"Fifty years after my parents enrolled me at Mosby, I am saddened to see politicians like [VA Gov.- elect Glenn] Youngkin build their careers on protecting White schoolchildren from having to talk about issues like slavery and racism. I was among hundreds of White kids who learned the obvious lesson that non-Blacks like me can only benefit from further exposure to this nation’s vibrant African American history and culture. We certainly don’t need to fear it.
"Youngkin’s heartbreaking decision to close his campaign with a promise to save students from Black literature like Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” carried me back to my difficult early years in graduate school, when I found immense comfort in the work of Black female writers. Youngkin and his base might think women like them would have nothing to say to a guy like me, and it is certainly true that we come from opposite ends of the privilege spectrum. Yet they gave me just what I desperately needed, from the sweet solace at the end of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Color Purple” to the in-spite-of-it-all resolve of Maya Angelou’s “But still, like dust, I’ll rise.” -- Woody Holton, professor of history at the University of South Carolina and son of former Republican governor of Virginia Linwood Holton, on what he learned as one of the few white students at Mosby Middle School in Richmond, VA, in the early '70's, and how it applies to current Republican racial dog whistling. Good reading.
