Rename Huff! While your at it check this out: Many parents of the Mountain View Whisman School District recently learned about a fringe benefit in the form of a $1.2 million home loan as an amendment to the Superintendent’s Agreement for Employment. This item is currently on the July 2, 2020 MVWSD Board Meeting- Regular Agenda, item VIII J.

Yes, of course, we must urgently rename Huff. I will be happy to bring a hammer to remove that name from the buildings and street signs.

But people, I think we are missing an even bigger name that must be canceled from our culture and our city: Washington.

He was a slave-owner after all. That's the only thing that matters about him in today's world. Yes, I know in our school classrooms we now mainly mention this one fact about George Washington above all the other minor details of his life, but that's not good enough! He must be canceled from our culture and erased from our history books!

We must urgently petition the mayor of Washington D.C. to change the name of that city to simply "The District". After all, D.C. stands for "The District of Columbia" and as we all know, Columbia was derived from Columbus, whom must be canceled from our history too. So, Washington DC becomes The District.

We must also write Congress to rename the state of Washington and every street in every city in the USA named Washington and any school named Washington. I suggest the State of Washington be renamed "The State of Seattle", that way they can advertise that Seattle is so nice they named it twice and come see the police-free, safe party zone CHAZ.

Just yesterday, a statue of President Andrew Jackson was torn down because of what people say about him which would be Politically Incorrect today. Mountain View has a street named after Andrew Jackson and one for George Washington.

And I would also remind everyone that Abraham Lincoln said that if he could save the Union without freeing the slaves, he would do that to avoid a civil war. Clearly, Lincoln was a racist and must therefore be canceled from our culture. One statue of Lincoln is in the process of being canceled.

We must judge all people from our history by the standards of July 2020 acceptable behavior and erase anyone who does not live up to today's standards.

There are people who will say negative things about the people which each of our schools were named after. Plenty of people had very valid objections to our most recent school name: Vargas. Vargas is still young, what if Vargas does something terrible in coming years? What if Vargas says something some future group finds offensive?

I suggest we switch to the school naming policy used by New York City: PS-1 for: Public School 1

That way we wont "offend" anyone in the future with our imperfect history. Because sweeping history under the carpet, ie. revisionist-history, is always the best way to educate our kids and the best way to avoid the mistakes of history. So let's just erase everything and forget about all of it.

There is no educational value in the past. Nothing of importance to learn about how we got from there to here. No history is more important than risking anyone being offended today or in the future. I'm sure we wont make the same mistakes again, once they are erased from our history.

Anyone ever see a movie called "Idiocracy"?
I always thought it was a wildly impossible exaggeration just to make a funny, silly, dumb and campy movie about a fictional society of idiots and morons (in the original Greek meaning of those terms) who know nothing about anything because they erased it all.

I do have one question: How can we tell if we're making progress or what to be proud of if we no longer have any past to compare ourselves too, rather than comparing the past to ourselves?

While the account about Mr. Huff is not corroborated, and probably never will be, let us consider this historical speech:

"[T]he cause in which we are engaged is one of the greatest in which any can labor. It is the cause of the white man…I am in favor of free white American citizens. I prefer free white citizens to any other race. I prefer the white man to the negro as an inhabitant to our country. I believe its greatest good has been derived by having all of the country settled by free white men."

Who said this? Leland Stanford in in acceptance speech as the Republican Party’s gubernatorial candidate in 1859.

Unlike the secondary source on Mr. Huff this speech is a recorded fact!

So let's rename Stanford University! Let's protest until they do!

And more! Stanford, as the governor of California, said:

“The presence of numbers of that degraded…people [Chinese-Americans] would exercise a deleterious effect upon the superior [white] race….To my mind it is clear that [Asian-American] settlement among us is to be discouraged by every legitimate means. Large numbers are already here, and unless we do something early to check their immigration, the question which of the two tides of immigration meeting upon the shores of the Pacific”—the Euro-American and the Asian—“shall be turned back, will be forced upon our consideration when far more difficult than now of disposal…”

How dare the railroad baron who made his fortune on the back of the Chinese workers who built the Pacific Railroad be so cruel on the people he ruthlessly exploited!

Leland Stanford was a major proponent of Chinese Exclusion Act.

Rename Stanford.

Neither of you are as insightful or clever as you think you are. You unwittingly raise excellent points about the idolization of people who committed horrible acts, and your sarcasm really only works when you're talking to other Boomers. Well done.

In a thorough process, we need to ask if we judge a person more for their actions or their commonly held beliefs. In actions, Henry L. Huff was a commendable early resident of Mountain View and a Mountain View educator and principal.

