--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Virginia had a bit of a year last week. One more quick thing before we get out of here.
--:-- [Discussion continues without clear speaker identification]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As you all know, earlier this week, our governor admitted to wearing blackface in college as part of a costume. It suffered embarrassment. Then later, the attorney general also admitted to wearing blackface in college as part of a costume. After embarrassment. It's extremely embarrassing to the state. It became the laughingstock of the country. And as chair of the ethics committee, I have to ask, has anybody else worn blackface in college?
--:-- Christy Coleman: But what if the costume won a contest? What was the contest? Blackest face. But this isn't just a Virginia thing. This is a national problem. Minstrelsy and all of that, it was something that the entire country participated in. And we see, really, the birth of popular blackface as an entertainment form actually getting its start in New York City.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She spoke to me from the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia, which she runs. For Virginians, it is more painful, perhaps simply because it is something that has come to the fore when Virginia has been working so hard to be a tad more progressive.
--:-- Christy Coleman: You know, this is a state that has a very mixed economy. It has urban centers that are extraordinarily diverse. And so this slide backward from a figure or figures that people presumed were a part of that march forward is the jarring part.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For the uninitiated, from what exactly is Virginia moving forward? Virginia is preparing to commemorate three key events that happened in 1619. The first of those being the first of representative government. The second of those being the arrival of women. And the third, of course, is the arrival of Africans in 1619. They are brought here against their will, and they are sold to be put to work in the Virginia colony.
--:-- Christy Coleman: By the 1700s, of course, slavery is very much entrenched in Virginia, even to the eve of the American Revolution. Virginia at that point is 40% people of African descent. So the whole question, this whole idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator, All of that is born in Virginia, and yet born in a place where even the man who writes those words is an enslaver.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But there have also been people who have resisted it from the beginning, and that's part of the story that often gets missed. We get into the 1800s. It takes two votes for Virginia to determine whether or not it's actually going to secede.
--:-- Christy Coleman: You know, when they do secede, the decision is made to move the Confederate government to Virginia because she has this legacy of independence and revolution. But it is also the second largest intrastate slave trading port in Richmond to the point where today about 40 percent of African-Americans could, in fact, trace an ancestry that was sold from Virginia to points further south.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this is our history. This is our legacy. What are things like for black Virginians during the civil rights era? They are doing the same thing that black people are doing throughout the South. They are boycotting. They are asserting their rights to vote.
--:-- Christy Coleman: The difference is you're not seeing the same level of violence that you saw in the deep south of Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia. Why is that? Well, instead you saw things that were a tad more insidious.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Rather than allowing for, for example, the schools to be desegregated, we'll just shut down the schools. And then they transfer the money into private Christian schools and that what happens A lot of the private schools that get started in this state are actually started as a form of massive resistance by whites who don't want to integrate their schools.
--:-- Christy Coleman: So that's part of Virginia's history. That no public elementary or secondary schools in which white and colored children are mixed and taught shall be entitled to or receive any funds from the state treasurer for their operation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The transition began in the 70s with Governor Holton. My love affair with Richmond Public Schools began when I was a 12-year-old. My dad, Linwood Holton, was elected governor of Virginia in 1970. He enrolls his young white daughter, Anne, into public schools.
--:-- Christy Coleman: My dad led my sister off to the high school with the local, national, international press in tow, following their every steps. Meanwhile, my mother took my brother Woody and me to Mosby Middle School. Mosby Middle School, now Martin Luther King Middle School, formerly all African American school.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think it showed a certain grace and dignity that he was trying to pull out of Virginians because Virginians do pride themselves on that. Even in the midst of ugliness, there is a certain dignity that people share.
--:-- Christy Coleman: And I think he was trying to call upon this sense of dignity and decency. And it wasn't always easy, but that one action, I think, really helped to turn the tide.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then you move into, you know, Virginia elects the first black governor. Former Lieutenant Governor Douglas Wilder took the oath of office in Richmond today and became the first black ever elected governor in the United States.
