Photo Credit: West Point – The U.S. Military Academy
Right now the City of Virginia Beach has been tripping to put it calmly. Just a week ago someone reported that their neighbor had motion sensors set up around their house where every time they opened the door their neighbor had monkey sounds, the N word and racist music playing to taunt them and the police refused to do anything about it. It’s since stopped and the culprit exposed. Then there is Pharrell who cancelled a music festival in the same area after his cousin was shot and killed by police there. But here we are to discuss what one of the city’s leaders has a list of black authors they find problematic to include Toni Morrison.
Toni Morrison, the first black woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, a renowned author has somehow become the subject of ire within the Virginia Beach public school system. School board member Victoria Manning wants her book The Bluest Eye banned as well as Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison; Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines. Nevermind the fact she said she hadn’t read any of these books but just a few excerpts, that’s not stopping her. Victoria Manning runs a “Wokeness Checker” webpage and als fiercely denounces Critical Race Theory. In a previous interview she said, “Our students and our teachers are being taught that our country is innately racist, and students and teachers are being pitted against one another based on their skin color.”
Now as a person who has lived in Virginia close to 4 years now and am heavily involved in the community, there is a political trend going on both here and nationwide. The events of 2020 have caused a major backlash. I was even concerned getting through the year with all of this pro-black media and events going on thinking that there absolutely has to be backlash to this. The architect of this War on Critical Race Theory, Christopher Ruso has both admitted to lumping all race based discussions together as Critical Race Theory to get parents riled up. So it’s a dishonest discussion by default. And the pople who discuss it on cable news tend to have no idea what it is. And this is the same voterbase that had decades of textbooks in Virginia that said slavery wasn’t that bad so this comes as no surprise. It’s unfortunate that there are people using racial animous to draw votes. But in the words of NeNe Leakes, you’ll never win when you play dirty. And to pick on Toni Morrison of all people during a time the country is supposed to be going through a reckoning on race is peak unawareness.
