The left-wing dominated Falls Church, Virginia School Board voted unanimously last night to erase the names of two Virginia-born founding fathers from the city’s public schools, citing equity and slavery in beginning the renaming process of George Mason High School and Thomas Jefferson Elementary.
“After deep and careful consideration of everything I’ve heard and read, I conclude that renaming both schools is in the best interest of our students and a necessary part of our equity work,” School Board Chair Greg Anderson said of the issue, despite community polling which found that Falls Church residents oppose the name change by an over 2 to 1 margin.
“I considered the survey results and the community discussion that followed, and I revisited our public hearings,” Anderson said of the poll results. “…I conclude that the public is split,” he went on to say, despite just a quarter of poll respondents endorsing the name changes.
Proponents of the change agreed with Anderson’s tossing of the polls, with Jennifer Santiago, who spoke in favor of the changes, saying the polling data showed that a form of reverse democracy must be exercised to protect “marginalized people” from “systemic racism.”
“While there are many times majority rules works in issues of equity, it is the opposite that is needed. If the majority rule worked for traditionally marginalized groups, we would not have systemic racism,” Santiago explained.
The twin 7-0 votes came after 6 months of debate between the board and the community, spurred by massive cultural unrest brought on by the political left following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
While neighboring Northern Virginia municipalities have begun to rapidly strike the names of Confederate war heroes and segregationist Democrats from their school districts, Falls Church’s attack on the founders appears to represent new territory for the region.
As concerned community members have pointed out both before and after the vote, the “slippery slope” feared by many appears to have been met. What began as as a supposed “rehabilitation” of Virginia’s storied Civil War legacy has now devolved into what some are calling a full blown attack on the founders of the Republic.
NewsLeader recently categorized and published every historical statue removed in Virginia during the civil unrest that has occurred in 2020, noting that “visible signs” of history are being removed, while The Washington Post celebrated the vandalism and removal as statues as an opportunity to “learn” from history. Additionally, lawmakers in New York have called for the removal of a Thomas Jefferson statue, and a Boston statue of Abraham Lincoln was removed.
Even The Washington Post has questioned whether progressives have gone too far in their quest to categorically remove America’s history.
This article has been updated for clarity.
