(April 28, 2023) Six months ago Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin appointed Martin D. Brown as the state’s Chief Diversity, Opportunity, and Inclusion Officer. Last Friday Brown, who is African-American, made some revealing remarks about the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiative at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). As implemented under black Superintendent Cedric Wins, VMI’s concept of DEI replaces equality of opportunity for the individual with equality of outcome for groups collectively. By dictating outcome equality for groups distinguished by immutable characteristics such as sex and race, VMI claims to have adopted an anti-racist and anti-sexist policy. In truth, it has adopted an anti-merit philosophy that will inevitably lead to the destruction of a meritocracy.
In a speech last Friday at VMI, the Governor’s Diversity Officer Brown challenged VMI’s vison of DEI: “Let’s take a moment right now to kill that cow. DEI is dead. We’re not going to bring that cow up anymore. It’s dead. . . [T]his governor has a different philosophy of civil discourse, [and] civility—living the golden rule.” Such a philosophy is contrary to DEI’s conventional rule by intimidation through cancel culture. “VMI is unique … You’ve been at the tip of the spear in serving our country as warriors, but you’re also the spear-tip in this cultural war. When you are focusing on equity, you’re not pursuing merit or excellence or achievement.”
Brown also stated that race relations were much improved. Additional affirmative-action policies would counter-productive: “Because [race relations are] better, we can’t ascribe perpetual victimization… Acknowledging those truths frees us to deal with the issues, the real issues, of today.” In response to a question Brown later wrote: “Equity has become a tradeoff for excellence. Our aim is to expand opportunities but not guarantee equal results.”
This is a hill worth dying on. DEI’s equality-of-collective-outcome guarantee is a fatal poison. Youngkin and Brown must not retreat if this hill is to be won. Make no mistake, the public will notice. Kentucky author Walter Tevis put it brilliantly in his 1959 novel, The Hustler. Upon winning a redeeming billiard match after a long string of losses the main character realized: “It seemed astonishing to him now how necessary it was to beat this man. For it was important. It was very important.”
“It was important who won and who did not win. Always. Everywhere. To everybody. . .”
(January 18, 2023) Arlington Cemetery’s Confederate Memorial should remain intact. Although four of the first seven cotton states arguably seceded over slavery, they did not cause the Civil War. They had no purpose to overthrow the federal government. After forming the seven state Confederacy in February 1861 they promptly sent commissioners to Washington to “preserve the most friendly relations” with the truncated Union. Instead of letting the cotton states depart in peace, the North’s resolve to force them back into the Union caused the war.
With half of the military-aged white men of the eventual eleven-state Confederacy, the four states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas only joined the original seven after President Lincoln called upon them to provide volunteers to force the first seven back into the Union. In response to a telegram from Lincoln’s Secretary of War directing that Virginia provide her quota of such volunteers, Governor John Letcher replied that his state would not comply and concluded: “You have chosen to inaugurate Civil War. . .”
On the eve of the war, Northerners and Southerners differed on their relative loyalties to the federal and state governments. According to historians Edward Channing and Eva Moore, Northerners had “the general opinion that the Union was sovereign, and the states were part of it. . . The idea that the people of the United States formed one nation had been reinforced by the coming of immigrants from abroad. These people had no conception of a ‘state’ or a sentimental attachment to a ‘state.’ They had come to America to better their condition. . .” By mostly settling in the North, they influenced most Northerners to believe that they owed their loyalty to the Union first and only secondarily to the state.
In contrast, among Southerners every “white boy and girl grew up to regard himself or herself as born into the service of his or her state.” At the 1892 dedication of the Monument to the Confederate Dead in Knoxville one speaker echoed the point: “. . . the Southern soldier believed his allegiance was due, first to his state and then to the general government…So when his state called for his service, he responded believing it to be his duty.”
Moreover, when some of America’s Founding Fathers in the North were still living, the region had a greater attachment to state’s rights. During the War of 1812 the governors of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island would only deploy militia to defend their respective states despite directives from President James Madison that they be put into national service.
