No matter one may consider Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, there’s no denying the person is telegenic.
Thus it appears solely pure that the Virginia Tourism Company selected to incorporate him in a promotional video. Youngkin, with shirt collar casually unbuttoned, delivers a hearty welcome to the vacationers who will see this brief taking part in in Virginia airports and tourism welcoming facilities.
“In Virginia, there’s one million alternative ways to say welcome,” the governor congenially intones, “and I wish to be one of many first.”
The video has stirred controversy as a result of Poolhouse, the Richmond promoting agency that obtained the $268,600 contract from a state company to provide it, labored on Youngkin’s gubernatorial marketing campaign. Elsewhere on this web page, columnist John Lengthy argues persuasively that this tempest in a teapot has little steam, because the video positively just isn’t a marketing campaign video.
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But the advert does encourage a query, one the tourism company ought to have thought of extra deeply: when Youngkin says “Welcome to Virginia,” who’s he welcoming?
In any case, the governor has unwisely made the stamping out of “divisive ideas” like discussions of racial injustice and the trampling of rights afforded to transgender college students a part of his model.
His appointees have deepened the issue. For instance, State Well being Commissioner Colin Greene dismissed the notion that racism has ever been a supply of well being disparities for Black People, and Board of Historic Assets member Ann Hunter McLean asserted slavery wasn’t the principle explanation for the Civil Struggle.
Greene walked again his feedback after a rebuke from Youngkin, whereas McLean resigned.
The varied faces whose smiles are showcased within the “Welcome to Virginia” video broadcast an attraction to all comers, but the governor’s mere presence considerably undercuts that message.
Bear with us right here: the Roanoke Occasions mailbag brings in books on a continuing foundation.
Lately the put up workplace delivered “Nothing Particular” by creator Desiree Cooper and illustrator Bec Sloane.
This beautiful image guide comprises a story of a 6-year-old Black boy from Detroit who has traveled to Virginia to summer season for per week along with his grandparents. Younger Jax, frightened he’ll be bored whereas away from his metropolis’s facilities, discovers he loves serving to grandpa and grandma catch blue crabs and shuck corn. It’s as candy a narrative as they arrive.
Serendipitously, it was poignant to find “Nothing Particular” mendacity atop the Roanoke Occasions’ copy of “When Aidan Grew to become a Brother,” one other candy image guide about an all-Black household that the Roanoke County college district yanked from a library shelf as a result of the protagonist is a transgender boy — precisely the sort of guide banning Youngkin has thrown his weight behind.
The story in “Nothing Particular” at first appears freed from “divisive” context within the troubling approach Youngkin’s administration has outlined it. However behind the guide, journalist and group activist Cooper discusses the Nice Migration that occurred from 1910 to 1970, by which tens of millions of Black American households left southern states to flee Jim Crow oppression.
Cooper writes that like many different Black households within the North, hers would journey south each summer season to attend household reunions and church homecomings.
“Little is claimed concerning the annual reverse-migration that has change into central to black nostalgia,” writes Cooper, who intends “Nothing Particular” as an homage to that custom.
In sharing that household anecdote, Cooper additionally imparts an vital historical past lesson, one each Virginia little one ought to know. It’s appalling to assume that, as a result of elements of that lesson are upsetting, elected officers that share the mindset of the Roanoke County Faculty Board may as a substitute choose to maintain the guide out of the palms of youngsters.
And but: welcome to Glenn Youngkin’s Virginia.