The Revolt of the Unwoke

If the land of woke has a capital, it’s San Francisco. Which makes it all the more extraordinary that the City by the Bay has now become ground zero for a revolt by unwoke moms and dads.

Part of this is Asian-Americans awakening to progressive plans to sacrifice their children in the name of equity and diversity. Another part is ordinary citizens pushing back against the dividing of America into white oppressors and nonwhite oppressed. Still another is parents and alumni alarmed by the board’s lowering of standards at one of America’s most elite public high schools by elevating race categories over merit.

In San Francisco these strains have come together in a bid to recall three members of the city’s highly unpopular school board. The targets are President Gabriela López, Vice President Faauuga Moliga and Commissioner Alison M. Collins. To force a recall election, pro-recall forces need 51,325 signatures for each candidate by Sept. 7.

They already have more than half what they need, and say they now have the resources to hire professional signature gatherers for the rest. Polling shows 69% of San Francisco parents back the school-board recall {snip}

{snip} San Francisco was one of the last public school systems to reopen. It was so bad, at one point the city itself sued the school district.

Meanwhile, in January the board found the time to vote to strip 44 public schools of their names, including Abraham Lincoln High and Dianne Feinstein Elementary, over alleged complicity in racism or oppression. This was followed by an embarrassing about-face when it emerged how flimsy the criteria were. {snip}

{snip} A month after its infamous name-change vote, the school board scrapped merit-based admissions in favor of a lottery system at Lowell High School, crown jewel of the city’s public system. The idea was to increase minority representation at the school.

But as critics noted, Lowell was already 82% nonwhite. It’s just that progressive math excludes Asian-Americans. {snip}

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All three of the school-board members targeted for recall voted to drop merit from Lowell admissions. Ms. López, the president, also asserted that a merit-based system is inherently racist.

As for Ms. Collins, she has been too much even for her colleagues. She was stripped of her vice president title and committee assignments when tweets from 2016 emerged, one of which accused Asian-Americans of using “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and get ahead.” {snip}

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