In 1814 New Englanders held a convention in Hartford to suggest amendments to the U.S. constitution that would strengthen state’s rights generally as well as the region’s national influence specifically. Ironically, by advancing the calendar forty-seven years the following Hartford resolution might well have been written by a seceding Southern state: “In cases of deliberate, dangerous, and palpable infractions of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty of the state…it is not only the right, but the duty, of the state to interpose its authority for their protection.”
Thus, both Northerners and Southerners valued state’s rights as a fundamental American right when it served their purposes. Similarly, both the Union and Confederate soldiers were Americans. Both merit a memorial to their reconciliation. According to historian David Blight, by 1874—just nine years after Appomattox—“a genuine reconciliation based on mutual experience was already taking hold among soldiers.” Two years earlier Congress and President U. S. Grant had authorized Confederates disfranchised by the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment to become candidates once again for House and Senate seats if they desired.
After Southerners eagerly volunteered to fight in the 1898 Spanish-American War, President William McKinley opined that America should honor the dead of both North and South. In 1906 President William Taft authorized the United Daughters of the Confederacy to raise funds for a reconciliation memorial at Arlington. The resulting sculpture, created by Virginia Military Institute graduate and Confederate veteran, Moses Ezekiel was erected in 1914.
Notwithstanding their homeland had been devastated by the Civil War, postbellum Confederates and their descendants more readily volunteered to fight under the old flag than did citizens from other parts of the country. Presently 44% of military volunteers are from the South although the region has but 36% of the nation’s 18-24 age group population. This disproportional service is a long tradition.
In a 1955 Georgia Review article about postbellum Southern volunteerism James Bonner wrote, “It would be impossible, of course, for the scholar to prove that the Southerner in battle has possessed more courage or displayed better fighting qualities than his compatriot from any other part of the country. However, from a statistical viewpoint, there is irrefutable evidence of the fact that, throughout American history, no other section of the country has sent its picked youth into battle so freely and so heedlessly as has the South.”
In World War II Texas A&M’s military college provided more officers than did Annapolis and West Point combined. Bonner also wrote, “At the outbreak of World War II, the Southern states had the highest proportion of volunteer enlistments to induction under the Selective Service Act of any other group of states.” Nationally, the number of enlistees was half the number of draftees. “[In contrast,] Georgians volunteered at the rate of 93% of those drafted, while the figure for Texas was 99%, and for Kentucky, 123%… So great was the volunteer enlistment from the South that Congressman Luther Patrick of Alabama stated that it was necessary to start selective service to [geographically] equalize the manpower burden for national defense.”
Without knowledge of the approaching Spanish-American War, the dedication speaker at Knoxville’s 1892 Confederate Monument noted earlier accurately predicted, “I am persuaded that the soldier from Mississippi or Louisiana would give his life in defense of his country today as readily as one from Massachusetts or Maine.” Since the authentic combatants of the Civil War speedily and genuinely reconciled, it is shameful to overrule them a century later.
As essayist Rick Sapp notes, an analysis of the arguments for removal compared to those for retention shows that Arlington’s Confederate Memorial should remain intact. The destruction case is succinctly put by the Defense Department’s (Re)Naming Commission, “The memorial offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery.” To that is often added claims of Southern treason and the presumption that the Confederate soldier chiefly went to the battlefield to defend slavery and not his homeland. All are opinions. In contrast, the case for preservation hinges upon substantial evidence from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when America’s leaders and citizens—including still-living veterans on both sides—generally wanted reconciliation. To destroy the monument is to erase the history of that reconciliation and to signal that there can be no end to the Civil War.
New rule at The Washington Post: It’s OK to insinuate that conservatives are racist for disagreeing with an authority figure who happens to be black. No evidence of bias required.
The democracy-dies-in-darkness newspaper set a new low yesterday in an article published Monday describing how conservative alumni of the Virginia Military Institute decry the implementation of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion by the Board of Visitors and Superintendent Cedric T. Wins. Reporter Ian Shapira never comes out directly and calls the dissident alumni racist, but he makes the implication unmistakable. His rhetorical devices are a case study in slimy journalism that stops just short of libel.
Let’s start with the headline, which may or may not be Shapira’s composition but accurately reflects the tone of the article.
