San Francisco Renaming Schools

[Sun_Worshiper]

Silly, but I have can think of more important things to be outraged about

...than the fact that some of the people these schools were named for had noticeable flaws? Agreed. This is what is so funny about the loony left. Outrage as a pastime.

Better that than trying to destroy American democracy. How many threads have you kicked off about Republican efforts to overturn a free and fair election?

[mahagonny]

Factual errors made by those renaming the schools.

https://missionlocal.org/2021/01/the-san-francisco-school-districts-renaming-debacle-has-been-a-historic-travesty/

Silly, but I have can think of more important things to be outraged about

...than the fact that some of the people these schools were named for had noticeable flaws? Agreed. This is what is so funny about the loony left. Outrage as a pastime.

Better that than trying to destroy American democracy. How many threads have you kicked off about Republican efforts to overturn a free and fair election?

what do you mean 'kicked off?' The thread is still there. Go express yourself.

[dismalist]

That might make sense: Locals should own the symbols. But what if I found sufficient local community members to rename the High School I live near from [Locale] High School to Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini High School? Would that be OK?

Yes. And no.

If that's what the community wants, then it's entirely legitimate for the community to enact its will. That's a separate issue from whether it's morally acceptable for the community to enact the change it wants to enact. Mussolini was a bad man with few redeeming features, so I don't think it's appropriate to honour him or his memory by naming public edifices after him. In the United States, where his more or less only association is with fascism, it seems especially inappropriate to do so, since it seems like doing so would also involve making a particular kind of (bad, morally wrong) perlocutionary act.

Lincoln has more going for him than Mussolini, and it doesn't seem prima facie morally wrong to have public edifices named after him. Neither does it seem morally wrong to decide to cease to associate your edifice with his name, especially since he also did some pretty morally bad things. If your school is named after MLK and your community decides it doesn't want to have its school named after someone who was Black so it decides to name it after platypuses or chicken of the woods, well, even though those new names are perfectly inoffensive, the associated perlocutionary act seems like a bad (morally wrong) one to me. If, on the other hand, the community decides to go from    MLK --­> Platypus because they think we should no longer name schools after people, that seems fine.

Precisely. That's why and how what is merely disagreed upon is deemed immoral. Who does the deeming?

Meanwhile, given many of the arguments on this thread, I'm going with Benito High School!

[Sun_Worshiper]

Factual errors made by those renaming the schools.

https://missionlocal.org/2021/01/the-san-francisco-school-districts-renaming-debacle-has-been-a-historic-travesty/

Silly, but I have can think of more important things to be outraged about

...than the fact that some of the people these schools were named for had noticeable flaws? Agreed. This is what is so funny about the loony left. Outrage as a pastime.

Better that than trying to destroy American democracy. How many threads have you kicked off about Republican efforts to overturn a free and fair election?

what do you mean 'kicked off?' The thread is still there. Go express yourself.

Kicked off means started, genius. I'm just pointing out that you get outraged about trivial nonsense, while ignoring serious issues.

[mahagonny]

OK, Sun Worshiper, you're prodding, so... I will admit to being somewhat outraged by some recent rends. For example, in some circles if a person says the phrase 'white supremacy' often enough and with enough indignation, they automatically become regarded as someone of especially well-tuned moral sensibility and thus qualified to make decisions for the rest of us. Not only do they never explain what white supremacy they're referring to or how whatever it is they're thinking of (if anything) could be a threat to others, but they don't even get asked to.
I start threads because I'm interested in what people will write in response. The forum invites us to. Why don't you try it? You're a person too. I may disagree strongly but that's part of the experience.
On the old forum, 'The Fiona' had the reputation as 'the fora threadkiller.' There was much playful banter over it.

Kicked off means started, genius.

Aw...the word 'genius' is overused.

[Parasaurolophus]

Who does the deeming?

The other people who live around you.

[dismalist]

Who does the deeming?

The other people who live around you.

Benito for Prez!

[Parasaurolophus]

The reality is that buildings don't have some kind of inherent name, neutral or otherwise. You can't scrutinize their parts under a microscope to find the hidden name. There's always someone--or some group of people--who does the deciding. These are people invested with the legal authority to do so, and they follow whatever process has been elaborated for doing so. If other people follow the process and come up with a new name, well, them's the breaks. There's nothing inherently wrong about that.

[dismalist]

The reality is that buildings don't have some kind of inherent name, neutral or otherwise. You can scrutinize their parts under a microscope to find the hidden name. There's always someone--or some group of people--who does the deciding. These are people invested with the legal authority to do so, and they follow whatever process has been elaborated for doing so. If other people follow the process and come up with a new name, well, them's the breaks. There's nothing inherently wrong about that.

Carl Schmitt could have said that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt

[marshwiggle]

That might make sense: Locals should own the symbols. But what if I found sufficient local community members to rename the High School I live near from [Locale] High School to Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini High School? Would that be OK?

Yes. And no.

If that's what the community wants, then it's entirely legitimate for the community to enact its will. That's a separate issue from whether it's morally acceptable for the community to enact the change it wants to enact.

Huh???? So should they be allowed to do this "morally unacceptable" thing or not? If not, who should overrule them? If so, who should defend their authority to do so?

My simple rule would be: the place gets a name when it's built. If it gets torn down and replaced, it can get a new name. If some information comes to light that makes the original name totally unacceptable, they can tear it down and replace it with something new.

You may not be old enough to remember the McDonald's in San Ysidro. It got dismantled at night and removed from the community.

[Parasaurolophus]

It's really not very difficult:

• If you can name buildings, then you can rename them, too. This is a legal process. Who gets to name a thing, or decide what it's named, is a legal matter.
  
• You can also judge people for their naming decisions, and you can also judge that some names are inapt or offensive. These are moral processes. The people who get to exercise their moral faculties are the exact same people who get to do so when you call them a bad name, or when you punch them in the face, or when you take a shit on the sidewalk--i.e. everyone around you.

If your follow-up question is 'who decides what's moral?', then the answer is 'everyone, but nobody in particular'. If you want to follow up on that with 'what makes something morally good or morally bad', well, take a class in meta-ethics.

[mahagonny]

It's an ego boost for the school committee to imagine that the community needs them to name buildings, again. Gives them a chance to show how cool they are and how they are improving our minds. Whereas, they need them to do unglamorous tasks like figure out how and when to reopen, what the COVID testing rules and availability will be, etc. Mundane work that brings real consequences and the chance for things to go wrong. Not fun, but necessary.
That doesn't mean they should do it, if it were necessary. But it isn't, because the people they will name the schools after will not be more exceptional or virtuous than the people whose names they are removing.
I'm waiting for this kind of enlightenment to come to our neighborhood, and I'm waiting for the local academics to be there with bells on. The press too, but not all of them.

[mahagonny]

That doesn't mean they should shouldn't do it, if it were necessary.

corrected

[dismalist]

./.

[dismalist]

It's really not very difficult:

• If you can name buildings, then you can rename them, too. This is a legal process. Who gets to name a thing, or decide what it's named, is a legal matter.
  
• You can also judge people for their naming decisions, and you can also judge that some names are inapt or offensive. These are moral processes. The people who get to exercise their moral faculties are the exact same people who get to do so when you call them a bad name, or when you punch them in the face, or when you take a shit on the sidewalk--i.e. everyone around you.

If your follow-up question is 'who decides what's moral?', then the answer is 'everyone, but nobody in particular'. If you want to follow up on that with 'what makes something morally good or morally bad', well, take a class in meta-ethics.

So what does meta ethics tell me about Benito?