The likely future mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, campaigned as a center-left Democrat. As a former police officer, he presented a compelling option to the people of the city who are fed up with the crime wave in the wake of the “Defund the Police” sloganeering.

This is not to say that Adams does not come with a whole host of problems as well, but at least he projected a rational approach to public safety (by acknowledging that gang violence is an actual problem), as opposed to some of the more radical left candidates.

However, with the 98% likelihood that Eric Adams will be the next mayor of New York City come November, this gives the Democratic candidate the freedom to be as wacky and wild left as he wishes to be. After all, he won the primary. What are the good liberals of New York City going to do – NOT vote for him?

So when Eric Adams says something as dangerous as “we have to clean up our history,” he will get a pass from all of New York because he has that magic “D” after his name on the ballot. And yes, he really said that. Adams, if he had the power, would remove all references to slave owners’ names from the streets and the buildings.

“We have to clean up our history,” the Brooklyn borough president continued after an event Friday honoring the pioneering Black journalist Ida B. Wells. Adams joined Wells’ family members to unveil a new portrait of the late crusader at Borough Hall.”

“We can’t have children walk into school buildings that are named after slave owners. We need to look at some of the street names and then we need to diversify,” Adams said.”

“We want to ensure that Borough Hall and City Hall, and all of these buildings are really diverse,” he added.”

So, in order to get to peak diversity, history must be sanitized for future generations, according to Eric Adams. This stretches a lot farther than Adams has likely considered, as the New York Post continued to point out.

Adams himself lives in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn that honors the Dutch colonial director general Peter Stuyvesant who enslaved up to 30 people on his 62-acre Manhattan estate. Aside for the neighborhood, there’s a Stuyvesant Avenue in Brooklyn, a Stuyvesant Street in Manhattan and the elite public high school Stuyvesant.”

This idea has already been examined by New York Magazine, and even they concede that the idea is pretty much impossible on a large scale.

The process of renaming a street, for instance, begins with a piece of City Council legislation. Approval from a local community board isn’t necessary, but gathering member signatures can help bring on lawmaker support. From there, the council evaluates the name change and considers feedback from those who live in the area, local lawmakers, and the general public. Thoroughfares like Nostrand Avenue or Beekman Street, respectively named for John van Nostrand and Henry Beekman — both of whom, census records show, owned slaves in 1790 — would stand to be rebranded. Proposals to rename neighborhoods — say, Boerum Hill, named for the Boerum family who owned 14 slaves — may similarly require council approval.”

Changing the name of a school is trickier. It starts with a proposal submitted by the principal and reviewed by the local parent-teacher association. If they pass it, it’s circulated to the general public, after which the school district’s superintendent has to get onboard, then the local community education council. The Department of Education’s chancellor gets the final word. And changes have to be submitted by March 1 of the year before the change is to take effect (so a name change submitted March 1, 2021, wouldn’t go into effect until school starts in September 2022).”

The names of private sites are beyond municipal reach. There’s no official procedure for demanding that someplace like Stuyvesant Town change its name. If it were to happen, it would almost surely be the result of community pressure and changing attitudes.”

But Eric Adams says that kids are being traumatized by having to go to schools named after slave owners. Tell you what. We can have that conversation AFTER kids are allowed BACK IN those school buildings this fall. Take a clue from San Francisco, please.

But why stop at slave owners, Eric Adams? As my grandparents were incarcerated during World War II, thanks to Executive Order 9066, I hereby demand that everything in New York City named after President Franklin D. Roosevelt be similiarly re-named. After all, wouldn’t anything named after FDR be traumatizing for anyone whose family was interned? Or is that going to be too hard for the left to swallow, to remember that their revered New Dealer has his name on that particular EO?

Or MAYBE we just leave things alone. If the left learned nothing from the only book series they seem to have read – Harry Potter – shouldn’t they have learned that “fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself“? Or maybe Eric Adams would just rather pretend that he is the future mayor of Oceania, and control of the past will grant him control of the present. Or maybe he’s just pandering because he has this election pretty well assured, and he can say anything he likes now, so long as it makes a good condescending soundbite for the hard left.

Featured image: Eric Adams via Krystalb97 on Wikimedia Commons, cropped, CC BY-SA 4.0