Diverse community of S.F. voters erases school board members' lived experiences

A little over a year ago, the New Yorker published a rather hilarious interview with Gabriela Lopez, president of the San Francisco School Board, which I wrote about here. 

Lopez, whose media relations approach appeared to be consulting a Say 'N' Say keyed to D.E.I. buzzwords, was dismissive of parents' concerns that renaming schools to conform to current notions of social justice should be a lower priority than, say, reopening them.

With Ms. Lopez and two of her colleagues, San Francisco voters were unimpressed. Voters ousted them  by blowout margins in yesterday's recall election.

 

Political backlash like this -- for locality-specific issues like schools administration -- is sure to spark speculation for the upcoming Congressional mid-term elections. And even though Governor Gavin Newsom easily won his recall election, it is interesting that an area as left-leaning as San Francisco wholeheartedly rejected officials' furtherance of an important aspect of the progressive project.

What says the Commenteriat? Has Tip O'Neill risen from the grave? Are all politics local again?

If you can't eat your plant-based meat substitute, you can't have any gluten free pudding.

I rarely have much interest for anything the New Yorker publishes these days, but this Q&A with San Francisco's School Board president, Gabriela Lopez, is fascinating, to say the least. As you may have heard, the board recently voted to rename a number of its schools due to their allegedly problematic namesakes, such as Paul Revere, Abraham Lincoln, and even good old Diane Feinstein.

Whether you think the name changes are warranted (and whether you think it's even an appropriate subject to which to devote time and resources, in light of ongoing school closures), Ms. Lopez's comments are remarkable not so much for their substantive content, if any, but for their vapid expression. Her answers are a bizarre melange of bureaucratic platitudes about "processes," New Agey happy-talk about "experiences" and "conversations," and authoritarian defensiveness over whether being factually accurate is tantamount to "discrediting" the hard work done by the committee responsible for the renaming. It's all topped with a thick layer of Millennial rhetorical nerfing, e.g., lots of for-mes and I-understand-buts. I have not done sufficient research to determine whether Ms. Lopez, 30, is herself a product of an American public school system in the 21st Century. But I know the New Yorker does not often publish interviews with news-makers in question-and-answer format, unless the exact words are worth parsing for one reason or another.

I've pasted a sample here, but the whole interview must be read to fully appreciate the absurdism. Though I cannot confirm that Ms. Lopez speaks with the famous San Francisco "uptalk," it helps if you imagine her every sentence ending with a question mark.

[Q:] So none of the errors that I read to you about previous entries made you worried that maybe this was done in a slightly haphazard way?

[A:] No, because I’ve already shared with you that the people who have contributed to this process are also part of a community that is taking it as seriously as we would want them to. And they’re contributing through diverse perspectives and experiences that are often not included, and that we need to acknowledge.

[Q:] I’m not quite sure what that means when we are talking about things that did or didn’t happen.

[A:] I think what you’re pointing to and what I keep hearing is you’re trying to undermine the work that has been done through this process. And I’m moving away from the idea that it was haphazard.