“VMI’s first Black superintendent under attack by conservative White alumni”
See the trope? The superintendent is Black, the alumni are conservative and White. The headline doesn’t say explicitly that the alumni are attacking the superintendent because he is black. But the phrase invites readers to assume that there must be a link between the superintendent’s race and the race of the alumni — why else would race be injected into the headline, which by its nature is sparing and economical with words?
Shapira then leads this article with this:
Ever since Virginia Military Institute began rolling out new diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives last year, a fierce and well-funded group of conservative alumni has been attacking the efforts to make VMI more welcoming to women and minorities.
Here he supplies a motive. The alumni are attacking “efforts to make VMI more welcoming to women and minorities.”
The charitable word to describe this phrase is “misleading.” True, alumni are criticizing the DEI program, but they are not attacking it because they oppose making VMI more welcoming to Blacks and minorities. If they had ever expressed such a desire, Shapira would have quoted them to that effect. But they haven’t.
Rather, dissident alumni are attacking the DEI program because they believe DEI encourages cadets to focus on their identity by race, sex, and gender, which is antithetical to the egalitarian Rat Line/regimental system, which tears down previous identities basic training-style and remolds cadets as “brother rats” and VMI citizen-soldiers. One might disagree with the dissidents’ philosophy. One might disagree with their analysis of how DEI is being implemented at VMI. That’s fine. But Shapira ignores the philosophical differences entirely and frames the issues as based on race.
He continues:
Now the mostly White alumni group has turned its sights on a new target: the first Black superintendent at the nation’s oldest state-supported military college.
Again, Shapira frames the controversy as a matter of race. I have interacted with dissident alumni for some two years now and I have never heard them allude to Wins’ race other than in passing and never as a negative. Shapira is making Wins’ race an issue.
True, some alumni have criticized the Board for giving Wins a $100,000 bonus, others have called for him to be fired. Why? Because he is Black? No, because VMI has seen a 25% decline in entering 1st-year students. Reasonable people can disagree on why VMI saw such a decline and whether Wins bears responsibility. But it is not gratuitous to suggest that the decline might have been due in some degree to the massive wave of negative publicity of VMI as a racist, sexist institution (perpetrated largely by Shapira and the Post) and the seeming validation of that assessment by the Board and Wins through the implementation of DEI training and programs.
Shapira then runs this quote from Chuck Rogerson, a retired White Army colonel who roomed with Wins when they were cadets:
“They can’t handle the change because they’ve never had to deal with it before — a man of color leading the institute. Did they ever question prior superintendents’ salaries?”
Here the insinuation of racism becomes more explicit: Wins’ critics can’t handle the idea of a “man of color” leading the Institute. Rogerson’s putative evidence: They never criticized prior superintendents’ salaries. True, they didn’t. But that’s because they regarded the previous superintendent with great respect — not because he was White but because they shared his values and priorities. As it happens, dissident alumni disagree not only with Wins, who is Black, but with members of the VMI Board, most of whom are… White.
Almost comically in this context, Shapira quotes Board Chairman Tom Watjens, whom Shapira credits with overseeing the launch of the DEI program.
“Any time people are attacking the superintendent, I’m going to be unhappy. … He’s the one that we’re counting on for helping to bring us forward and protect the mission and purpose of the institute to bring us to the next level,” said Watjen, who is White. “Every time he gets attacked, I feel attacked.”
Here, Watjens poses as the Great White Savior. But he doesn’t need to feel attacked when Wins gets attacked. Dissident alumni have criticized Watjens directly. It is grotesque to suggest that dissident alumni have singled out Wins for criticism. Alumni have had plenty to say about the role of Watjens and the Board in the governance of VMI.
The article continues in that vein. Alumni, says Shapira, have “assailed” VMI’s first chief diversity officer Jamica Love, “the college’s highest-ranking Black woman.” Get that? Alumni have assailed her, a Black woman — not the DEI policies she is implementing. “Angry” alumni, writes Shapira, have found a forum on WRVA’s John Reid Show. Shapira proceeds to quote not the alumni appear on his show but Reid, a conservative but not a VMI alumnus, and to take issue with his views on DEI.