--:-- Christy Coleman: And he was voted into office obviously by a lot of white people in Virginia, right? That's correct. Today in Richmond, the capital of the old Confederacy, the grandson of a slave did what's never been done before.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I, Lawrence Douglas Wilder, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
--:-- Christy Coleman: So my point is, Virginia's history and the statehouse's history is full of these moments of moving more progressively forward to full inclusion, but then these sort of snapback moments.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which I guess brings us back to today. It brings us back to blackface. The use of blackface is cultural violence. It was designed that way from the beginning as an entertainment.
--:-- Christy Coleman: So, of course, people's reaction to it was visceral. What is the thing that people who see blackface and see a controversy like this and go like, I mean, I want to be Serena Williams for Halloween. Why is that offensive?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What do they not get? That people's culture isn't a costume. and that more often than not, these depictions are meant to mock.
--:-- Christy Coleman: That's what they don't get, and they don't want to. I should be able to do what I want is also what you hear, whether they're wearing blackface or whether they're donning a so-called Native American headdress and putting themselves in any number of these costumes or a person throws on a sombrero with a funky mustache with a poncho.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's all offensive. Blackface just happens to be, had been around the longest and the most pervasive. And that's different, right, from like a 10-year-old kid who wants to be Black Panther for Halloween?
--:-- Christy Coleman: Very different. Because that child that wants to be Black Panther for Halloween, I pray to God his parents are not putting shoe polish on his face to do it. He doesn't need to do that. No.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Most people acknowledge if you put on the suit, we know who the heck you're supposed to be. You know, I mean, it's kind of ridiculous, right?
--:-- Christy Coleman: Um, it's a completely different thing. You know, I saw a picture of a young man, a boy probably was no more than 10 years old, giving a black history report, and he dressed up like Malcolm X.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did he brown his skin? Absolutely not. He put on a pair of glasses, he put on a suit, and he put on a bow tie.
--:-- Christy Coleman: Bringing this back to Governor Northam, who may have worn KKK whites and definitely blackened his face in the 80s. He's also the guy who ran on getting rid of all the Confederate monuments in Virginia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's the duality of Virginia, right? That's the duality. Prognosis is a new podcast. It comes from the people at Bloomberg.
--:-- Christy Coleman: and it looks into the leading edge of medical advances and asks the question, who gets or should get access to them? You meet the people at the front lines of medical change.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's this crusader in psychedelic drug research who's roaming the sands at Burning Man looking for venture funding. He sounds like a character.
--:-- Christy Coleman: There's an entrepreneur who's genetically engineering frogs in his garage. Would love to get to know those frogs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there's an online community of diabetics who've hacked together an artificial pancreas. I want to see that thing.
--:-- Christy Coleman: Prognosis is a podcast about the leading edge of medicine and the people who are bouncing on it, trying not to fall off and die.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The first season of Prognosis is available right now. What do you use to listen to podcasts? Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google? Find it there. Prognosis.
--:-- Christy Coleman: These monuments went up during Jim Crow era when black people were essentially receiving their freedom and also their civil rights. These monuments were put up as reminders that you might be free, but we're still in charge.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I see them trying to defend their state, their country. We didn't go up there fooling with the North. They come down here trying to invade us. It's an utter disrespect.
--:-- Christy Coleman: I actually took my first trip down Monument Avenue, my first complete trip to pass all the monuments two days ago. I deliberately avoid Monument Avenue for that reason in my own form of personal protest.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The young people today, you can't please them. I don't know, I guess they just grew up different from what I did.
--:-- Christy Coleman: I was in the military and stationed in Italy. You wouldn't go there and tear the Coliseum down because many people were murdered there. I mean, it's history. I don't look at it as a monument. celebrating slavery more as just a monument to history.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's respect what they contributed and have continued to contribute before and after the war and honor the men. We're not racist. We're friends with a lot of the blacks that come out here with us.
--:-- Christy Coleman: We're just trying to honor the soldiers that fought for the state of Virginia. You know, we have so many large, tall, historic pieces of African-American history that do not get preserved and literally get bulldozed over.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so it just puts a punctuation mark on what's important to Richmond. Take them down. Take them all down.
