Why the recent decision of the Shenandoah County School Board to restore the names of two local public schools previously stripped of their references to three Confederate generals is unethical is crystal clear to me, but apparently to nobody else, or at least nobody else whose opinion I can find in print.
The Board voted 5-1 to change the two schools’ names back to Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby Lee Elementary School, four years after the same board with different members changed the names to Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary School. The previous act of historical air-brushing had occurred because it seemed obvious to those members that a lifetime petty crook overdosing on fentanyl and dying under bad cop’s knee while resisting a valid arrest in Minnesota meant that the names of those schools in Virginia had to be purged. Such was the logic of the George Floyd Freakout.
The George Floyd-inspired re-naming was wrong for the same reason all of the Confederate statue-toppling was and is wrong, as Ethics Alarms has attempted to explain from the moment this destructive movement started. The Washington Post and others call it “a racial reckoning.” It really is a cultural self-lobotomy. Communities and societies honor significant individuals in their histories for many reasons, and the fact that they have been honored in a particular time period is as much a part of history as the individuals themselves. Communities and societies of a subsequent period removing such honors and memorials in periodic outbreaks of presentism actively prevents future populations from examining and comprehending the nuances and conflicts of their own nation and its developing values. It also erases complex individuals and their life stories from our collective memories, a loss no matter how one justifies it.
The statue-toppling and renaming orgy (my current home state, Virginia, has led the universe in this fad) is simple-minded and single-minded: all it focuses on is retroactively punishing anyone who didn’t have the paranormal ability to intuit that his society was wrong about the moral and ethical nature of buying, selling and owning human beings. That’s Confederate General Turner Ashby above. He died heroically in combat. Ashby is almost completely forgotten, but he was honored by having a couple of schools in Virginia named after him, not because he supported slavery, but because, in the words of his commanding officer, Stonewall Jackson, “his daring was proverbial; his powers of endurance almost incredible; his tone of character heroic, and his sagacity almost intuitive in divining the purposes and movements of the enemy.”
Gee, I think I’d like to learn more about that guy; he sounds like an interesting figure whose life may have some lessons to teach! Nope, sorry, said those previous school board members. Ashby must be erased from the slate of local history because two assholes, one black and one white, one a cop and the other a criminal, ran into each other by chance, one of them died, and a Marxist scam movement decided that it was an act of racism they could exploit.
Oh. That makes sense.
Enough: these arguments and related ones are available in the essays listed here and elsewhere; I shouldn’t have to rehash them again. The ethics message today is that restoring the names of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby to those schools doesn’t simply reverse a foolish “Look! We’re woke too!” decision by some facile low-level elected officials caught up in Black Lives Matter mania. The current Shenandoah County School Board doesn’t wield a time machine. Giving those schools now the names of Confederate generals is a declaration that that these men who rebelled against their government largely in defense of the practice of enslaving black human beings should be honored anew today, in 2021. That is a very different position than believing that the past decisions of an earlier American society to honor them warrants consideration, respect and deference.
Restoring the names is divisive as well as legitimately offensive. Why is this so hard to see? What would be the perceived message if the United States government suddenly started erecting new statues of Lee, Jackson and other Confederate figures from coast to coast, and renaming streets and highways after Jefferson Davis and John C. Calhoun? Respecting controversial memorials from past eras is preserving history. Restoring them after they have been removed, no matter how misguided those decisions may have been, actively endorses the often warped and harmful values that partially inspired the memorials the first time.
[If you are willing to have your head explode, read the over-heated exchanges in the comments to the Washington Post’s news story about the school board’s decision.]
Ethics Alarms 
i recently drove through the very scenic shenandoah Valley.
My mnd envisioned the now green environment as when they were blood soaked battlefields that took the lives of so many.
The road signs that led to historic battlefeilds were plentiful. Directions to various schools that bore names familair to the student of the Civil War were easily discernable. Seeing such i was able to google those places and red more about the hsitory.(I was not driving).
I live on a street whose namesake was Bedford Forrest. It leads to a town square. There stands the county courthouse as it stood in those centruies. On one corner is a generic statue to a confederate soldier. On another is a plaque that tells of the seigeof the town by Union soldiers.
But what is most intriguing is that the Courthouse was the place where Judge Horton sat. He was called to preside at the retrial of the Scottsboro Boys. His decisions led to the overturn of all the convictions. In front of that courthosue is a memeorial statue of Judge Horton.
One street named after a rebel leading to a square full of a history that led to the application of justice in an unjust world.