None of the alumni in question responded to Shapira’s requests for comments, which is understandable given his long-standing hostility to them, but he does quote Thomas Gottwald, a former board member who resigned during the Northam administration and was reappointed by Governor Glenn Youngkin, based on a recording of the board meeting. (Gottwald, Shapira reminds his readers, is White. And he donated $77,500 to Youngkin’s campaign.)
It’s not a small group of alumni who feel like their voice isn’t being heard right now. It’s a big group. To make broad generalizations about alumni, about anyone being critical of what is going on, is just one further implication that alumni need to just shut up and get in line, that dissenting opinions, different opinions aren’t encouraged or welcomed here.
Gottwald makes a valid point. That is the way the dissident alumni feel.
One might argue that I’m misconstruing Shapira’s article, that I’m reading insinuations of racism into his words. Let me respond by noting that the article has generated some 4,400 comments at last count, and most of the commenters are reading it the same way I do.
“Sounds like VMI is an incubator for white supremacy,” says one.
“The spirit of VMI might as well be the spirit of the KKK. Sickening,” says another.
“I am SO SICK AND TIRED of elderly white southern racists clinging desperately to their white supremacy dreams,” says another.
There are genuine philosophical issues at stake. How is DEI being implemented at VMI? Is the emphasis on racial, sexual and gender identity compatible or incompatible with the Rat Line? These are issues that Shapira could explore if he chose. But to my recollection, he has never done so. Instead, he has cast alumni dissidents as reactionary White conservatives. With this article, he has gone further by insinuating racist motives.
Ironically, as much as the dissident alumni may disagree with Wins, any negative feelings they bear for him pale in comparison to the animosity they feel for Shapira. Alumni accord Wins respect for his distinguished military service, and they had high hopes for him when he was first appointed. The person they detest more than any other is a smug, Princeton-educated heir of a wealthy Kentucky bourbon-distillery conglomerate who uses The Washington Post to signal his superiority over his moral inferiors — Shapira himself.
(November 21, 2022) The Washington Post has an article today accusing politically “conservative” alumni of racism for opposing aspects of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and so-called “antiracism” initiatives as remedies for the school’s alleged hatred of blacks and women. Ian Shapira, the journalist, commits many transgressions, but let’s consider two.
First, he fails to recognize that Virginia did not secede to defend slavery in 1861. She seceded because she opposed Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteers to force the states that had indeed seceded back into the Union. Virginia believed that Lincoln did not have such authority under the Constitution. On 4 April 1861 her secession convention voted two-to-one against secession. Less than two weeks later it voted two-to-one for secession. The forcing factor of change was Lincoln’s call for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to coerce the seven Gulf states back into the Union.
Second, the Post’s Ian Shapira singles-out John Reid of WRVA radio as a popular voice opposing the so-called reforms that the current VMI Administration is trying to implement. His accusations against Reid could leave the uninformed reader with the impression that Reid is a bigot. In reality, Reid is merely voicing opinions about DEI, Critical Race Theory, and so-called “antiracism” that are similar to those of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Shapira makes no mention of the fact that Reid has repeatedly tried to get representatives from the VMI Administration on his show, but they either decline or ignore him. Reid truly wants an open and fair discussion. It is the VMI Administration, in my opinion, that wants to lecture its opponents rather than have a conversation with them.
VMI’s traditions were already changing before Superintendent Wins arrived. Although officially brought in by the school’s Board, the move was abruptly prompted by former governor Ralph “Blackface” Northam who got the state of Virginia to pay a law firm $1 million to prepare an analysis that concluded VMI is racist and sexist.
The following is an edited version of a letter sent by a VMI alumnus to the school announcing that he is rescinding his one million dollar bequest to the school owing to the “woke” agenda that dominates the current Administration and Board of Visitors. It was publicly distributed last week at the Bacon”s Rebellion Blog.
