Category: Race and Race Relations
-
Indians and McAuliffe’s Last Stand
by James A. Bacon A certain KP Nayar offers an interesting perspective on Virginia’s gubernatorial election from his vantage point as the Washington columnist for Moneycontrol.com, an English-language publication serving the business market in India. “Indian Americans constitute only one percent of the U.S. electorate, but Virginia is a state where they have influenced state…
-
Larry Sabato Is the One Living in a “Post-Factual” World
by James A. Bacon Larry Sabato has lost it. There was a time early in his career when the University of Virginia political science professor paid close attention to Virginia politics and spoke insightfully about it. But as he grew ever more successful as an author, director of the UVa Center for Politics, and a…
-
The Anti-Racist History of Vouchers in Virginia
by James A. Bacon The school choice movement — and vouchers in particular — are portrayed by proponents of public school monopolies as elitist and racist in origin. According to historian Nancy MacLean, the idea for vouchers came out of Virginia’s Massive Resistance to school integration as a way to transfer white children from integrated…
-
Shootings Are Spiking? Let’s Blame COVID!
by James A. Bacon It came as a big surprise to U.S. Senator Mark Warner to hear about the spike in violence occurring in the City of Richmond. The Senator, who last lived in the city when he was governor in 2006, met with what WTVR-TV describes as a gathering of government and community leaders.…
-
COVID, School Closings and the Real Racism
by James A. Bacon If you’re looking for evidence of “systemic racism” in Virginia schools, you can find it in a table produced by Matt Hurt, executive director of the Comprehensive Instructional Program, and published in the previous post. The table shows the extraordinary decline in in-person instruction that took place in the 2020-21 school…
-
Beating a Zombie Horse: Yes, Virginia, CRT Is Real
by James A. Bacon If these were normal times I could file this post under the “beating a dead horse” tab. Jim Sherlock and I have blogged repeated on the topic of Critical Race Theory in Virginia schools, providing abundant documentation along the way. But various parties — from the McAuliffe campaign to the Washington…
-
Changing Culture with the Other CRT
by Carol J. Bova The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) document, “Navigating EdEquityVa — Virginia’s Road Map to Equity” lays out a back-door strategy for changing traditional American values and culture. “The mission of the Virginia Department of Education,” says the Road Map, “is to advance equitable and innovative learning.” The document acknowledges senior staff,…
-
A Racially Divisive Disaster
by Marilyn Rainville As a retired teacher and mother of two raising a school-aged grandson, I am concerned about what is being taught in the Virginia’s public schools. Two weeks ago, I spoke at a Mathews County School Board meeting to voice my concerns about Critical Race Theory. The school Superintendent declared that our county…
-
Black Voter Monolith Looking Less Monolithic
by James A. Bacon Last week Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin received the endorsement of the Hampton Roads Black Caucus (HRBC). It was the first time that the civil rights organization, which had endorsed Democrat Terry McAuliffe eight years ago, has backed a Republican for governor since it was founded in 2012, according to the…
-
VDH Still Can’t Count
by Carol J. Bova In a blog post published yesterday, I noted that the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) COVID-19 dashboard breaks down vaccination status by racial/ethnic group and by age, but not by racial/ethnic groups and age. Thinking that VDH might possess the data, even if it had chosen not to publish it, I…
-
VDH Should Show Vaccinations for Age and Race Together
by Carol J. Bova Jim Bacon used an infographic from the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) in his recent post, God, COVID and the Rage Against the Unvaccinated showing the percent of the eligible population in Virginia with at least one dose. What the infographic doesn’t say is the numbers are based on Virginians age…
-
God, COVID and the Rage Against the Unvaccinated
by James A. Bacon “There is a growing rage among the people who are vaccinated about the people who have refused a free and effective vaccine,” Stephen Farnsworth, an oft-quoted political science professor at the University of Mary Washington, said recently. “We’re all going back toward lockdowns because of the selfishness of a few.” As…
-
A Closer Look at Those “Driving While Black” Statistics
by James A. Bacon When the Commonwealth published its Virginia Community Policing Act traffic-stop database last week, the Richmond Times-Dispatch spun the data this way: Black drivers are disproportionately stopped and arrested, and they have their cars searched at higher rates than any other race statewide. Here’s what the RTD could have written: Black drivers stopped for…
-
What We Want the Future to Know About 2020
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Several commenters to the previous post on the removal of the Lee Monument expressed interest in the items that were placed in the new time capsule that was to be placed in the base of the former Lee Monument. According to a news release from the Governor’s office, these are the items:
-
Lee Monument Removed
Yesterday morning the Lee Monument, the last major and most prominent celebration of the Lost Cause, was removed. Virginia and Richmond have now truly embraced the 21st Century.