One of my longtime Usenet allies, Christopher Charles Morton, came up with this statement regarding the issue.
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/a-few-suggestions-for-renaming-americas-military-bases-currently-named-for-confederates/#comment-4538946
The same principle applies here.
It is amazing what analogies Chris could think of.
A few random thoughts:
In Minneapolis, there is/was a Lake named, Lake Calhoun. It is kind of the central lake in the city. Growing up, I never knew why it was called Lake Calhoun, or why it would be named after John Calhoun.
Turns out, after the army set up Fort Snelling, they sent soldiers out to explore the surrounding area. They found a lake and named it Lake Calhoun after their boss, Secretary of War, John Calhoun (bunch of suck-ups).
So, in spite of his looooong career as a public servant, Senator, Secretary of War, and Vice-President, the sole fixation with respect to him was the fact that he had slaves (and defended the institution). So, people of far less consequence than he decided his name should be removed from the lake and changed to Bde Maka Ska, the “original” Dakota name for the lake (I have no idea whether that was the original name or not, but that is the story). Why they did not simply allow it to honor Rory Calhoun, a man who is desperately in need of having a lake named after him is a question I fear will never be answered.
I will grant you that Calhoun was a bad man in more ways than one. I don’t think I know of a single John Calhoun story that would make me think I would want to have dinner with him. He just sounds like a complete asshole.
But, he was a significant public figure and it was wrong to remove his name from the lake. Putting his name back on it might be slightly different from the examples in this post because his honor was not connected to the Civil War.
I also find it funny that the same people who deride the Confederates as traitors tend to romanticize all things Native American. Native Americans have waged far more wars against the United States (and for far longer). Why should they receive any honors from a country they have no interest in joining?
The answer to all of this is simple: it is part of the American story. Yes, people moved here and displaced the indigenous population. People were dragged here and forced to live their lives in bondage. Yes, we fought about that and ended slavery; we are still coming to terms with the indigenous population. But, all of these people are Americans. And, their interests, history and contributions should be acknowledged.
But, if we are going to piss and moan that some people want to re-honor their Confederate heroes, then maybe we should have just let them leave. Maybe we should let them leave now. Because if you can’t deal with the fact that some of your fellow Americans want to honor people you don’t like, why do you want to be associated with them at all.
Or, you should simply embrace the fact that this is a country with a complicated history and what makes it great is the fact that it has struggled through those things and that struggle should be celebrated.
It would be a real shame if Civil War re-enactments fell by the wayside because it became deplorable even to wear the uniform of the Confederacy. Because that is where this is headed. But, as the iconoclasts will tell you, you can always read about the battles in a book or a museum.
-Jut
They didn’t think of doing the obvious and naming them after Booker T. Washington, or George Washington Carver, or Frederick Douglass, or Martin Luther King? Maybe those names aren’t so obvious? Too long ago? History is white supremacist?
So let me get this correct, this school board wants to stick their thumbs in the eyes of the previous board out of pure vengeance for the wrongs the previous board did 4 years ago, didn’t these people ever learn that “two wrongs don’t make a right”?
It’s beginning to seem a bit like many of the things that Republicans are doing across the USA, or will likely do if Trump gets elected, are “two wrongs make a right” vengeance.
Vengeance is NOT the way to flush the past 10+ years of absurdity and reunite our society under the Constitution and American values.
Again…
“Based on observed cultural, societal and political patterns, I see the 2024 election as being a societal and cultural disaster for the United States of America. No matter who is elected, the reactions are going to be bad, and they’re likely to be very bad.”
Hope is not easy to come by these days.
I didn’t think of the decisions from that perspective, but your point is valid. It looks like payback rather than responsible policy-making. “Nyah,nyah, you changed names we liked, so now we’ll change the names YOU liked! So there!”
Yup, you almost had it, try this…
“Nyah, nyah, nyah-nyah, nyah; you wrongly abused your power, wasted time and money changing names of schools that didn’t need to be changed just to pander to the absurdities of the woke cancel mobs, so now we’ve got the power to stick our thumbs in the eyes of both you and the absurd woke crowd! So two wrongs can make a right”.
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/6-years-old-funny-expression-260nw-148516961.jpg
Naaaaa… nothing could possibly go wrong with that kind of vengeful policy actions from a school board that’s in charge of educating students and setting the right example for the students. I’m sure the kids will get the right message.
Absurdity abounds.
““a racial reckoning.”
That term just oozes the idea of revenge, doesn’t it?