The Richmond-Times Dispatch has, once again, taken up the cudgels against racism.
In the safest, most banal way it possibly can.
The focus of the paper’s ire is Harry F. Byrd Middle School in Henrico county. A student there has mounted a campaign to have the name of the old segregationist removed. It’s a fine story, and will likely give the student in question a real leg up on those college essays.
Nvermind what variety of learning occurs each day inside the building with the bad man’s name over the door.
The newspaper champions the cause like so:
Changing the school’s name does not resemble an exercise in erasing history. A school name confers respect; it designates honor. Ideas have consequences, conservatives like to say. Richard Weaver’s book “Ideas Have Consequences” rates among the conservative classics. One consequence of practicing objectionable policies is that society does not name institutions after offending personages. (By the way, racism mars Weaver’s book.) Byrd’s statue rises in Virginia’s Capitol Square. It represents his career in its entirety and belongs there. Historical erasure occurs when the present dishonors the past by not telling the whole story. Americans understand that even their greatest ancestors were flawed. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves; Robert E. Lee fought a war to perpetuate slavery. They belong to America’s patrimony. A school honoring a father of Massive Resistance crosses propriety’s line.
How the editorial writers managed that leap without pulling several muscles, we will never know.
Nor will we ever be entirely sure how they can square the paper’s indignation at the school’s name with its duration:
Byrd Middle School opened in 1971. Harry Sr.’s son, Harry Jr., also a U.S. senator, spoke at the opening ceremony. He used the occasion to decry school busing to achieve integration, a divisive topic of the day. Compulsory busing raised questions regarding education generally, but racism stood at the heart of the debate. Naming a school after Byrd was an act of defiance, although perhaps not a willful one. African-Americans understood what the gesture meant. Certain whites tend to be oblivious to the insult they sometimes inflict.
Better to be indignant late than never indignant at all.
But even curiouser is the paper’s taking up this fashionable cause when far uglier problems with schools sit in plain sight.
Last week, Paul Goldman and I wrote in the Washington Post another in our series of pieces on the decrepit state of the city of Richmond’s public school buildings. We gave special attention to Mayor Dwight Jones, who has displayed the sort of disdain for the city’s poor, mainly African-American students that, in another context, would have earned the disdain of editorial boards across the state:
Why is Mr. Jones so resistant to school modernization? His administration’s explanation is that “11 percent of the population is representing the kids who need to be served in our schools. When you start speaking … like it’s the entire city’s responsibility, maybe the residents, maybe all the taxpayers, maybe don’t feel that way if they’re not using the public schools.”
This “11 percent” is made up mainly of African American children from families of modest means.
If Donald Trump had given this explanation for forcing poor black children to attend run-down school facilities, every liberal editorial board in the country would be calling him a racist, a bigot, whatever. If a white Virginia Republican had said it, every liberal editorial board in the state would be demanding heads roll at Richmond City Hall.
But Jones gets a pass. Why? The mayor’s explanation for his school politics falsely hints at white resistance to helping African Americans — if you know Richmond’s code words. This is shameful.
His willingness to play racial politics keeps good people silent. When will this end?
Richmond elects a new mayor next year. Thanks to a law written by one of the authors, Jones is term-limited. But what about his way of thinking?
The closest the RTD came to scolding Mr. Jones was an anodyne editorial that admits some of the city’s school buildings are in “deplorable shape.” But the paper puts the blame on…voters, who didn’t give elected school boards the power to tax:
Part of the tension here arises from the shift to elected school boards. As this newspaper repeatedly warned during debates over that change, granting school boards independence without having them shoulder any responsibility for taxation would inevitably create political tensions, since it allows school boards to make pie-in-the-sky proposals and let somebody else figure out how to pay for them — or take the blame for not doing so.
The Richmond school board admits there is a genuine problem with its buildings that school boards, both appointed and elected, have ignored for years. And the current members wants to address it. In the editorial board’s mind, this constitutes a “pie-in-the-sky” proposal that can only be solved if the parties reason together over coffee and an Adele mix tape.
The paper’s editorial writers surely know where the Mayor has put his priorities. A new AA baseball stadium? Top of the list. Kids? Eh…they can’t bid on contracts, so who gives a damn? Bringing the Redskins to town every summer? Right away. Pave certain streets to hold an international bike race? The city can’t act quickly enough. “Traffic calming” islands on other streets? We’re on it!
The Mayor’s priorities, echoed and abetted by the RTD, are for whatever is bright, shiny, new, and lucrative for a select few.
Perhaps that’s too harsh. In the spirit of the season, then, it could be the RTD is merely under the influence of the “chloroform of conformity.”
Back in March, Paul and I penned this for the WaPo:
But with so many of Virginia’s public schools crumbling because of age or outright neglect, the case for putting more money to work to correct these problems seems self-evident. The conscious policy of benign neglect has turned what was once a manageable list of fixes into a litany of horrors.
That assumes, however, anyone cares about the kids who attend those schools. It appears not to be so. Many of the kids and families in these crumbling schools are, to be blunt, poor. They are also overwhelmingly minority. One might think Democrats would have a field day with this, hammering Republicans for their tight-fistedness.
But they, like Republicans, prefer instead to keep inhaling the chloroform of conformity, allowing the disposable kids in those crumbling schools to fend for themselves.
Better to ignore the disposable kids — those the Mayor’s staff referred to as the “11 percent.” If they could throw $1000 a plate fundraiser for the political class, or buy a slew of pop-under ads on newspaper websites, they would get the attention they deserve.
Or if they did something slightly more fashionable than dodging falling ceilings and mold colonies…say, advocate for a name change…the RTD might, possibly, take a little bit of notice.