His beliefs, which were likely targeting Chinese immigration, are abhorrent by standards, then and now, yet still were sadly very common in Calfornia at that time.

We are at the precipice of a cultural enlightenment right now. Yet simply the act of removing Huff's name doesn't feel enlightened to me, as a Chinese American, the very kind of people that Huff, Stanford, and countess Californians in the 1800s up until WWII, aimed to exclude. I would prefer a memorial to all the Chinese Americans that suffered the horrors of that time period, especially in California, such as the segregations into Chinatowns, including the one that was once on Villa in MV. I'd rather see a $60,000 statue on the Huff campus celebrating immigrants over the $60,000 it takes to rebrand a school name, and I'd rather spend $60,000 on anti-racism curriculum than either.

Ultimately, I agree that in the end we may reach the conclusion that the removal of a name does not condemn Huff, but is a decision to not celebrate Huff, which is enough to rename the school.

Yet, I hope we don't stop there, for a removal of a name is a virtue signal, and not an active form of education for generations to come. I hope we commit to teach future Mountain View residents about Huff's attitudes towards non-European immigration, a lesson we need now more than ever.

The comment above, before Mr. Chiang, clearly embodies age discrimination. The commentator implies that older people such as Boomers are biased. It is surprising that someone who claims to be so virtuous and so anti-discrimination is in fact practicing ageism discrimination. Hypocrisy knows no bounds.

By the way, if you read the article isn’t it clear to you that the author Eugene Sawyer was strongly anti-immigration himself? It seems to me that the author imparted his own beliefs into Mr. Huff. Perhaps anti-immigration was trendy at that time. The journalist had to embellish Mr. Huff in a way that fit the time.

If you write a bio of a local luminary today you probably would want to say that he or she is anti-pollution, pro immigration, BLM, climate change, etc. All the standard stuff, even though there may be nothing worthy of note that he or she has done.

I cannot find any supporting facts in that article on the claim that Mr. Huff is anti-immigrant. In fact I think if there were any actual quotes or deeds by Mr. Huff the author would have seized upon them glowingly, because it was one of the major “virtues” the author declared upon Mr. Huff. The author must have tried but could not find any.

Therefore in my view it is very questionable that Mr. Huff was out of norm on immigration for that era.

[Post removed due to trolling]

Yeah let’s spend the money now on the urgent matter of renaming. Such a pressing concern in the era of covid, economic crisis, and budget deficit.
PS: Stanford is named after Leland Jr., who died too young to offend anyone.

Correction to my earlier comment.
I should have written, Frank Huff, the educator who the school is named after.

Henry Huff was Frank's brother. One can view the book that is the source of this debate regarding Frank Huff here: Web Link

On the topic of Frank's brother Henry, Henry Huff was a horticulturalist, and gave Congressional testimony in 1920 on Japanese farmers, calling them skilled but a "menace" in an effort to exclude further Japanese immigration to the West Coast (Source: Web Link

So my earlier comment should not just be just about Chinese immigration, but their family held the common belief of a wider Asian threat. These views were widely held in the West Coast at their time, including many CA senators, governors, and mayors. I'd rather focus on teaching students the complex history of these people than remove each of their names, because, sadly, if you tried to remove the number of names of pre-WWII Californians that held Anti-Asian beliefs, they would be too numerous to rename. Some of the other MV schools that are named after local people of that time, it would be reasonable to infer they may have held similar beliefs, but just aren't historically recorded.

Would it not be better to commemorate the diverse history of Mountain View by teaching this history at Huff rather than renaming Huff and moving on? I hope the school board does not rush action but deeply explores this local and national issue of how to view our past. To start, lets involve all of MVWSD's students in this in the fall.

[Post removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]

@Christopher Chiang. Renaming Huff is actually a good opportunity to discuss that history. Taking down a statue or renaming a building doesn't erase the history books, in fact it adds to them (Huff was renamed in 202x because of....).

@Flabbergasted, it's a convenient excuse to say that Stanford is to honor the Jr. The founder obviously knew who will be remembered.

Palo Alto renamed Terman middle school even though the name was intended to memorize the brother of the other Terman who were targeted.

@anon
Stanford University was not named after Leland Stanford, the politician and railroad owner. Its full name is Leland Stanford Junior University. When I entered in 1966, I didn't like the thought that I was attending a junior university, but it turned out that the university was named after Leland and Jane's son, Leland, Jr., who died at age 15 in 1884.

My cohort and I had no illusions that Stanford was a hero. In fact, we sought to rename the mascot, "Indians" to "Robber Barons."

