It's no conspiracy: Collins' Tweets should get her removed from the School Board

She is refusing to resign. Hoping this will blow over?

If you haven’t read the 2016 Tweets by Alison Collins, the former vice-president of the San Francisco School Board, I invite you take a look now. They are #23 in the recallsfschoolboard.org 30 reasons site.

You’ve probably seen many of them. They are breath-takingly inappropriate.

She says “Many Asian Am. believe they benefit from the ‘model minority’ BS.” That Asians “use white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’”

And the one that stopped everyone for a quick intake of breath: “Being a house n****r is still being a house n****r. You’re still considered ‘the help.’”

There was, of course, outrage. More than 1,000 people attended an on-line meeting, complaining about the Tweets. And members of the Board stepped up (a little) and removed Collins from the vice presidency and committee assignments.

Two Asian members of the Board, Jenny Lam and Faauuga Moliga, called for Collins’ resignation. Mayor London Breed said she was “disgusted” by the comments and joined State Sen. Scott Weiner and Assemblyman David Chiu in demanding she resign.

But Collins has apparently decided to try the Gov. Andrew Cuomo strategy — ride it out and hope to hang onto the job.

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This can’t stand. With Asian hate crimes front page news, a public school board can’t have a member with such distasteful views. Remember, at last report, she still hadn’t taken the Tweets down.

There are errors of judgement and there moments that reveal fundamental flaws in character. Calling Collins’ Tweets racist is a strong statement, but when the definition of racism is “a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities,” it is pretty hard to escape.

Collins hasn’t helped herself. First she issued one of those “I’m sorry you were offended” apologies, which makes it seem like it was your fault. She tried a second one, but critics remain unimpressed.

She sniffed that the Tweets were years old, so apparently they should be forgotten.

If so, Sen. Dianne Feinstein would like a word. When she was mayor of SF, she became embroiled in a dustup about the Confederate flag. It was part of long-standing display of many flags at City Hall. A protester took the flag down. Feinstein had another one put up. (And then when it was stolen again, she left the spot empty.)

For that offense, this year the school board voted to remove Feinstein’s name from a San Francisco elementary school.

The flag incident happened in 1984, so apparently as far as the Board is concerned there’s no statute of limitations on behavior it finds offensive.

Next we went through a period of calling the uproar “political.”

Congratulations. We have once again proved that politics ain’t beanbag.

This is what people do. If you are a public figure and you have annoyed a group of people/parents — and you have, even before the Tweets — you had better be ready for them to dig into your background.

It’s called “oppo research” and it is the most normal thing in the political world. You may remember that Ohio State defensive lineman Nick Bosa had to answer for his Tweets supporting Donald Trump when he was drafted by the 49ers.

And, if your opponents go back to 2016 and find some things that you really, really shouldn’t have said . . . that’s on you. Not on them.

If only there were a a quick-click way to share this newsletter. Hey, wait a minute . . .

Then Collins floated the idea that the Tweets are taken “out of context.”

They are not. They are right there in Twitter black type with Collins’ face next to the words.

What is the alternative context of “house n****r”? By itself, the n-word is a vicious racial slur. When country singer Morgan Wallen was heard using the word in a video this year, the national backlash got him dis-invited to the Country Music Awards. He issued multiple apologies and attended awareness training.

And that’s where the other part of the Collins’ defense comes in. More than one defender in a recent open, virtual meeting said, “I’ll bet you don’t even know what a house n****r is.”

Everybody knows.

They were the slaves who worked in the house, who were mocked for selling out to get the perks from the owners. And today, as the Urban Dictionary says, it means “a black person that does their best to please white people even if it means disowning their own racial identity.”

Collins didn’t just use the slur, she added the “sell out” tag. Like she said, “Many Asian Am. believe they benefit from the ‘model minority’ BS.”

None of this is OK. There’s no fix for this other than Collins’ departure. If she won’t resign she should be removed.

The really sad thing is, facing an actual crisis in trying to get the schools reopened, the Board continues to be an unending funhouse ride of nonsense.

Their windy, self-important meetings meander into parody. I hope you didn’t miss the Heather Knight column about how the Board spent two hours debating whether a gay dad who is co-president of his daughter’s PTA was diverse enough for them.

And not only did they never ask the dad a single question, their conclusion was that he wasn’t. That he should come back with other more diverse candidates, maybe including a “Chinese parent who doesn’t speak English.”

The renaming of the schools debacle only gets worse with time. The “How the hell do you cancel Abraham Lincoln?” stories wrote themselves . . . and appeared in media sites all over the country. San Francisco is the joke and the punch line, all wrapped up in one.

But the Board has remained steadfast. They know that many consider Lincoln to be America’s greatest president and that he is “the Great Emancipator,” but there was this incident, back in 1862.

After an uprising was put down, 297 Native Americans were sentenced to be hanged. Lincoln commuted the sentence of 265 of them, but 32 were hung. And that was it for Abe as the name of an SF school.

The Board was asked to consider Lincoln’s overall career and body of work, but they said, according to the NPR national story Lincoln’s “life taken on whole was not relevant.” They have their standards and when they are violated, they make the tough choices.

OK. About Alison Collins. What are you waiting for?

Contact C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. Compliments and suggestions accepted gladly. Criticism not so much. Twitter: @cwnevius