Today, Explained - Race runs through it

Episode Date: February 13, 2019

Virginia: birthplace of American democracy and American slavery, first state to elect a black governor and maybe the first to have a governor with a KKK costume on his yearbook page. Christy Coleman from the American Civil War Museum in Richmond explains the duality of Old Dominion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, so we're all in agreement that the lieutenant governor should be encouraged to step down. Virginia had a bit of a year last week. One more quick thing before we get out of here. As you all know, earlier this week, our governor admitted to wearing blackface in college as part of a costume. It suffered embarrassment. Then later, the attorney general also admitted to wearing blackface in college as part of a costume. After embarrassment. It's extremely embarrassing to the state.

It became the laughingstock of the country. And as chair of the ethics committee, I have to ask, has anybody else worn blackface in college? It got its own SNL sketch. But what if the costume won a contest? What was the contest? Blackest face. But Christy Coleman says this isn't just a Virginia thing.

This is a national problem. Menstrualcy and all of that, it was something that the entire country participated in. And we see really the birth of popular blackface as an entertainment form actually getting its start in New York City. She spoke to me from the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia, which she runs. popular blackface as an entertainment form actually getting its start in New York City. She spoke to me from the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia, which she runs. For Virginians, it is more painful, perhaps simply because it is something that has come to the fore when Virginia has been working so hard to be a tad more progressive. You know, this is a state that has a very mixed economy. It has urban centers that are extraordinarily diverse. And so this slide backward from a figure or figures

that people presumed were a part of that march forward is the jarring part. For the uninitiated, from what exactly is Virginia moving forward? Virginia is preparing to commemorate three key events that happened in 1619. The first of those being the first of representative government. The second of those being the first of representative government. The second of those being the arrival of women. And the third, of course, is the arrival of Africans in 1619. They are brought here against their will, and they are sold to be put to work in the Virginia colony.

By the 1700s, of course, slavery is very much entrenched in Virginia, even into the eve of the American Revolution. Virginia at that point is 40% people of African descent. So the whole question, this whole idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator. All of that is born in Virginia, and yet born in a place where even the man who writes those words is an enslaver. But there have also been people who have resisted it from the beginning, and that's part of the story that often gets missed. We get into the 1800s. It takes two votes for Virginia to determine whether or not it's actually going to secede. You know, when they do secede, the decision is made to move the Confederate government to Virginia because she has this legacy of independence and revolution. But it is also the second largest intrastate slave trading port in Richmond, to the point where today about 40% of African Americans could in fact trace an ancestor that was sold from Virginia to points further south. So this is our history, this is our legacy.

What are things like for black Virginians during the Civil rights era. They are doing the same thing that black people are doing throughout the South. They are boycotting. They are asserting their rights to vote. The difference is you're not seeing the same level of violence that you saw in the deep South of Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia. Why is that? Well, instead you saw things that were a tad more insidious. Rather than allowing for, for example, the schools to be desegregated, we'll just shut down the schools.

And then they'll transfer the money into private Christian schools. And that's what happens. A lot of the private schools that get started in this state are actually started as a form of massive resistance by whites who don't want to integrate their schools. So that's part of Virginia's history. That no public elementary or secondary schools in which white and colored children are mixed and tall shall be entitled to or receive any funds from the state treasurer for their operation. The transition began in the 70s with Governor Holton. My love affair with Richmond Public Schools began when I was a 12-year-old.

My dad, Linwood Holton, was elected governor of Virginia in 1970. He enrolls his young white daughter, Ann, into public schools. My dad led my sister off to the high school with the local, national, international press in tow following their every steps. Meanwhile, my mother took my brother Woody and me to Mosby Middle School. Mosby Middle School, now Martin Luther King Middle School, formerly All African American School. And I think it showed a certain grace and dignity that he was trying to pull out of Virginians because Virginians do pride themselves on that. Even in the midst of ugliness, there is a certain dignity that people share. And I think he was trying to call upon this sense of dignity and decency. And it wasn't always easy,

but that one action, I think, really helped to turn the tide. And then you move into, you know, Virginia elects the first black governor. Former Lieutenant Governor Douglas Wilder took the oath of office in Richmond today and became the first black ever elected governor in the United States. And he was voted into office, obviously, by a lot of white people in Virginia, right? That's correct. Today in Richmond, the capital of the old Confederacy, the grandson of a slave did what's never been done before. Hi, Lawrence Douglas Wilder. Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear. That I will support the Constitution of the United States.

That I will support the Constitution of the United States. And the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia. So my point is, Virginia's history and the State House's history is full of these moments of moving more progressively forward to full inclusion, but then these sort of snapback moments. Which I guess brings us back to today. It brings us back to blackface. The use of blackface is cultural violence. It was designed that way from the beginning as an entertainment. So, of course, people's reaction to it was visceral. What is the thing that people who see blackface and see a controversy like this and go like,

