Virginia Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

My obsession with “cancel culture”

Voting rights

I have become fairly obsessed with the notion of a so-called cancel culture. How did the term so “quickly became one of the buzziest and most controversial ideas on the internet”?

“Despite the seemingly positive intentions of many cancellations — to ‘demand greater accountability from public figures,’ as Merriam-Webster’s evaluation of the phrase notes —” Let me stop in mid-sentence here. Accountability is what we feel we want in a civilized society and don’t always receive.

Continue… “people tend to call out cancel culture itself as a negative movement, suggesting that the consequences of the cancellation are too harsh in minor instances or represent rushed judgment in complicated situations.”

That’s undoubtedly happened, especially involving things one has done in the past. I’m so glad I wasn’t on Instagram in the 1980s.

The term is of recent origin. But the notion of canceling people because they violated the conventions of the day has long existed. It’s that now, we have the technology to better facilitate it.

Often it’s been powerful organizations who’ve silenced dissenters. The church canceled Copernicus and Galileo. If it had access to Twitter, it’d have had a field day with Martin Luther. Maybe we’ll see the return of the scarlet letter.

“The kind of language that’s used to talk about groups of people assembled together—or their collective actions seeking to change the status quo—often maligns communities as irrational, ‘mobs’ or ‘rioters’ with uncontrolled, invalid emotions, a kind of faceless contagion that presents a threat to civilized, law-abiding society and the ruling establishment.”

Every social movement for changing labor laws, or giving rights to women or people of color, e.g., involved some “uppity” people making the status quo uncomfortable. Of course, there will be pushback. The difference now is that the discussion is online, so there are lots of megaphones.

A boycott is always a double-edged tool

Before Major League Baseball decided to move this year’s All-Star game out of Atlanta, Former and possible future Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams had hoped it wouldn’t happen.

“I understand the passion of those calling for boycotts of Georgia following the passage of SB 202,” the founder of the voting rights organization Fair Fight Action said. “Boycotts have been an important tool throughout our history to achieve social change.

“But here’s the thing: Black, Latino, AAPI and Native American voters, whose votes are the most suppressed under HB 202, are also the most likely to be hurt by potential boycotts of Georgia. To our friends across the country, please do not boycott us,” Abrams continued. “And to my fellow Georgians, stay and fight, stay and vote.”

But MLB commissioner Rob Manfred stated, “I have decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game.” Will the action help or hinder the fight against more restrictive voting laws? Will “canceling” the Peach State rescind the recently-passed law? Hey, idk.

The greater good

Remember Ralph Northam (D-VA)? He was, and is, the governor who, some years ago, was wearing blackface in a yearbook photo. He was immediately apologetic and repudiated his previous behavior. Some nevertheless called for his resignation. He survived because the next two officials in the Virginia gubernatorial succession line had problems of their own.

Northam has “signed several bills into law that aim to expand voting access, most prominently a measure that makes Virginia the first state in the country to enact a state-level voting rights act.”

It is “modeled on the federal law of the same name after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority gutted a key provision of the federal VRA in 2013. That invalidated provision had required jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination—including much of Virginia—to “preclear” any proposed changes to voting laws or procedures with the Justice Department to ensure they weren’t discriminatory.”

It would have been a shame if Northam had been forced out of office.

Conservative punditry

Ann Coulter, in a recent email alert, referred to Derek Chauvin as a Human Sacrifice. “In modern America, we periodically offer up white men as human sacrifices to the PC gods. Among our benefactions: Jake Gardner, Kyle Rittenhouse, Darren Wilson, the Duke lacrosse players, University of Virginia fraternity members, Stacey Koon, and Mark Fuhrman.

“The rest of us just keep our heads down and pray we won’t be next.”

This is a fascinating swipe at cancel culture, conflating white cops who beat or killed black people, and a vigilante with a couple of complicated college-related cases. Chauvin, Dr. Coulter notes, should be exonerated because it absolutely was not his knee that killed George Floyd.

She concludes, “In the darkest days of Jim Crow, the entire country never ganged up on a single individual like this. Please, gods of wokeness, we ask that his human sacrifice be acceptable! Throw another virgin into the volcano.”

Virgin. Oh, give me a break. His bullying in other incidents shows a pattern of behavior unbecoming of a peace officer. That’s what they used to call them.

A lazy phrase

The BBC had an interesting article, which you should read. The final paragraph quotes Parker Malloy of the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America. “It’s OK to believe that social or professional consequences for things said or done are either too harsh or not harsh enough…

“And it’s OK to be concerned about the outsized power tech companies like Facebook or Twitter have in the world, but using the framing of ‘cancel culture’ to make these points will always come off as lazy and cowardly.”

