Tuesday, voters in San Francisco chose to recall all three of the school board members whose fate was put before them. The reasons for that decision seem pretty clear. During the worst disruption to schooling in recent history, the board members busied themselves with renaming schools, covering murals, ending competitive admissions at a top high school and generally making race the focus of their activities. They did this while a) schools remained closed and b) leading the district toward an economic collapse that required state intervention to correct.

But even on a school board where it appeared everyone was going broke for woke, Alison Collins stood out. On top of being at the forefront of all of the above-mentioned efforts, it turned out Collins had also accused Asian parents of using “white supremacist thinking.” The tweets were a few years old but it became clear Collins opinion hadn’t really changed.

In fact many Asian American Ts, Ss, and Ps actively promote these myths. They use white supremacist thinking to assimilate and "get ahead".

— Alison Collins 高勵思 (@AliMCollins) December 4, 2016

She directed this vitriol at parents who wanted to see their children succeed and who wanted that success to matter. Meanwhile, Collins herself was saying that not only were Asian parents racist but “meritocracy” itself was racist. As you can see in this clip, Collins clearly saw herself as a brave truth-teller for saying these things.

However, many parents I've spoken to disagree with that framing, pointing out that academic achievement shouldn’t be demonized.

Other parents I've heard from say reform is needed but that the process shouldn’t be rushed and that community input is needed. (4/7)

— Sophie Bearman (@stbearman) February 2, 2021

After all of this came out, several officials including Mayor London Breed called on Collins to resign. Even the LA Times editorial board was in agreement. She didn’t resign but fellow members of the board voted 5-2 to remove her from her role as board vice president.

In response, Collins demonstrated the emotional fragility so common among woke activists. She filed an $87 million lawsuit against her own school board which a law professor from UC Davis described as “more of an op-ed pretending to be a lawsuit.” She eventually dropped the lawsuit 5 months later.

So now that Collins has been recalled, how is she taking it? If you guessed “not well” come collect your prize. Collins clearly hasn’t learned anything from the experience of being roundly rejected by voters. On the contrary, she’s basically arguing this was a right-wing, racist backlash…in San Francisco.

The outcome of the School Board recall effort is not surprising. Many like to believe San Francisco is exceptional, but this city is not so different. The local recaller backlash shares traits with broader efforts to “take our country back”. Nationwide there are efforts to roll back voter rights, repeal abortion, restrict LGBTQ rights, fight mask mandates, and remove curricula centering the history of non-white Americans. Here in SF, the issues have been renaming schools, murals, school closures, Black Studies, and desegregating Lowell. Each of these was met with aggressive, often angry reactions which animated the recall election.

Some will try to justify the recall as a necessary response to a school board that was too “woke” for its own good. This argument is misinformed…

Recallers have no policy proposals and they have no candidates. The campaign focused on personal attacks, misinformation, tearing things down, and going backward. Now we know what it costs to buy an election in San Francisco. Charter interests, Realtors, Visa, PG&E, and tech billionaires contributed to the nearly $2 million raised to fund this recall. This stands in stark contrast to the money raised by 38 candidates in the last four school board elections who collectively spent $1 million. This is a misuse of the democratic process, and there are people who are going to be harmed by the outcome.

I’m proud to be on the right side of history.

Collins also retweeted this thread arguing that Collins was just “honoring” Critical Race Theory. The thread also argued you can be racist without being a Republican.

2) another catalyst was the changing of school names in SF. Honestly, this is the one of the first step in honoring Critical Race Theory as a district. Something folks should think about when pondering why these three board members were ousted

— Krea Gomez-Jones (@Krea_Jones) February 16, 2022

5) you don’t need to be White to be racist or conservative

— Krea Gomez-Jones (@Krea_Jones) February 16, 2022

This is directed at you, Asian parents! Collins also tweeted her own attacks on racist San Francisco parents who are acting no different from “the Right.”

As San Franciscans, we like to believe we are different than other cities. Nonetheless our city still continues to fall down when it comes to disparities in police violence, housing access and educational opportunity.

— Alison Collins 高勵思 (@AliMCollins) February 17, 2022

If you’re not as woke as Alison Collins, you might as well be a red-state conservative.

What our Board did differently, was empowering historically oppressed communities to craft their own narratives and their own solutions. The outcome of the recall is erasure/silencing the voice of the many community members who for decades have pushed for changes in our schools.

— Alison Collins 高勵思 (@AliMCollins) February 17, 2022

So there you have the Manichaean worldview of former school board member Alison Collins. Either you’re on the right side of history with her or you’re a racist joining a backlash against much needed Critical Race Theory in public schooling. There is no room for nuance and of course no need to even mention evidence of the board’s economic incompetence.

All of this supports what I’ve been saying about the woke for quite a while now. People like Collins are extremists who aren’t interested in dialogue or compromise, only in compliance. But for the moment they remain a minority, even in progressive San Francisco. If you want to know why so many efforts at canceling people fail it’s not because cancel culture warriors are reasonable people, it’s because there aren’t enough of them to enforce their will. But with wokeness having captured college campuses across the country that’s likely to change. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which extremists like Alison Collins actually have the power they already assume they deserve on account of their righteousness. If that happens, the results will be a catastrophe for the country.

Finally, now-former school board president Gabriela Lopez is basically saying the same thing:

This headline says it all. If you are not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

— Commissioner Gabriela López 🇲🇽 (@lopez4schools) February 17, 2022

Like Collins, she regrets nothing and is very sure she made no mistakes worth mentioning.

I wonder what excuse you would have prior to this? Anything to dismiss even the discussion of racism. You do know the renaming work starting in 2017 right? In response to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville…

— Commissioner Gabriela López 🇲🇽 (@lopez4schools) February 17, 2022

It’s like this meme has come to life only instead of the children being wrong it’s the voters in San Francisco.

“Why, there are no children here at the 4H club, either! Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong.” pic.twitter.com/NNJNIw711N

— The Simpsons (@Simpsons_tweets) April 18, 2019