Lesson Learned 0
The Roanoke Times addresses the blackface controversy currently surrounding my governor and actually does some research. It traced down the text books that were in use when when Governor Northam was in school and points out that they grossly and purposefully misrepresented slavery, the Civil War, and the war’s aftermath.* Here’s a bit:
This is, of course, no excuse for being so stupid as to put on blackface in the first place, but it could be a mitigating factor for not realizing the full implications of doing so.
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*They did. I had some of those same text books and, indeed, remember the lie about “indentured servants.”
But I was a history major in college, where I unlearned Virginia’s lies. I doubt that Mr. Northam, as a prospective med student, had one-twelfth the number of history classes that I did over four years of college and a year of grad work (which taught me that, however much I may have loved the study of history, I was not cut out to be a professional academician).