Two Virgins and the Vermont Republic

Virgin Queen

Vermont road map VA Virginia, a state – a commonwealth – in the southeastern US. Capital: Richmond. Largest city: Virginia Beach.

Since I wrote about Virginia five years ago, I’ll just note that the state was “named for Queen Elizabeth I of England, who was known as the Virgin Queen. Historians think the English adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh suggested the name about 1584.”

VI Virgin Islands, a US territory in the Caribbean. Capital and largest city: Charlotte Amalie, on the island of St. Thomas.

The US Virgin Islands were sold to the United States by Denmark in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies of 1917. Other islands in the archipelago are controlled by the United Kingdom.

“Christopher Columbus named the islands after Saint Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins (Spanish: Santa Úrsula y las Once Mil Vírgenes), shortened to the Virgins (las Vírgenes). ”

GREEN Mountain State

VT Vermont, a New England state of the US. Capital: Montpelier. Largest city: Burlington

I wrote about our 2015 vacation. The truth is, I’ve been all over Vermont. A wedding on Lake Champlain, several choir performances in my Methodist days, even shopping. Of course, I’m inherently fond of the state, since it involves the color green.

On the Travel Trivia website, it listed 5 Countries That No Longer Exist. One was the Vermont Republic.

“On January 15, 1777, Vermont became the Vermont Republic, with its own Declaration of Independence, elected assembly, money, postal service, military, and diplomatic relations. Vermont was joined in its decade and a half of sovereignty by sixteen New Hampshire towns and a few more from New York.

“They were eventually given back to their states when Vermont joined the union [in 1791 when it became the 14th state], but it was a process by which Congress, New York, and New Hampshire recognized Vermont’s sovereignty. That means Vermont’s time as an independent nation wasn’t a fun historical quirk; it was a tangible expression of North American international freedom.”

For the verdant ABC Wednesday

Blackface + time + change = redemption?

“When a politician’s positions on current issues already raise questions about racism, then evidence of racism in his or her past ought to have increased significance.”

“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.” That was Abraham Lincoln in 1858 during a debate with Stephen Douglas.

Seven years later, he evolved, wanting to allow black soldiers – such as my ancestors – who had fought so bravely in the Civil War the ballot. Had he lived, who knows how much he may have changed, with Frederick Douglass whispering in his ear.

The notion here is rather obvious: people change. In The Mosque Across the Street – a video shown at the FOCUS churches service I attended this month – we see one Christian parishioner at a Memphis church weep as he realizes that HE was the problem in dealing with the new Muslim neighbors.

Jeff, a Facebook friend, wrote this recently: “Bob Zellner was a civil rights hero, a white organizer of SNCC. His father was a Klansman until he went to Europe in the 1930s, met up with a group of Southern Gospel singers and traveled with them. He wrote to his wife that at some point, he ‘forgot they were black,’ and he realized how foolish and awful he had been. When he got home he resigned from the Klan, traveled the South as an anti-Klan preacher… and his wife took his Klan uniforms and made much needed shirts out of them for the kids.”

As the very first line of his Oyez bio reads, “Hugo LaFayette Black refused to let his past dictate his future.” The Alabaman joined the Ku Klux Klan in 1923, but quit two years later. As an old poli sci major could tell you, Black was sworn in as an Associate Justice in 1937, and served for 34 years, supporting many groundbreaking civil rights cases.

People change. And we WANT and EXPECT people to do so. I’ve read a number of stories from white people, especially during this Black History Month, about how they, or those around them, were radically changed by interaction with people of different backgrounds.

One fellow from my former hometown wrote: “I changed from the young guy growing up in a backward community that still appears to show the same racist, bigoted attitude. Becoming educated, and allowing others to point out most of my misconceptions helped.”

So I am having some difficulty – OK, a LOT of difficulty – judging people solely based on how they dressed up in costumes – even racist, offensive costumes – decades ago. It does not necessarily make that person a bigot for life.

If people who were ACTUAL members of the Ku Klux Klan can be redeemed, some indiscretions of the past, even blackface – which must have been the state hobby among white Virginians at some point – can be contextualized.

What we need is some sort of formula based on the severity of the offense, the recency of the offense, the level of contrition, and most importantly, their current comportment. As a guy I know wrote: “I think that this needs to be decided by the group that he has offended, not white liberals.”

To that end, the subhead of this article from a couple weeks ago intrigued me: As Calls Mount for Ralph Northam to Resign, Some Virginians Mull a Second Chance. “Seems the average black voter in VA has conflicting feelings about all this. Maybe because they have seen a lot worse?”

