Rep. LaShawn Ford (D-8th) told the Chicago Crusader that a frenzy to end Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion by removing the names of Black civil rights heroes from U.S. Naval ships will only lead to more miseducation for all Americans.
Agreeing with him was Northeastern University Professor Emeritus Robert Starks, who said the idea is “simply insane.”
They were referring to a project that would remove Harriet Tubman’s name from a USNS Naval Ship, along with those of other civil rights leaders like Thurgood Marshall, America’s first Black Supreme Court Justice, and Medgar Evers.
A list of progressives has also been compiled for removal from ships, including the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, labor leader Dolores Huerta, suffragist and abolitionist Lucy Stone, and labor and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez.
In defense of the ship name removal project, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the Defense Department “is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history and the warrior ethos.”
“Any potential renaming(s) will be announced after internal reviews are complete,” Parnell stated.
Ford argued, “History taught in history classes and books is already both incomplete and inaccurate, and those monuments are important to keep the real history alive. To erase that is leading to the miseducation of all people, not just Black people.”
Ford described the removal of Black civil rights names from the ships as “un-American,” saying that erasing those names “leaves the impression that Blacks developed this country only as enslaved people. To erase our names as if we never existed is really bad, and it is un-American.”
Years ago, Ford called for a freeze in the teaching of American history because he felt it wasn’t accurate. He argued that “it made the white man more powerful than anybody and makes everybody else—white women and Black people—inferior to the white man. That is how American history is portrayed, and it doesn’t include Black people.”
“It doesn’t surprise me what some want America to look like,” said Rep. Ford. “But what this tells me is that there is a desire to whitewash Black history and to turn back the hands of time to where it was white America and Black servitude, and that is not right.”
Professor Starks stated, “It is insane because in erasing the history of Black people, you are also erasing the history of America, and that makes no sense whatsoever. Anyone pushing this will have a real problem justifying it, and Black people are mad as hell about this.”
“Once this sentiment is gone from the presidency, I hope we can have those names put back on the ships because this is actually out of its mind,” Starks said.
He is hopeful that Black members of the Senate will file a lawsuit to stop the removal of African American names from the ships. “That is the only way we can stop this insanity.”
Starks noted the irony in wanting to erase Black names from ships and buildings while restoring the names of white, southern Confederate figures on statutes and ships, calling it “insane.”
He is hoping that Democrats will control both the House and the Senate in the next elections, believing it will “stop all of this nonsense.”