I have pursued this topic with some attention because I think
it is quite relevant to contemporary Virginia history.  The
politics of race is present in most places in our country, but
it is especially important in Virginia for a variety of
reasons, not the least of which is the presence in our state
of such a vibrant commitment to Confederate memorialization.

It is of course possible, perhaps even likely, that I have
misinterpreted Tom's intention.  In crafting my posts here, I
have tried to keep in mind the larger issues that I see being
raised in recent conversation.  My intended audience has been
the list-serv as a whole, not any single individual.  When I
riff off of one individual's post, it is because the errors I
think I see in it strike me as getting at something larger and
worthy of public comment.  If I have, in the process, done
violence to Tom's arguments (as I hope I have not), then I
offer my sincere apology.  That was not and is not my
intention in posting.

There has been an effort by some Virginia politicians and
public intellectuals in recent years to sweep the whole issue
of racism away, as somehow being illegitimate to talk about,
or irrelevant to our public life together.  Some prominent
Virginians have essentially wanted to argue "Well sure, things
were bad in the past, but we have fixed them now, and we
should just move on."  Such an argument is tantamount to
suggesting that Virginia's past--Virginia's recent past--is
irrelevant to our public policies today.  This is, needless to
say, an odd argument coming from a state that has so
powerfully and prominently committed itself to memorialization
of its past, and in which tradition plays such a large role in
its public life.

There is a core of truth to the argument that things are a
better today than they were in the past, by the way.  Things
are a whole lot better today, at least so far as racism goes,
than they were 25 years ago.  I can still remember the caravan
of 5,000 cars, Confederate flags flying, driving up from
Richmond in 1977 (I think) to protest the Court ordered
desegregation of the Richmond school system.  The court had
just ruled that the pupil placement boards in Richmond were
not an acceptable compliance with Brown v. Education.  This
was five years or so *after* the Republican governor of
Virginia had courageously, and very publically, tried to set
the example to end segregated education in Richmond.  (That
incident, by the way, is one you would think Republicans in
Virginia would be proud to memorialize!)  What I recall of the
speeches made by the leaders of that caravan on the steps of
the United States capitol and supreme court was that they were
full of racist vitriol.  No one today could organize such a
caravan, and no one today that I am aware of is advocating
that kind of racism.

But the racism of the people who organized that caravan, and
who spoke those hateful (and deeply un-American) speechs in
our nation's capital, have left real consequences.  You and I,
as citizens, have to deal with those consequences.  To deny
them is to perpetuate them.  That is, to my eye, complacent.

If *any* of Virginia's history matters to the public life of
the Old Dominion today, then it is *this* history.  I believe
that history matters a lot to our public life together,
because it accounts for how we have arrived at the situations
we currently inhabit.  The effort to avoid the consequences of
our past by just ignoring our history seems to me to be deeply
misguided.  

History matters.  Surely we on this list-serv, of all people,
can agree on that.

All best,
Kevin
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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