Read @ianshapira’s dive into relentless racism at Virginia Military Institute, the nation’s oldest state-supported military college whose cadets fought for the slaveholding South during the Civil War & whose leaders still celebrate that history. wapo.st/3562JQ0
“I wake up everyday wondering, ‘Why am I still here?’ ” said William Bunton, 20, a Black senior from Portsmouth, Va.
A White professor reminisced in class about her father’s Ku Klux Klan membership. The woman still teaches at VMI.
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.
This is what a VMI sophomore posted in March after a Black classmate objected to incorporating an image of Stonewall Jackson in their class ring: 
In 2017, Col. William Wanovich, the school’s commandant of cadets, appeared in a Halloween photo of cadets dressed up in boxes as President Trump’s border wall with the words “Keep Out” and “No Cholos,” a slur against Mexicans.
In June, Carmelo Echevarria Colon III, a former battalion operations and training sergeant, condemned #BlackLivesMatter in a Facebook post: “I am seeing all these clowns taking a knee and bowing to [protest]. I’ll take a knee alright. To maximize my shooting platform.”
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