Thread by @HMAesq

"The child reported the assault and declared she believed the negro scoundrel was one Owen Anderson, but that he was disguised so that she could hardly tell. He was taken in charge at once and brought before her, but she failed to identify him..."

"...The prisoner was taken down Church street to the depot...and Anderson was raised up and was dead in a few minutes...One ball struck in the head, one in the body, and one in the leg."

Richmond Dispatch, Saturday, Nov. 9, 1889

Virginia is one of the capitals of the Confederacy. We have a dark and painful history of slavery, defending it, and then creating a different "peculiar institution" to perpetuate it.

We got it wrong on women's suffrage, we got it wrong on voting rights. We got it wrong on segregation, we got it wrong on interracial marriage, and we got it wrong last week on the #ERA.

If we try to escape our history, we will be doomed to repeat it. If we ignore the pleas of young black men like Orion Anderson, we will be held to harsh judgment.

There is no escaping the fact that there exists a system - a culture - designed to perpetuate inequality at an institutional level. We need to start thinking about what a truly equitable system would look like, because none of us have seen it.

I no longer call this system "broken" - it's operating as it was designed to do.

But we can be the ones to break it.

It's not a 35 year old photograph, or dressing up like Michael Jackson or Kurtis Blow, or playing "runaway slave" in gym class, racist graffiti on the Ashburn Colored School, or writing swastikas and the N-word in the snow. These aren't the issue.

It's the culture it represents. One where it's funny to dehumanize black people, laugh at a white-hooded terrorist, or joke about swastikas. It's what left of the culture that you can read in the 1889 article.

Actions have consequences, but redemption is laudable.

From talking to many black voters: we must allow space for an individual's evolution and change of heart from mindsets of accepted racism or injustice if we are to see a lasting change for the better. Other black voters continue to call on Northam (and/or Herring) to resign.

Whatever happens, the episodes will be all for naught if we don't keep having uncomfortable conversations. They're necessary conversations, and politicians and candidates alike should be fostering them, looking beyond the next election.

The best medicines are usually bitter.