General Lee
Schachter thinks, or claims to think, that Robert E. Lee was actually a monster with an“appalling record of treason, racism, hatred, and dishonor”. (Americans tend to think of Lee as a Southern Gentleman par excellence. Even those who dislike the CSA, or even dislike the South itself, respect and revere General Lee.)
Schachter claims that better names would be “James Armistead Lafayette, Mary Elizabeth Boswer, William Harvey Carney, Barbara Johns, Maggie Walker [or] Oliver Hill”. All no-names.
Some Googling reveals that every single one of those alternates is Black. I highly doubt John Schachter is Black. (Here is what some Internet site says about that particular surname: “[The name Schachter] was apparently often Ashkenasic, and used specifically to describe a [kosher] ritual slaughterer. The derivation is understood to be from the Hebrew ‘shachet’ meaning to slaughter.”) An actual Black guy, an NAACP leader from Arlington, opposes the idea.
This story is as if it were designed just to prove post-122’s point about politically-correct school names in Arlington.
It’s been an Arlington institution for nearly 90 years. But is it time to change the name of Washington-Lee High School? / John Schachter thinks so, although it likely will be an uphill, perhaps quixotic, battle to remove the Civil War general’s name. / Schachter, who can see the high school from his 21st-story condominium unit nearby, used the citizen-comment period of the Aug. 8 School Board meeting to say Lee’s name (though not Washington’s) should be removed from the school. / Lee deserves “no positive recognition for his appalling record,” a record that includes “treason, racism, hatred and dishonor,” Schachter told School Board members. / “Lee deserves no honor for fighting on the wrong side for the wrong cause,” he said. / Schachter asked board members to establish a committee to “right this egregious wrong” and come up with an alternate name for the school, whose history dates to the early 1920s. [Article Continues]
A Pair of Traitors
The question about Lee’s “treason” becomes the tricky and unresolvable one of whether the States, or the USA itself, were the primary unit(s) of political identity in America.
A strong case could be made that Lee would’ve been even more of a traitor even if he’d stayed in the U.S. Army and led the invasion of Virginia, his home state. Ironically, Lee opposed secession personally, I’ve read. Yet Virginia had voted to secede. It was done. Why would Lee fight against Virginia, against his family, his friends, his neighbors?
Schachter probably lives in a mental fantasy-land in which he imagines himself brave or heroic for being obnoxious.