[St. Louis Post Dispatch] A Virginia state employee has complained that her eighth-grade daughter was upset during a tour of the historic governor's residence when first lady Pam Northam handed a ball of cotton to her and another black child and asked them to imagine being enslaved and having to pick cotton.Yes, the vintage graphic is correct. That is a non-entitlement person picking cotton. I can assure you, there were many others doing the same type of work, at least in Georgia.
"The Governor and Mrs. Northam have asked the residents of the Commonwealth to forgive them for their racially insensitive past actions," Leah Dozier Walker, who oversees the Office of Equity and Community Engagement at the state Department of Education, wrote Feb. 25 to lawmakers and to the office of Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat.
"But the actions of Mrs. Northam, just last week, do not lead me to believe that this Governor's office has taken seriously the harm and hurt they have caused African Americans in Virginia or that they are deserving of our forgiveness," she wrote.
The incident highlights the scrutiny and doubt that envelope the governor as he tries to push past racist incidents from his past and ignore continued calls for his resignation. His first attempt at a promised "reconciliation tour" had a hiccup last week, when the student government at Virginia Union University asked him not to attend a black history celebration there.
And though Northam has vowed to dedicate the remaining three years of his term to racial equity, members of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus say he is not doing enough to help disadvantaged minorities in the state budget.