(November 14, 2022) I am a member of the VMI class 1975. In the nearly 50 years since my graduation, I have taken great pride in being one of the over 20,000 who can claim that honor. Therefore, I take no pleasure in writing this letter to state my growing concerns about the future of VMI, and my conviction that the path VMI is taking will destroy the Institute. I am confident that many other alumni share this view. My convictions have become so strong since Maj. Gen. [Cedric T.] Wins and his Administration took charge that I recently and reluctantly amended my will to excise a bequest of one million dollars to the Alumni Agencies.
In the brief span of two years since the abrupt dismissal of Superintendent General [J.H. Binford] Peay, the Institute has traveled far down the path of political correctness. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and Critical Race Theory (CRT) tenets, have sunk their toxic roots into VMI life.
The Board of Visitors’ (BOV) recent approval of a $100,000 bonus for Superintendent Wins, despite a 25% drop in enrollment, and his defiance of the Governor and General Assembly’s instructions discouraging the use of budgeted monies to fund VMI’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) program, are unacceptable insults. Recently I was appalled to see a social media posting, apparently from the Superintendent’s personal account, describing an alumnus and his own Brother Rat as “looking desperate and racist.”
I blame Superintendent Wins and some Administration members, for the above insults. I also condemn BOV public statements and the VMI Alumni Association for supporting them. Additionally, I accuse them of vilifying alumni merely for holding contrary views. Other destructive actions include the taking of authority from the Corps for running barracks and splitting the VMI Family. VMI’s challenges require serious, skilled leaders who love the Institute, but we do not have them.
Fortunately, none of the ill-conceived changes are carved in stone. They can, and must, be reversed. For that I look to Governor Youngkin, who may hopefully be sparked into action by a coordinated effort from my fellow alumni.
Fortunately, we are beginning to see genuine pushback against speech censorship, possible misuse of curriculum funding, and perhaps, defiance of the governor’s directive to refrain from teaching divisive concepts. The pushback reflects a growing number of concerned alumni and cadets rather than an isolated “small group” as the Wins administration suggests.
Protect Honor, The Spirit of VMI, and many concerned alumni are encouraging resistance to Wins’ divisive policies. The Cadet newspaper is trying to give the Corps back its independent voice. Dissenters must unite to truly return control of the Corps system, class system, Ratline and, especially the Honor Code and Honor system, to the Corps under the traditional leadership of the First Class. As in the past, the Corps must govern itself and be among the agents of whatever change may be necessary to restore and even improve the VMI experience.
We are not a group of unhappy alumni stoking fears and sowing seeds of discord about the training and education of students, as Gen Wins alleged in his October 18, 2022 letter to Alumni. We grow in numbers daily. We are dedicated to preserving that which is good in VMI while evolving what is needed to make VMI better for every cadet regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, belief, or background. But this must be done through transparency and openness to all ideas including those the BOV and Alumni Association leaderships have been repressing.
It is time for action. For my part, I start by rescinding the one-million-dollar bequest, which I am working to re-commit to The Cadet Foundation, or another charity separate from the VMI Administration and the Alumni Association. I want instead to know the money will be used by alumni and cadets working together in the true spirit of VMI and not in supporting policies that divide alumni and cadets, and discredit VMI in the public arena. I urge more alumni donors to act congruently.
Many thanks to The Cadet and supporters for standing up for free speech, fundamental values at the Institute, and working to address the serious questions and issues facing VMI. The Administration must accept, unconditionally, that the First Amendment is non-negotiable. It must immediately stop all actions to control and restrict The Cadet, the newspaper’s staff, and its foundation. It must stop distorting the facts surrounding the re-start of The Cadet as an independent Corps voice by cadets and supporting alumni. It must immediately restore The Cadet’s historic privileges as they’ve requested.
Next, it must unconditionally return control of barracks, the Ratline, Honor Code, and Honor system to the Corps. VMI has great young men and women who deserve our help and advice. Ultimately it is they who must run the Corp. Finally, the Administration, BOV, and Alumni Association must stop vilifying alumni while deliberately censoring and dismissing or otherwise suppressing contrary views and it must cease personal attacks against those who do not share “management’s views”.
Your [General Wins’] actions against free speech, reducing the authority of the Corps to run itself, and your divisive approaches cost VMI my one million dollars and if others follow my example, hopefully it will be much more.
Civil War Chat 