In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, a school board in northern Virginia stripped the names of Confederate military figures from two schools. Four years later, the board approved a motion to restore the names.
The school board in Shenandoah County, Virginia, early Friday approved a proposal that will restore the names of Confederate military leaders to two public schools.
The measure, which passed 5-1, reverses a previous board’s decision in 2020 to change the names of schools that had been linked to Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby, three men who led the pro-slavery Southern states during the Civil War.
Mountain View High School will go back to the name Stonewall Jackson High School. Honey Run Elementary School will go back to the name Ashby-Lee Elementary School.
The board stripped their names after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, fueling a national racial reckoning. The calls for racial justice and equity inspired some communities to remove Confederate symbolism and statues of Confederate generals.
But in Shenandoah County, the conservative group Coalition for Better Schools petitioned school officials to reinstate the names of Jackson, Lee and Ashby. “We believe that revisiting this decision is essential to honor our community’s heritage and respect the wishes of the majority,” the coalition wrote in an April 3 letter to the board, according to a copy posted online.
I was born during the Reagan era, so a bit too young to know much about it from the time, so it never ceases to amaze me how much he helped facilitate the backwards slide of our society. I think his administration was so effective as it was the combined efforts made by conservatives from what they learned by what happened with Nixon. The conservative “think tanks,” the creation of purposefully biased media platforms, the Powell Memorandum, courting the evangelicals, etc. were all effective both then and to this day. There is a ton we can all still learn about from this era.
My thoughts are just that surely much of this could have been prevented if we had taken better action when we had half of American aristocracy backed into a corner, and instead of doing anything about it, we just collectively said, “well, it looks like you guys learned your lesson, so here’s all your stuff back, just don’t call them slaves anymore and try to be discrete with your racism for a few decades.” Our ancestors defended this country, won, but then allowed 90% of the causes of the war to persist. To think they wouldn’t try to claw back the rest of what they had was naive and the “peace” gained by pardoning these people responsible has led to over a century of misery, especially to the people that had suffered most prior to the war, was not worth the cost of us not harshly correcting our national politics when we had the chance.
Seeing Lee and others argue for peace and moving on is no surprise. He was the perpetrator, and the loser of the fight. Why wouldn’t he want the world to forget about that? Who would expect the losing enemy general to call for harsh punishment for their actions? It’s the same reason why these Nixon, Reagan, and Bush officials are willing to publicly bash Trump when he’s not looking like a sure winner. It takes the attention off of what they got away with, and if they keep us mad at Trump, that less time to focus on their actions.
This is why while all this news ticks me off and makes me unhappy, I still try to keep learning about it and at least staying aware of who is saying what. Just because they people are “agreeing” with us now doesn’t mean they really support what they are saying, and it doesn’t make up for the actions they took against the American people.