For a plethora of reasons (few good and most entirely bad), Virginia has been infected by Republican control of the Commonwealth’s executive branch and House of Delegates. The nexus of villainy is the media-presented as moderate red-vested Youngkin. While he tweets far less, doesn’t seem to brag about grabbing em by the pussy, and knows how to speak softly in good society, Youngkin has been at odds with Virginians on issue after issue in the first weeks of his occupancy of the Virginia Governor’s mansion. He has not had a good starting few weeks in winning hearts and minds. And, these weeks have included anti-public education, anti-public health measures to the point of fascist(-like) secret informant lines to turn in educators who aren’t toeing a white-supremacist line.
With each day, it seems new items emerge of Youngkin’s dedication of turning Virginia from a path of progress forward back to Confederacy-revering grievance politics and policy. Now on the table, Glenn Youngkin’s first measure to celebrate Black History Month: emptying the office on providing educational tours and material as to slavery in the Governor’s mansion.
Under Governors McAuliffe and Northam, a program had developed and was beginning to give tours to research and educate about the history of enslaved people in the building and operation of the Virginia Governor’s mansion. That seems to be a past tense item.
After having the dedicated educational space turned in a Youngkin family room and having her office emptied out, “Archeologist and historian Kelley Fanto Deetz resigned on Friday from a position as Virginia’s Executive Mansion’s director of historic interpretation and education.”
Deetz arrived to work at Virginia’s Executive Mansion last month to find her office had been emptied. Items in a historic kitchen in the building’s annex, which had been reimagined to tell the stories of enslaved workers to visitors, had been shoved aside, she said. A planned educational room for schoolchildren had been turned into a family room for Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Deetz’s work updating the mansion’s tours is part of a multiyear project that draws heavily from the experiences of descendents of enslaved workers. … Her next step was to begin training volunteer docents on the updated tour so that they could take it over, with school groups scheduled to begin touring in spring
Evidently, in line with Youngkin’s Executive Order #1 against “divisive” (e.g., upsetting to white supremacists) education (with that tip line to inform on educators), “divisive” topics (such as how Youngkin’s family is luxuriating in a building built and maintained with the sweat and blood of enslaved people) are not allowed to be part of Virginia Governor’s Mansion historical discussions and tours.
As Lowell Feld, over at Blue Virginia put it,
Disgraceful – but also not surprising, from the same person (Glenn Youngkin) who ran a demagogic, “Southern Strategy”-style campaign centered, in part, on stoking anxiety about “Critical Race Theory” which isn’t even taught in Virginia’s schools, but which helped activate the Trump Republican “base” to turn out on election day…
UVA Professor Larry Sabato captures this with “Slavery is such a divisive subject ...”
And, well, cancel culture is a reality, sadly.