Add Thomas Jefferson to the small but growing list of names of famous individuals in American history who have had their names removed from public schools in Berkeley, California.
There doesn’t appear to be any logical reason for the name change except that some parents and teachers gathered enough signatures to form a committee to change the name. Name changes are becoming more popular lately thanks to the PC police and they are usually limited to mascots, but not in Berkeley.
In the last few years Berkeley schools dropped James Garfield for Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln for Malcolm X (a real travesty if there ever was one) and Christopher Columbus Elementary was torn down and when it was rebuilt it carried the name of Rosa Parks. So with these changes I would have bet that the proposed names of Ralph Bunche or Sojourner Truth would have been shoo-ins. Yet the winner was none other than Sequoia. I’m sure the civil rights activists were disappointed since they can’t claim any racial discrimination in the selection.
Still the question remains why bother changing the name to begin with? The answer apparently lies with the comment of one parent who said “I don’t care that he wrote the Declaration of Independence, he didn’t write it for me.” Well excuse me, if not for this document where would she be today?
I guess it’s just another typical day in a city that continues to be out of touch with the rest of the country.
Don Irvine is the chairman of Accuracy in Media.