But the university has made amends to the Chinese immigrants who built Stanford's railroad, enabling the economic development and population of the American West (at the expense of native people, one must remember) with its Chinese Railroad Workers project. See Web Link The historical documentation of this project is not nearly as impressive as the Chinese who labored to create the transcontinental railroad, but its an essential part of this region's past.

@Lenny Siegel, what you claimed is a convenient but convoluted excuse.

But more importantly renaming the school, because some anti-immigration journalist wrote a glowing article about Mr. Huff, tells the children that you are judged by the mistakes, not the contributions you make to the society.

No matter how hard you work, no matter how genuine you have been, or how much you have done year after year to help build your community, within the context of your time, you will be punished as long as someone in the future think you may be wrong about something. All your achievements are futile. You will be remembered as an evil person.

Is this what we want to teach to the generations to come?

And let's not forget Elihu Yale, for whom Yale University was named after, was an extremely corrupt and ruthless official of the East India Company, and an active slave trader. He was no notorious in treating the local Indian people, killing many of them, that the British removed him from his post.

For those who support renaming Huff, think about your conscience when years later your sons or daughters apply for Stanford or Yale. [Portion removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]

[Post removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]

@ @PC Parent, Anon Castro City

I knew somebody would assume.

"Neither of you are as insightful or clever as you think you are."

No, it's clearly you who misunderstood our posts, they were NOT intended as sarcasm or some clever trick. The fact you failed to get the point is sad, but not a surprise. Shows you lack insight.

"You unwittingly raise excellent points"

There was nothing "unwitting" about the points I raised, they were very deliberately raised, but it seems they were either beyond your understanding or you just jumped to the wrong conclusion. I meant every word.

"about the idolization of people who committed horrible acts,"

No, about the fact that if you look into the history of anyone of significance worthy of a memorial, you will ALWAYS be able to find some actions or words from them (or attributed to them) that by the standards of July 2020 will make them out to be monsters.

History should NEVER be written about the "worst things" about a person, but rather, history should be written about the things that made that individual have the greatest impact on history. That is neither good nor bad, and it is not subject to the fickle perceptions of the mob. History should not go digging to find what makes historically important people "normal for the times in which they lived". History should dig for that which made a person exceptional and worth memorializing their place in history.

I have always been a big fan of MLK (Martin Luther King), the fact that there were plenty of things he did or said that would be inappropriate and even unacceptable by July 2020 standards does not in any manner suggest that MLK should be canceled or erased from history just because MLK was far from perfect.

"and your sarcasm"

You are ASSUMING that I was being sarcastic, I assure you I was being fully sincere. I must assume such sincerity of purpose and words escapes your shallow understanding.

"really only works when you're talking to other Boomers."

I'm NOT a "Boomer", nor am I a fan of them. The Boomers did the same things of blindly ripping up of anything their parents (the Greatest Generation) ever did worth remembering.

" Well done."

Since you chose to mistakenly assumed I was being sarcastic, I will assume you last statement is being sincere.

Cancel Culture rearing its ugly head in Mountain View? How sad.

PC Parent, your latest post contradicts your earlier one.

Initially, you stated: "We must judge all people from our history by the standards of July 2020 acceptable behavior and erase anyone who does not live up to today's standards."

Now, it seems that you believe: "unacceptable by July 2020 standards does not in any manner suggest that MLK should be canceled or erased from history."

Which is it?

Can we please cancel the Democratic Party too, since they were largely responsible for institutionalizing slavery in the USA, Jim Crow laws and not to mention the KKK and segregation in schools, restaurants, bathrooms, drinking fountains, etc !!??

To everyone, let me be clear, I WANT this nightmare of "Cancel Culture" and erasing history to continue to run amok.
I WANT it to get FASTER in fact!

Either do it correctly and quickly and fully, or STOP DOING IT! Half-measures simply makes the division in our nation WORSE and breeds ever greater hate.

I WANT all our public schools to be renamed as: Public School #1, 2,3,4,5,6,7,...14

I WANT every city in the USA to start wiping out history, to change all streets names, change names of all schools, remove all historical monuments, to cancel every TV show or movie.

I WANT Washington DC to change it's name to "The District".
I WANT Washington state to change it's name to "The Stats of Seattle".

The problem with the original "Red Scare" (that was exploited by Senator McCarthy to create McCarthyism that ruined millions of lives) is that was so slow-moving that it took the introduction of a new medium, TV news, before anyone was able to stop the insanity.

Had Senator McCarthy gone whole-hog in a mad rush from the start to impose his standards on everyone, then people would have risen up together on ALL SIDES of the issues to stop the run away abuse before it did much harm.

