President Trump mocked Monday for recent efforts to remove the names of John Wayne from a California airport and President Woodrow Wilson of a Princeton University school over concerns of racist sentiments.
California Democrats in Orange County recently passed a resolution calling for Wayne’s name to be erased from his local airport due to “racist and bigoted statements,” while Princeton has already withdrawn Wilson’s name from his school of public policy. and from a residential university for “racist views”. and policies. “
PRINCETON DROPS WOODROW WILSON’S NAME FROM SCHOOL FOR ‘RACIST THOUGHT’
“Can anyone believe that Princeton just left the Woodrow Wilson name for his respected policy center,” Trump tweeted. “Now Democrats Do Nothing want to remove John Wayne’s name from an airport. Unbelievable stupidity!”
Princeton trustees voted on Friday to change the name of the school of public policy, which will now be known as The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, while the university will simply be called First College.
“The trustees conclude that Woodrow Wilson’s racist thinking and policies make him an inappropriate namesake for a school or university whose academics, students, and alumni must be strongly against racism in all its forms,” said a statement published in the school website.
The trustees cited Wilson’s “segregationist policies”, whereby he segregated multiple federal agencies and his cabinet after decades of integration after Reconstruction. The New York Times noted that while Wilson may not have led the segregation efforts, he “doubled” when questioned on the subject and rationalized segregation as a “strategy for maintaining racial peace.”
JOHN WAYNE’S FAMILY RESPONDS TO ACTOR’S 1971 CONTROVERSIAL INTERVIEW WITH PLAYBOY
Protests over the name of the New Jersey Ivy League school have been ongoing since 2015 when students occupied the president’s office and demanded that Wilson’s name be removed from Princeton buildings. The university responded by forming a committee to study Wilson’s legacy at the school.
The John Wayne resolution, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, asked the Orange County Board of Supervisors to reverse the 1979 decision to rename the actor, and cited comments he made in a 1971 interview with Playboy.
“I believe in white supremacy until blacks are brought up to a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people, ”he said in that interview.
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“I don’t feel guilty about the fact that five or ten generations ago these people were slaves,” he said at another point in the interview.
The latest push comes amid a nationwide movement to tear down monuments and rename buildings and institutions named after Confederate generals and other controversial figures.
Fox News’ Peter Aitken and Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