I mean, I want to be Serena Williams for Halloween. Why is that offensive? What do they not get? That people's culture isn't a costume. And that more often than not, these depictions are meant to mock. That's what they don't get. And they don't want to. I should be able to do what I want, is also what you hear, whether they're wearing blackface or whether they're donning a so-called Native American headdress and putting themselves in any number of these costumes or a person that throws on a sombrero with a funky mustache with a poncho. It's all offensive. Blackface just happens to be, had been around the longest and the most pervasive. And that's different, right, from like a 10-year-old kid who wants to be Black Panther

for Halloween? Very different. Because that child that wants to be Black Panther for Halloween, I pray to God his parents are not putting shoe polish on his face to do it. He doesn't need to do that. No. Most people acknowledge if you put on the suit, we know who the heck you're supposed to be. I mean, it's kind of ridiculous, right? It's a completely different thing. I saw a picture of a young man, a boy probably was no more than 10 years old, giving a black history report, and he dressed up like Malcolm X. Did he brown his skin? Absolutely not. He put on a pair of glasses, he put on a suit, and he put on a bow tie. Bringing this back to Governor Northam, who may have worn KKK whites and definitely blackened his face in the 80s, he's also the guy who ran on getting rid of all the Confederate

monuments in Virginia? And that's the duality of Virginia, right? That's the duality of Virginia, right? That's the duality. Prognosis is a new podcast. It comes from the people at Bloomberg, and it looks into the leading edge of medical advances and asks the question, who gets or should get access to them? You meet the people at the front lines of medical change. There's this crusader in psychedelic drug research who's roaming the sands of Burning Man looking for venture funding.

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These monuments were put up as reminders that you might be free, but we're still in charge. I see them trying to defend their state, their country. We didn't go up there fooling with the North. They come down here trying to invade us. It's an utter disrespect. I actually took my first trip down Monument Avenue my first complete trip to pass all the monuments two days ago I deliberately avoid Monument Avenue for that

reason in my own form of personal protest the young people today you can't please them I don't know I guess they just grew up different from what I did I was in the military and stationed in Italy. You wouldn't go there and tear the Coliseum down because many people were murdered there. I mean, it's history. I don't look at it as a monument celebrating slavery. More as just a monument to history.

Let's respect what they contributed and have continued to contribute before and after the war and honor the men. We're not racist. We're friends with a lot of the blacks that come out here with us. We're just trying to honor the soldiers that fought for the state of Virginia. You know, we have so many large, tall, historic pieces of African-American history that do not get preserved and literally get bulldozed over. And so it just puts a punctuation mark on what's important to Richmond. Take them down. Take them all down. Christy Coleman, you live in Richmond, Virginia, home to Monument Avenue, where any day of the week you can go visit Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis.

We got Lee Highway right across the river from the district here in Northern Virginia. When did these Confederate monuments and tributes start to get controversial? Well, see, that's the thing. A lot of people don't realize that even at the time that these monuments are going up, there are people who are protesting them for various reasons. So the idea that this was sort of a unified, you know, front among all white people, number one, or that all Virginians and the other is patently wrong and false. It's just that the powers that be at the time made those decisions. And because they knew they were potentially at threat, because there were people, at least here in Virginia, that they were potentially at threat when they even went up, they try to legislate

protection. And they do legislate protection of these things. I mean, what do you see when you look at a Confederate monument in Richmond, Virginia? Well, I think for me, it's a lot different. You know, I understand their placement, I understand their history, and I understand their meaning. Even though I acknowledge that it's a form of propaganda that was placed on the landscape as well. And I also understand why people do have visceral reactions to it, and whether those are reactions of, I hate them, they're disgusting, and I don't want them there,

as well as people who look at them and have some form of veneration, because generationally they have been taught that that's what they should do. Monuments and statuary and all of this kind of thing, they reflect the communities that put them up. You talk about this duality of Virginia. How much does taking down Confederate statues help erase that duality or help undo that duality? Taking down a statue is not going to erase the duality. The history is still going to be there. That doesn't go away because a statue goes away.

You know, that's probably one of the most laughable things I hear, is that when you take down a statue, you're erasing history. No, you're not. History is history. It's still going to be there. But, you know, would it address the history of violence and suppression? No, it doesn't. For some people, what it could mean is that the removal of them is an acknowledgement of the pain that they have caused. It is an acknowledgement that they are not benign. And then there are other people who say, you really want to deal with structural racism? I could care less about whether that statue is on the ground. What I care

about is, you know, why do we still have redlining? Why do we have one of the most aggressive or had one of the most aggressive eviction programs in the country that inadvertently affect poor people and people of color. If you really want to make amends for this stuff, let's go after the structural problems and the structural things that were put in place, not a statue. And you've got a governor who at least talks about doing both, taking down the monuments during his campaign, he mentioned, and working really hard towards racial equality, he's been talking about since his blackface past walked out of the closet. Do you think he's a lost cause now,

or can he salvage some legitimacy in the eyes of Virginians who really want to move forward? I don't know. I would imagine that he is doing a lot of soul-searching, and I think he's trying to figure out a path forward. And there are people who said if Governor Northam, in his run-up to election, had said, you know, there are some things about me and my past that I have learned about because of my interactions with all of these people, first as a physician and understanding the challenges of families. And then if he had gone into this and said, I even, you know, grappling with race, you know, when I was a

student, I did this. The idea that if he had come clean about that, Virginians, particularly Virginians of color, would have been, that's the first honest thing a politician has said in a long time. You think it would have worked? Absolutely would have worked. Really? Absolutely would have worked. Really? Absolutely.

How would that have worked? I'm telling you. Because here's the thing. It's an acknowledgment that I did this in my past and I've learned and I've grown versus these are ideas that I still embrace. That's the difference. And people are willing to accept that, that there is growth and there is change. Christy Coleman is the Chief Executive Officer of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia.

I'm Sean Ramos-Firum. This is Today Explained. Irene Noguchi is our Executive Producer. Afim Shapiro is the Engineer. Bridget McCarthy edits. Noam Hassenfeld and Luke Vander Ploeg produce. Siona Petros is the Intern. And Isabel is our Essential Oil Diffuser. Thanks, Mom.

Special thanks today to Peter Solomon and Roberto Roldan for their help in Richmond, and regular thanks to the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder for all the music. Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher, and we're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Thank you.