I WANT to see everyone "WAKE UP", which is NOT the same as "woke", but wake up in the broader sense our "cancel culture" is no more evolved than the society of ancient Egypt where each new Pharaoh would tear down all the depictions of prior leadership.

To be clear, I see no problem with the people of Iraq or Germany ripping out all of the symbols erected by their former dictator and mass murderers who had ordered memorials of themselves to be installed everywhere during their reign of terror.

I am NOT talking about memorials or named places/streets that were created by the dictator themselves during their lifetimes. Those are NOT memorials, they are objects used by the dictators to impose their will on the people and terrorize anyone who might challenge their power. Those should be torn down, some saved for museums as examples.

It would be like Trump (or any sitting President) spending billions of tax payer money to build a huge statue of himself to be placed in every city center in the USA. I would help tear those down myself.

In my opinion, nothing of public property should be named for or any memorial built in honor of any living person. Any such honors should wait until the person dies and there is time for a public evaluation of what was important about that person that deserves remembering.

Then such places, street names, memorials should be respected as historical objects and used as a point of education about our history.

Look at it this way, there are hundreds of thousands of historical homes on the official registry of historic places. I would bet money that if we researched every one of those homes we would find that someone once lived in them who either did something terrible or said something we would judge harshly by July 2020 standards.

So, lets tear all of them down while we're at it, OK?
Let's get it all done ASAP!

PC Parent, in your first post you said: "There is no educational value in the past. Nothing of importance to learn about how we got from there to here."

From your latest one, it sounds like you don't believe that at all: "such places, street names, memorials should be respected as historical objects and used as a point of education about our history."

Which is it?

@ Frank Richards

Sigh, it seems that I have been too subtle for some people to comprehend. It's established human psychology that people learn far better if they figure it out for themselves, but I guess not everyone can.

"PC Parent, your latest post contradicts your earlier one."

No, my posts are not at all contradictory, they just require careful reading and more than superficial thought.

"Initially, you stated: "We must judge all people from our history by the standards of July 2020 acceptable behavior and erase anyone who does not live up to today's standards.""

""We must..."" meaning the cancel culture mob must...

Any reasonably well-educated person knows that out of overall context anything written by anyone can be made to seem like anything you wish. Just look at how people use the Bible out of context quotes.

The prior quote you provided was a call to the cancel culture mob to act and think a certain way without considering the consequences.

The out of context quote below is a moral judgment on how people should think and feel.

"Now, it seems that you believe: "unacceptable by July 2020 standards does not in any manner suggest that MLK should be canceled or erased from history."

"Which is it?"

BOTH are true, one encourages the current "cancel culture" MOB to push even faster to force the government to do what they want. The other encourages people NOT in the cancel culture MOB to maintain a proper moral compass in the face of the conform-or-else MOB.

The purpose is, as I have stated, to make the cancel culture mob take such steps that will create a backlash from ordinary law-abiding people that will stop the insanity. Much like how Senator McCarthy was stopped by people finally standing up to him and being counted as opposing what McCarthy was doing.

McCarthy used the same tactics to destroy the lives of millions of law-abiding Americans that the Antifa and cancel culture mob are using today. Public shaming and private threats of violence. And McCarthy shamed the same sort of people too. Nobody is perfect and thus anyone could be targeted by the mob.

The cancel culture has already begun eating their own, I just want them to kick it into high gear and just wholesale ruining lives until someone turns a mirror on them and they are stopped by their own reflections.

Where are Lenny Bruce and Richard Prior when we need them?
Where are MLK and Malcom X when we need them?

Why did you quote my first post instead of my second one?

@ ShorelineWestMan
"Can we please cancel the Democratic Party too,

It's not the whole Democratic Party at fault here. Neither is the entire Republican Party at fault for their failings. Neither party should be canceled.

But PLEASE can you two parties give us a pair of candidates that are not so terrible? Please stop making us choose between two nightmares. Is that too much to ask?

" since they (Democrats) were largely responsible for institutionalizing slavery in the USA,"

Indeed, but most people intentionally ignore the fact that Black slavery (which began in Africa before the dawn of history) spread to the Americas & Caribbean over 200 years before the USA even existed as a legal entity. Unlike any other nation, slavery within the USA only existed for about one long lifetime before it was abolished at the cost of about 600,000 American lives.
The USA officially came into existence in 1789.
The 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865.

"Jim Crow laws and not to mention the KKK and segregation in schools, restaurants, bathrooms, drinking fountains, etc !!?? "

While your list of past sins committed by the Democratic Party, since it was founded in 1828, is perfectly valid, but let's try to be more productive by talking about what the leadership of the Democrat Party has done in our life times. Better yet, let a major Black leader talk...

