Activists Petition to Rename Robert E. Lee Elementary School in Long Beach, California

From Tim Grobaty, at the Long Beach Press-Telegram, "Robert E. Lee and the ‘PC Nazis’ Square Off":

Our series of columns regarding the idea of a name change for Robert E. Lee Elementary School has resulted in a lot of anger and otherwise vitriolic disagreement, because that’s how life goes these days. “PC Nazi” is among the more cordial things we’ve been called since we sprang this on the readership last month.

Of the 500 or so comments we’ve received, the largest category is, “What about all those other guys?”

Jerry, or jjm2154 as he’s called on Yahoo!, is a typical responder in this camp. “Twelve presidents were slave owners, eight while in office,” he notes. “There are five schools in the LBUSD name dafter people who were slave owners. Do we change them also?”

“Political correctness and history revisionism gone berserk,” proclaims another commenter. “There really was a Civil War and you cannot name-change it away. What’s next, changing the name of Knott Avenue because Walter Knott was a Republican?” Well, yes, that does seem to follow.

Another, tpobob@aol.com, wonders, “Where will it stop? Luther Burbank and David Starr Jordan were proponents of eugenics. Should they go too?”

We don’t know, we’re just a lowly PC Nazi, not the PC Heinrich Himmler.

And we truly don’t know. Maybe. Maybe change them slowly; one a year until everything’s cleared up.

At that rate, it’ll be after many of us are dead before the worst are weeded out and replaced by newer heroes. Surely people have made some significant accomplishments in the last 150 years....

But the matter at hand is Robert E. Lee, and a decision by the Long Beach Board of Education could come as early as the July 20 meeting. Meanwhile, apart from our gentle nudging, Earl Ofari Hutchinson and his Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable has entered the fray, delivering a petition of 57 signatures to the Board of Education on Monday, and Tuesday, the group announced that Al Sharpton has announced his support for the name change, which will no doubt enrage, in a deeply satisfying way, the anti-name change camp. Hutchinson has warned the board that “civil rights leaders will call for a march in Long Beach... if local officials refuse to take action.”

I think it's all out of control, but I'm not going to defend the Confederacy. Folks know my reasoning, and it's America's majority opinion by a wide margin. See, "Majority of Americans See Confederate Flag as Symbol of Southern Pride."