San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
History: Further understanding of past through discussion, not destruction
What’s in a name? A lot, to judge by the backlash against a proposal to rechristen about onethird of San Francisco schools, including Abraham Lincoln High School.
Everyone wants the school board to act: President Trump called the renaming “so ridiculous and unfair,” Mayor London Breed asked the school board to shelve the issue until schools reopened, and the renaming committee called for a quick affirmation.
This is the right discussion to have, but the wrong way to have it. Discernment and discussion, not speed, is of the essence. Striking the names probably won’t deepen our understanding of the past, but keeping them probably won’t either. A wellplanned public debate just might.
We won’t get to deeper understanding by prevailing in a political process. But we might get there if we follow the guidance of many of my fellow scholars of the Civil War era: We want more history.
More history means serious debate about the legacy of these historical figures, and the relevance of those debates to the world we live in today. There is a lot to wrestle with. Some of my students at UC Davis are shocked when they confront Abraham Lincoln’s casual racism and support for voluntary resettlement of people of African descent. They’re used to the Great Emancipator legend. Other students, however, are equally shocked to see Lincoln’s unequivocal denunciations of slavery in public and in private. They’ve learned a countermyth of Lincoln as racist apologist.
Neither myth captures a politician who both resisted calls for quick emancipation in the war’s first days and went far beyond public opinion in calling for the enfranchisement of some black men in what became his final speech, the words that inspired a Confederate sympathizer to assassinate him.
And slavery and emancipation, important as they are, are only part of Lincoln’s legacy. There is also the nation’s other great crime: the murder and displacement of native peoples. This debate came home to San Francisco in the renaming report that referenced Lincoln’s native policies. And, probably, it came home again last weekend in splotches of red paint that appeared on Lincoln’s statue at City Hall. The paint couldn’t tell
Don’t rush to rename Lincoln High — use wellplanned public debate to strengthen our grasp of the past
us what it meant, but the act may have been timed for the anniversary of the mass hanging of 38 Dakota men in December 1862.
We aren’t going to grapple with our history by shutting down all discussion of Lincoln’s legacy or by forcing a quick renaming or by splashing paint. And there is some littleknown history we must grapple with if we are to understand the nation’s past and its present: the Dakota War, the Dakota and HoChunk removal, the hurried and illfounded death sentences handed down to 303 Dakota people, Lincoln’s commutations of most of those sentences, Lincoln’s approval of 38 hangings. We need more history about the nation’s actions toward Native peoples, including more history about Lincoln.
And we need more history about the dozens of people the committee named, and about some the committee didn’t.
Simply saying yes or no to the names isn’t going to lead us to a deeper understanding of that history. But a serious discussion could help us all stop and think, if the school board can design the right public process. I suggest:
( 1) Embracing education. Researchers should prepare extensive documentation on the actions and words of each of the historical figures under discussion. Don’t rely on Wikipedia or simplistic proand antiarguments but accumulate and disseminate information. More history.
( 2) Acknowledging human frailty. No human being — not my heroes and not yours — will live up to a standard of one strike and you’re out, once applied universally and rigorously. We don’t have to overlook their flaws, but we do have to accept that all the honorees, like all of us, will be imperfect. We honor them for their acts in their time.
( 3) Reframing, not just renaming. Whatever we decide about names, we should develop displays and teaching tools that explain the actions of both those we honor and those who are replaced. More history.
( 4) Engaging with, not just humoring, the public. Too often public comments simply fill time while public bodies wait to act. Let’s have real discussion: questions and answers, genuine and sustained debate, straw polls. Let’s remember how to talk to each other, not past each other.
( 5) Repeating the process every 20 years. We show respect for history by taking it seriously, not by chiseling names on edifices.
( 6) Soliciting Bay Area honorees. The school board should build a nominations suggestion box, prioritizing candidates with Bay Area ties, and ask submitters to explain their reasoning. We learn more about our past if we state clearly why we honor particular people, and if we try to honor people who worked right here in the Bay Area, both the famous and the unjustly forgotten.