TRIGGER WARNING: Below is a 1960's quote by a well-known African-American leader who refers to people of his general ancestry as "Negro". You have been warned.

Malcolm X wrote: "The worst enemy that the Negro have is this white man that runs around here drooling at the mouth professing to love Negros and calling himself a liberal, and it is following these white liberals that has perpetuated problems that Negros have. If the Negro wasn't taken, tricked or deceived by the white liberal, then Negros would get together and solve our own problems. I only cite these things to show you that in America, the history of the white liberal has been nothing but a series of trickery designed to make Negros think that the white liberal was going to solve our problems. Our problems will never be solved by the white man."

"The white Liberal differs from the white Conservative only in one way; the Liberal is more deceitful, more hypocritical, than the Conservative. Both want power, but the White Liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro's friend and benefactor and by winning the friendship and support of the Negro, the White Liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or a weapon in this political football game, that is constantly raging, between the White Liberals and the White Conservatives. The American Negro is nothing, but a political football."

- Malcom X (1963)

@ Frank Richards
"Why did you quote my first post instead of my second one?"

First written, first response?

More to the point, my answer to both of your posts would be roughly the same. Since you still have made no honest effort to understand my first posts, why would I think you would be capable of understanding my reply?

When you make the intellectual effort to understand my first posts, then your questions will all be answered by that effort. Nothing I write can help you with that.

One hint, taking pieces out of context is always a blind alley if your intention is understanding, however, if your purpose is dishonest, then taking things out of context is the lazy and cheap tool of such purposes.

But you already responded to it in a previous post. To address both of your responses, it's odd that you would use "we" to describe a group you clearly don't consider yourself part of (""We must..."" meaning the cancel culture mob must...").

My second post is a little harder for you to address, I gather, because it points out you were directly saying "There is no educational value in the past," which, from your later statements, is not something you believe.

Looking at the video of the end of Thursday night's board meeting, all five boards members were persuaded by the "historical account" cited in the article that Huff school will get a name change. All five also stuck to their plan to give the Superintendent a contract extension and a bonus of a $1.2 million loan toward the purchase of a house variously described in the materials as in the county and in either Mountain View or an adjacent city. The meeting was scheduled to air (on youtube) at 6 pm but was not officially started until after 7pm. No telling what was going on before showtime. The proposed resolution purported to attach a purchase agreement. There was none in the agenda packet and trustees somehow knew at the meeting that no house had even been selected by the Superintendent. Somehow. . Made no sense. Trustee Jose Gutierrez, who has announced that he is next running for City Council, cast what he called a "symbolic" vote against the contract change to indicate he had listened to those who had objected. Made no sense. The Superintendent also talked about re-opening the schools in the face of the coronavirus. Good to plan - but the virus is spreading like crazy and it doesn't just kill the grandparents. I heard a doctor-scientist on tv last night report that asymptomatic young party-people had received permanent lung damage from the virus that could disable or help kill them down the road.

Note that the agenda for the first July 2 meeting (a second was set for 10:30 pm) had two closed session items before open session items. But the agenda stated, as the Brown Act requires, that the meeting would publicly convene at 6pm to first receive any public comments about the closed session items. That did not happen. Instead, the public meeting was started at 7:06 pm with the board president announcing that no (reportable) action had been taken in closed session. Unless there is some emergency rule that has overridden that (public input for closed session items) part of the Brown Act, it was violated. And when you have smart, experienced board members involved, it is fair to wonder WHY.

The Family Surname (of the offending). Is the entire Huff surname contaminated by the racist immigration views of this one member? I wonder how many families (white/ Protestant and in this county for a century) have no family member who had 'been a blot' on their Surname?

The Terman family out of Palo Alto also had such a situation. One Bad Apple (their first Stanford academic). But the Terman name also was with the currently living Terry Terman and his son. Terry has been a kind local member of the League of Women Voters and a philanthropic member of some other local NGOs. The academic son of The Bad Apple was the very famous academic engineering mentor to Hewlet and Packard / giants of the development of Silicon Valley. And Well known charitable foundation creators.

Do not Throw out the Family with the One Bad Apple / like Palo Alto did with Terman Middle School. They (and we) could rename the school! Terman or Huff (for the family / not the One Bad Apple). And put the 'brass plaques' with the reason, in several prominent places about the school site. "A teaching moment"

[BTW, I would also like any (Thomas) Jeferson school to be renamed Jefferson-Hemings / if you know that history!]