All it took was picking up the phone. Radio IQ profiles Rina Shaw, a Central Virginia resident who was expunged along with 1,600 other Virginia residents from the voter rolls as part of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s purge of non-citizen voters. Shaw tells Radio IQ she accidentally marked “non-citizen” on her DMV paperwork and was disenrolled. After being informed of the fact, she tried unsuccessfully to correct her error by means of “mailed-in paperwork.” Youngkin’s action has been challenged legally and seems destined to a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court. Here’s what’s ignored in most articles I’ve read: Youngkin’s order requires the state to notify those whose registrations are flagged… as evidently happened in Shaw’s case. And the order gives them 14 days to provide proof of citizenship… which Shaw managed to do. Radio IQ notes toward the bottom of its story that she “was reenrolled after a call to her registrar’s office.”
Update: Minutes ago the Supreme Court upheld Youngkin’s executive order.
History is complicated. Colonial Williamsburg hopes to open a new attraction next year: the Bray School, which is touted as the oldest surviving school for Black children in America. A school roster from 1760 shows that three free Black children were enrolled and 27 were slaves. Historians are understandably delighted in revealing an aspect of Black history in Virginia that had been buried for so long. And I agree. We should tell the history of all Americans. In its article about the school, The Washington Post asks, who were the children? What did they do with their education? Good questions. But I’d like to know also… who built the school? Who paid its ongoing expenses? What were their motivations? Weren’t there laws against educating Blacks? The institution of slavery, I suspect, was far more variegated in practice than commonly depicted.
Sign of the times. To someone like me who attended school in the 1960s, images like the one above at Lake Ridge Middle School in Prince William County, are beyond bizarre. Requiring students to pass through metal detectors before entering school is an idea that literally never occurred to anyone back in the day. Now it’s hailed as a victory in the effort to keep students safe.