--:-- Christy Coleman: Christy Coleman, you live in Richmond, Virginia, home to Monument Avenue, where any day of the week you can go visit Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When did these Confederate monuments and tributes start to get controversial? Well, see, that's the thing. A lot of people don't realize that even at the time that these monuments are going up, there are people who are protesting them for various reasons.
--:-- Christy Coleman: So the idea that this was sort of a unified front among all white people, number one, or that all Virginians and the other is patently wrong and false. It's just that the powers that be at the time made those decisions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And because they knew they were potentially at threat, because there were people, at least here in Virginia, that they were potentially at threat when they even went up, they try to legislate protection. and they do legislate protection of these things.
--:-- Christy Coleman: I mean, what do you see when you look at a Confederate monument in Richmond, Virginia? Well, I think for me, it's a lot different. You know, I understand their placement, I understand their history, and I understand their meaning, even though I acknowledge that it's a form of propaganda that was placed on the landscape as well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I also understand why people do have visceral reactions to it, and whether those are reactions of I hate them they disgusting and I don't want them there as well as people who look at them and have some form of veneration because generationally they have been taught that that what they should do Monuments and statuary and all of this kind of thing, they reflect the communities that put them up.
--:-- Christy Coleman: You talk about this duality of Virginia. How much does taking down Confederate statues help erase that duality or help undo that duality?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Taking down a statue is not going to erase the duality. The history is still going to be there. That doesn't go away because a statue goes away.
--:-- Christy Coleman: You know, that's probably one of the most laughable things I hear is that when you take down a statue, you're erasing history. No, you're not. History is still going to be there. But, you know, would it address the history of violence and suppression? No, it doesn't.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For some people, what it could mean is that the removal of them is an acknowledgement of the pain that they have caused. It is an acknowledgement that they are not benign.
--:-- Christy Coleman: And then there are other people who say, you really want to deal with structural racism? I could care less about whether that statue is on the ground. What I care about is, you know, why do we still have redlining? Why do we have one of the most aggressive or had one of the most aggressive eviction programs in the country that inadvertently affect poorer people and people of color?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you really want to make amends for this stuff, let's go after the structural problems and the structural things that were put in place, not a statue.
--:-- Christy Coleman: And you've got a governor who at least talks about doing both, taking down the monuments during his campaign, he mentioned, and working really hard towards racial equality he's been talking about since his blackface past walked out of the closet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Do you think he's a lost cause now, or can he salvage some legitimacy in the eyes of Virginians who really want to move forward?
--:-- Christy Coleman: I don't know. I would imagine that he is doing a lot of soul searching. And I think he's trying to figure out a path forward.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there are people who said if Governor Northam in his run up to election had said, you know, there are some things about me and my past that I have learned about because of my interactions with all of these people. first as a physician and understanding the challenges of families.
--:-- Christy Coleman: And then if he had gone into this and said, I even, grappling with race, when I was a student, I did this. The idea that if he had come clean about that, Virginians, particularly Virginians of color, would have been, that's the first honest thing a politician has said in a long time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You think it would have worked? Absolutely would have worked.
--:-- Christy Coleman: Really? Absolutely would have worked. Really? Absolutely.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How would that have worked? I'm telling you. Because here's the thing. It's an acknowledgment that I did this in my past and I've learned and I've grown versus these are ideas that I still embrace. That's the difference.
--:-- Christy Coleman: And people are willing to accept that, that there is growth and there is change.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Christy Coleman is the Chief Executive Officer of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia. I'm Sean Rameswaram for him. This is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. Afim Shapiro is the engineer. Bridget McCarthy edits. Noam Hassenfeld and Luke Vanderplug produce, Siona Petros is the intern, and Isabel is our essential oil diffuser.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks, Mom. Special thanks today to Peter Solomon and Roberto Rolden for their help in Richmond, and regular thanks to the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder for all the music.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher, and we're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Thank you.
