The San Francisco Unified School District’s art department moved to eliminate acronyms from its name, saying that the abbreviations are tied to “white supremacy culture.”
“We are prioritizing antiracist arts instruction in our work,” said Director of the Arts Department Sam Bass while announcing that the acronym “VAPA,” which stands for visual and performing arts, would be changed to the SFUSD Arts Department.
“It is a very simple step we can take to just be referred to as the SFUSD Arts Department for families to better understand who we are,” Bass said.
The move comes after the San Francisco school board recently made the controversial decision to rename 44 of the district’s schools, claiming the people they were named after had ties to racism or slavery.
Bass based his decision on a 1999 paper, “White Supremacy Culture,” which argued that “our culture perpetuates racism when things continue to be written down in a certain way.”
“The use of so many acronyms within the educational field often tends to alienate those who may not speak English to understand the acronym,” Bass said.
Asked about her feelings on the department changing its name, San Francisco Mayor London Breed appeared to confuse the discussion with the debate over changing school names.
“We definitely need to have a robust conversation about what we need to do but not a rushed conversation,” Breed said.
The SFUSD website is so full of acronyms, there is a page dedicated to defining what all of them mean. Despite that, there is no districtwide effort to eliminate acronyms outside of the arts department.
But Bass said he believes in making changes, including a move to change “SOTA,” which stands for the School of the Arts, to the Ruth Asawa school.
“In the same spirit of getting rid of acronyms, I do believe in calling it Ruth Asawa,” Bass said.
