Alternatively headlined: There Will Be Heat Death in the Universe Before You Read These Quotes in a Washington Post news article.
Carmen Villani, Virginia Military Institute class of 1976, recently compiled a list of perspectives given by African-American alumni as well as actions taken by staff and professors that illuminate the military academy’s record on race. The narrative is far different from the one articulated by former Governor Ralph Northam, himself a VMI alumnus, who declared in October that VMI was guilty of “systemic racism” and then ordered an investigation to prove his point. He submitted the list to members of the VMI Board of Visitors and Superintendent Cedric Wins last week.
In introducing the comments, Villani recounts the words of David McCullough in a 1994 speech at in Charlottesville. Thomas Jefferson, said the noted author, “was an exceedingly gifted and very great man, but like the others of that exceptional handful of politicians we call the Founding Fathers, he could also be inconsistent, contradictory, human.”
We are all “human,” Villani says, and that makes all of us flawed but we strive to be better. That is what should be recognized about VMI. Flawed, yes, BUT it has been a great contribution to society.” The Institute does not deserve the slanders it has endured in recent months.
— JAB
Messrs. Randolph And Gore, VMI Class Of 1972
“’We had bigger fish to fry in our minds,’ Randolph said. ‘We were dealing with something that everybody has trouble dealing with — not black people, not white people, everybody — and that was being a rat at VMI.’ ‘I just kind of had it,’ he said. ‘VMI’s a great school — it’s just not for everybody.’” (more…)
