Schoolyard Cancel-Culture Bullies Come for Daniel Boone Chicago plans to change the name of my elementary school. By Joseph Epstein
A plan is afoot to change the name of a Chicago grammar school I attended. Daniel Boone, under the reign of self-righteous political correctness, is now a problem. The old pioneer apparently kept seven slaves and took over lands belonging to (as we now say) indigenous people. (His daughter Jemima was also kidnapped by a Cherokee-Shawnee raiding party, but let that pass.) For these sins the Chicago Public Schools Office of Equity has decided Boone is a “historically egregious figure” and can’t be allowed to have a school named after him.
The question of a new name was taken up in March at what the Washington Examiner’s Abigail Adcox described as an “in-person forum for the renaming process that was exclusively for parents, guardians, staff, and community members who are ‘Black, Indigenous, [or] People of Color.’ ” The school’s neighborhood is now a mixture of East Asians and Orthodox Jews. Most of the Jewish children attend religious day schools.
I attended Boone School from ages 10 to 14. I find myself not shocked but distressed by the name change. Boone was the scene of many of the happiest days of my boyhood. I was a quarterback, a shortstop, a point guard. I danced the rhumba with Marie Goldman at my first boy-and-girl parties. I spent my summers playing ball on the school’s gravel playground. I made friends I retain more than 70 years later.
What is in it for those intent on taking down statues and changing names of institutions? A feeling of high virtue, through redressing injustices of the past by canceling its heroes. They have at their disposal a powerful weapon: the right to call anyone who disagrees a racist.
And so heroic figures of the past—Columbus, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, now Boone and others doubtless to follow—must be shuffled off the stage because they held views or acted in a manner incongruent with the high moral standards of today’s self-righteous.
Some 20 years ago, in a book on snobbery, I defined the “virtucrat” as “any man or woman who is certain that his or her political views are not merely correct but deeply, morally righteous in the bargain.” At the time I thought such people little more than moral snobs. I had no notion their growing tribe would have so pervasive an effect on the culture. Think of all the associate provosts, deans and other university administrators whose job is ensuring what they deem proper diversity, inclusivity and equity. Such jobs are now beginning to be found in large corporations. Will they one day become presidential cabinet offices?
The effect of the virtucrats has been profound. At the university, equality has replaced intellectual achievement as the goal. They have lowered the standard of culture, and everywhere narrowed the range of artistic possibilities. Today a white writer is no longer permitted to write about blacks, a man about women, or a heterosexual about homosexuals.
The virtucrats have all but crushed humor. They have radically altered language, down to its use of pronouns. They have made it impossible to talk candidly about crime at a time when candor is desperately needed. They have made life, guided by their own self-righteousness, more inhibited, constricted, unpleasant all round.
The virtucrat is a moral bully, and like all bullies must be stood up to and stopped. Hell, I learned that on the playground at Daniel Boone School.
Mr. Epstein is author, most recently, of “Gallimaufry: A Collection of Essays, Reviews, Bits.”
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