Great idea to rename the houses after locations! Let's use this opportunity to reassure the children that, as we continue to discover and uplift new and increasingly oppressed and marginalised groups and individuals, we will gradually come to understand how all of today’s (and tomorrow's) heroes are deeply problematic and reject their legacies wholesale.
Let's change ALL the names - and ensure that in future we avoid referencing any form of humanity. We’re already far more complicit in problematic inegalitarian behaviours and associations than this article recognises - as is clearly illustrated by the other names mentioned:
Florence Nightingale was born into a privileged family of parasitic landowners and directly benefited from their ill-gotten gains to obtain an elite education and even to travel extensively abroad (a privilege almost no one in the UK is allowed today). She was indisputably a white feminist and therefore inherently exclusionary of African American and Native American women. Her lifelong friend Mary Clarke infamously proclaimed that if given a choice she would rather be a galley slave than a woman - and yet Nightingale STILL has not denounced and disavowed Clarke for this hateful and hurtful display of cis privilege.
Nelson Mandela was born into a royal family and levereged hereditary privilege and money to receive an education unavailable to most black South Africans under apartheid. Via his foundational role in uMkhonto we Sizwe, he abandoned his principles of pacifism. He was an apologist for British imperialism: openly stating that he enjoyed the “trappings of British culture”, praising the UK Parliament and court system, and even thanking the Empire for his early education. As the first President of post-apartheid South Africa, he resisted calls to institute radical land reform and a socialist-style redistribution of resources and instead continued the neoliberal policies of his predecessors in order to maintain exploitative foreign investment in the country. Married to three different women and fathering six children, he was almost certainly also a beneficiary of unacceptable cis-het privilege.
#IT'STIME #PHOBESMUSTFALL #DOWNWITHPEOPLE #NOHEROES #DRAINTHESWAMP #APLAQUEONALLYOURHOUSES