by Paul Goldman

“[For] me, the promise of America is equal opportunity for every individual.”

This is a core belief for axed University of Virginia President Jim Ryan. Read his best-known book. Most sensible Virginia Democrats would agree. Most sensible Virginia Republicans too. Ironically, the quote itself actually didn’t come from Ryan. Or any Virginia Democrat or Republican either. Rather it comes from the key Trump Administration lawyer who helped force the UVA President to resign. 

In justifying Ryan’s ouster, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillion said the following: 

“[The] federal government got pretty aggressive in going in and saying, no, sorry, after Brown v. Board of Education you have to allow equal opportunity for all people in the United States... To me, the promise of America is equal opportunity for every individual.”” 

I find her reference to the Brown case most fascinating for this legal reason: Brown v. Board of Education doesn’t apply to higher education! 

The case (actually, there were two separate decisions) applied to K-12 public education. Virginia was a losing defendant.

Surely, Dhillon knows that. She was a top student at UVA law school. Her words are thus clear: The Trump administration wants to apply the equal opportunity principle in public schools from kindergarten to post doctorate.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be thrilled. So would the leading Democratic Party civil rights advocates. Just read any party platform since modern Democrats told the old southern segregationists to take a hike. 

King called education “the great equalizer.” As does any sensible person. We know no one can be all they can be without a quality education. The Democratic Party has said this for decades. The 2024 GOP platform agrees. Read it. They agree we need to have the greatest educational excellence across the board in our history. Is it American birthright. Read Chapter 7 of the Trump platform.

Which raises, of course, the self-evident question: Why are we still fighting in Virginia over the principle of equal opportunity in the educational sphere… when we all agree it’s necessary for our people and therefore our society as a whole to be as successful as we want it to be?

Many Democrats say it’s because of Trump’s anti-black and anti-minority attitude. Republicans, as we’ve seen in the Ryan saga, are accusing Democratic leaning educators of acting like Dixiecrats in the days of segregated education. 

There is actually a far simpler and easily provable reason in a court of law. The same court system that produced the historic Brown decision.

The reason: Article VIII of the Constitution of Virginia. This is the educational clause in our founding document, last meaningfully changed in 1970. Unfortunately, the guiding hand behind the change was the state’s last segregation is governor. Democrat, later Republican Governor also, Mills Godwin. 

“The promise of America is equal opportunity for every individual” is a principle no one would ever connect to Mr. Godwin. He despised Black people. So much so that he had Article VIII drafted in language — the state shall seek to provide a quality education for all — to that is now also denying people educational opportunities to the state’s poor rural white students also! He knew the risk. But he didn’t care how many kids he hurt. Fact: there are twice as many white students in Virginia public schools than black student students. Article VIII has proven a tragedy for all but the most fortunate of them.

Godwin and his fellow racist intended to rule us from the grave. They were furious at the racial progress being made in Virginia. So. they pushed down on us the ultimate punishment: taking away the educational future of our children so they could NOT be all they could be. Just plain evil. 

What we see in the Ryan saga, if truly appreciated, is not a university trying to discriminate between groups but rather an educational system that fails kids from the beginning, requiring decent people to try and correct what should have not occurred in the first place. 

Fact: Sitting Senator Bill Stanley, R-Bedford, supported by Senator Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, and other Democrats joined by Stanley’s GOP colleagues, tried in 2021 to put Virginia in the forefront of the effort to ensure equal educational opportunity for all. There’s only one way to do it: Put the legal right in the state constitution. 

As Mr. Trump’s lawyer herself said, it was the court, not the politicians, who created equal educational opportunity. It was the courts, not Virginia educators who created such equal opportunity. 

Godwin was a crafty old SOB. He made sure group would fight group by twisting equal educational opportunity into a political quagmire. 

Stanley did the right thing. As did the bipartisan 34-to-1 majority that passed his constitutional amendment. But liberal Democrats killed it in the House of Delegates! 

That’s right folks: liberal Democrats did it, for some reason to punish me because I never kissed the establishment’s ass. They were mad that I went to a Republican to try and get the Democrats to do the right thing. 

But for this pettiness, today even the poorest kid in Virginia would have the constitutional right to equal education opportunity. Virginia’s public education system would be making sure every individual would get the very equal opportunity the Trump people are demanding: that the federal government must demand now just as it did in the 1950’s.

Unfortunately, many of the voices today lamenting the Ryan saga have refused all these years to put the right of equal educational opportunity in the Constitution of Virginia.

The Commonwealth of Virginia joined the union on June 25, 1788. Roughly 237 years ago. I think we’ve heard enough speeches, enough promises, enough criticisms enough talk for several lifetimes promising equal opportunity.

Read SJ 275 submitted to the General Assembly  in 2021. Equal opportunity only requires a small change in the Virginia constitution.

Gov. Youngkin can call a special session this year. The General  Assembly could put it on the state ballot next year. By January 1, 2027 the equal opportunity we’re fighting over right now would be set in stone. Forever. 

Like it or not that’s the only way to hold the system accountable. Until the politicians of Virginia are prepared to make such equality an enforceable, constitutional right, then as the cowboys say at Virginia’s many cattle ranches, they are all hat and no cattle.

Paul Goldman is former Chair of the VA Democratic Party, a former candidate for mayor of the City of Richmond, and author of “Remaking Virginia Politics.”