keep the name the way it is.

There’s no debate that

Drake is an important figure in Marin’s history. The issue is how the English circumnavigator’s visit is perceived today.

While history has painted Drake a hero, contrary views prefer to focus on his early years on a slave ship or that his arrival in Marin is a milestone in European colonialism that not only displaced native people, but brought diseases that ravaged their number.

Events in recent months that led us to expand the lens through which we view issues such as race and human rights amplified calls to remove Drake’s name.

Symbolically, those calls argue, Drake is to blame for practices and deeds that may have been acceptable in the 16th century, but — appropriately — are not today.

Recognizing that dichotomy is important. There are many decisions and actions that take on a different appearance as society grows and changes.

Drake’s early life connection in the abhorrent practice of slavery is a prime example. It was not outlawed in England until 1807, more than a century after Drake’s involvement.

Blaming Drake for the evils of colonialism is a broad swipe, crossing dozens of decades and many nationalities.

Removing Drake’s name is not going to rewrite history.

There are other place names across Marin that could raise similar complaints, but Drake has become the highest-profile popular target.

While Fairfax voted to remove his name from its stretch of the boulevard, Larkspur, San Anselmo and the county chose a Solomon-like compromise, enabling locals whose homes and businesses line the boulevard to avoid the cost and need to change their addresses.

After all, for whatever Drake is being blamed, it’s not their fault. The absence of a popular vote — even if only involving those boulevard property owners — on the issue also adds a degree of unfairness in scrubbing Drake’s name altogether.

But politicians in three jurisdictions, amid political pressure that they might be labeled racist or lack empathy for sticking with Drake’s name, have opted for a compromise that could add the historic balance that name change supporters say is missing.

Those additions might someday become colloquial shorthand designating the locations along the boulevard.

It is a fair compromise. It is, however, a label and its change — for a school or a boulevard — falls far short of bringing about the shift away from racism. That’s going to take more work, tougher decisions, more time and a greater systematic commitment.

Drake, whether considered heroic or iniquitous, is an important figure in Marin’s and world history. His life provides telling lessons of our history, ones that shouldn’t be hidden or ignored.

As an observation credited to Spanish philosopher George Santayana puts it: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”