At VMI, Black cadets endure lynching threats, Klan memories and Confederacy veneration

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Local

At VMI, Black cadets endure lynching threats, Klan memories and Confederacy veneration

By Ian Shapira
Oct. 17, 2020 at 7:42 p.m. EDT

More than a half century after the Virginia Military Institute integrated its ranks, Black cadets still endure relentless racism at the nation’s oldest state-supported military college. ... The atmosphere of hostility and cultural insensitivity makes VMI — whose cadets fought and died for the slaveholding South during the Civil War and whose leaders still celebrate that history — especially difficult for non-White students to attend, according to more than a dozen current and former students of color.

“I wake up everyday wondering, ‘Why am I still here?’ ” said William Bunton, 20, a Black senior from Portsmouth, Va. ... Keniya Lee, a 2019 VMI graduate, lodged a complaint last year against a White professor who reminisced in class about her father’s Ku Klux Klan membership. The woman still teaches at the Lexington, Va., campus, which received $19 million in state funds this past fiscal year.

In 2018, a White sophomore told a Black freshman during Hell Week that he’d “lynch” his body and use his “dead corpse as a punching bag” — but was suspended instead of expelled. ... In March, after a Black sophomore objected to incorporating Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s image into the design of their class ring, a fellow student denounced him by name on an anonymous chat app: “F---ing leave already. People like you are the reason this school is divided. Stop focusing so much on your skin color and focus on yourself as a person. Nobody i[n] your recent family line was oppressed by ‘muh slavery.’?”

In September, when Vice President Pence gave a speech on campus, Bunton and another Black student boycotted the event — and were each punished with three weeks of confinement on campus, demerits and multiple hours of detention. ... Now the school is under pressure from some alumni and students to remove or relocate its Confederate statues — including one of Jackson — and reconsider its long-held reverence for the Confederacy.

{snip}

Ian Shapira
Ian Shapira is a features writer on the local enterprise team and enjoys writing about people who have served in the military and intelligence communities. He has covered education, criminal justice, technology and art crime. Follow https://twitter.com/ianshapira

[secondwind]

1. ....

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. Northam orders independent investigation of VMI's culture following reports of systemic racism

David Fahrenthold Retweeted

After reading
@ianshapira's jaw-dropping reporting, the governor and other Virginia officials promised an independent review of what they called “the clear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism at the Virginia Military Institute.”

Link to tweet

Northam orders independent investigation of VMI's culture following reports of systemic racism

By Claire Mitzel 981-3334 11 hrs ago

Gov. Ralph Northam on Monday ordered an independent investigation of the Virginia Military Institute after Black cadets and alumni spoke out against racism they endured while attending the public military college. ... A third party will review VMI’s “culture, policies, practices, and equity in disciplinary procedures” and share preliminary results by the end of the calendar year, Northam wrote to the college’s board of visitors.

In the letter, Northam and 10 other co-signatories expressed their “deep concerns about the clear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism” at the military college. The letter was sent a day after the Washington Post published a story detailing continuous racism that Black cadets have experienced while attending the nation’s oldest state-supported military college. The Roanoke Times first reported over the summer about ongoing racism at the college and alumni’s push for change.

“Black cadets at VMI have long faced repeated instances of racism on campus, including horrifying new revelations of threats about lynching, vicious attacks on social media, and even a professor who spoke fondly of her family’s history in the Ku Klux Klan — to say nothing of inconsistent application of the Institute’s Honor Code,” the letter said, referencing the Post story. “In addition, VMI cadets continue to be educated in a physical environment that honors the Confederacy and celebrates an inaccurate and dangerous ‘Lost Cause’ version of Virginia’s history. It is long past time to consign these relics to the dustbin of history.”



While the board of visitors has “the ultimate authority for immediately addressing these concerns ... it is clear that internal action alone is no longer sufficient for VMI to join in the commitment to diversity and equity that the rest of Virginia’s government is embracing,” the letter stated.

{snip}

This Roanoke Times article links to several previous articles about the problem at VMI.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. Popehat started a thread about this.

Real quality people, real quality culture.

Link to tweet