Florida Secretary of State Michael Ertel had to quit recently. He wore blackface to make fun of victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I have no sympathy, and he needed to go.

As the Weekly Sift guy notes: “When a politician’s positions on current issues already raise questions about racism, then evidence of racism in his or her past ought to have increased significance.”

As a practical matter, I believe this is also true:

“I worry that we’re playing into Trump’s hands when we drum Ralph Northam out of the Democratic Party. As I interpret it, Trump’s message to wavering whites and men and anti-gay straights goes something like this:
“‘You’re never going to be pure enough to satisfy the liberals. So you might as well wear your MAGA hat and fly your Confederate flag, because no matter what you do, there’s never going to be a place for you on the other side'”.

Nation of Change recommends that Ralph Northam immediately resigns when the “lord of racism in the here and now” goes. THAT is a workable plan.

V is for Virginia

Virginia was the 10th state to enter the Union.

I’ve long had this odd fascination with the state of Virginia. Partly it’s because it’s part of the old Confederacy, but the northernmost part. The distance from Richmond, the Confederate capital during the US Civil War, to Washington, DC is only 110 miles. General Robert E. Lee of Virginia seemed the reluctant warrior.

Several northwest counties broke away from Virginia during the Civil War to create the state of West Virginia, which entered the Union in 1863.

Four of the first five US Presidents, all save John Adams of Massachusetts, were from Virginia, and eight altogether, which gave it the nickname “Mother of Presidents”.

Here’s some trivia information stuck inside my head. In order for the new Constitution to be accepted, nine of the 13 states had to ratify it, and it was so. But the holdouts were massively important to the vitality of the nation; finally, they came around, and that’s why I remember Virginia was the 10th state, New York, the 11th, and North Carolina, the 12th. Rhode Island made lucky 13.

In 1607, the first permanent New World English colony was established in 1607 at Jamestown. I was reminded by a question on the TV quiz show JEOPARDY! that the colonists resorted to cannibalism during the brutal winter of 1609.

I have vacationed in Virginia at least twice. Once, with my girlfriend at the time back in the early 1980s, I went to Virginia Beach. We went to see her brother, whose name, as I recall, was Roger. The other time was in 2008 when my family visited Yorktown and Colonial Williamsburg.

Every time I take the train to Charlotte, NC, of course, I travel through Virginia. I think I spend more time in that state than any other during the trip.

The most frequent reference to Virginia in this blog has to be the case of Loving v. Virginia, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the bans by Virginia (and other states) on interracial marriages were unconstitutional.

Since 1969, the motto for the state has been “Virginia is for Lovers”.

Read about Virginia from Wikipedia and the official government site.

ABC Wednesday, Round 15

V is for a Virginia Slave Law

Based on the age of Blair Underwood’s ancestor, and the age of the slaves, it was believed that the slaves were likely his parents or other relatives.

The one television program the Daughter and I watch together is an NBC show called Who Do You Think You Are? It involves stars looking back at their genealogy. An episode we saw recently featured actor Blair Underwood, which I hope you can find here or here or here at the third notch 21 minutes in, with him walking down the steps.

What Underwood discovers is that one of his ancestors at the end of the 18th century, Samuel Scott, actually owns property in Virginia. He is distressed, though, to discover that Scott also owns two slaves! Well, until the researcher he is with explains to him the Virginia Slave Law of 1806 [Shepherd, Statutes at Large, III, 252; passed January 25, 1806]: “The General Assembly moved to remove the free Negro population from Virginia with a law that stated that all emancipated slaves, freed after May 1, 1806, who remained in the Commonwealth more than a year, would forfeit his right to freedom and be sold by the Overseers of the Poor for the benefit of the parish. Families wishing to stay were to petition the legislature through the local county court.”

This was known as a manumission law by which someone who was a free black could be enslaved, or re-enslaved. Based on the age of Scott, the ancestor, and the age of the slaves, it was believed that the slaves were likely his parents or other relatives, protected by the “peculiar institution” rather than being forced to leave the state, or worse.
***
It appears that modern-day Virginia is now involved with a new Jim Crow attitude:

Virginia knows it has DNA evidence that may prove the innocence of dozens of men convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. Men just like [Bennett] Barbour. So why won’t the state say who they are?

“Bennett Barbour was convicted in 1978 of a rape he didn’t commit…The Commonwealth of Virginia learned that Bennett Barbour was innocent nearly two years ago when DNA testing cleared him of the crime. Virginia authorities, however, never informed Barbour of his innocence.” An irritating story.

ABC Wednesday – Round 10