One of the great American novels that recounts the horrors of slavery has erupted as a flashpoint in the closing days of Virginia’s race for governor, with Democrat Terry McAuliffe and his allies accusing Republican Glenn Youngkin of “racist” campaigning.
Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” is staple of high school English programs, but a parent who advocated it be banned from Virginia schools appeared in a new Youngkin ad released Monday.
Laura Murphy, identified as a mother from Fairfax County, recalls McAuliffe’s opposition to legislation she pushed for that would have allowed parents to prevent their children from studying sexually explicit literature — an effort known at the time as the “Beloved Bill.”
The book Murphy objected to is never mentioned by name in the minute-long spot, but was “Beloved,” winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction by Morrison, the late celebrated Black writer who later won a Nobel Prize for Literature.
“There’s only one thing that is disgusting and gross here, and it’s Glenn Youngkin’s newest racist dog whistle,” Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said Tuesday on a call the Virginia Democratic Party arranged for reporters. “Black Virginians know it when they see it and know it when they hear it.”
Youngkin’s campaign dismissed the accusations of racism by calling attention to the Black Virginia lawmakers who voted for the legislation, included in similar bills from 2016 and 2017. The bills passed with bipartisan support before McAuliffe, in his first term as governor, vetoed them on free speech grounds, concerned about censoring the teaching of classics deemed offensive.
“Are these Democrats racist?” Youngkin spokesperson Matt Wolking asked in an email.
McAuliffe is seeking a return to the office he held from 2014 through 2018, and polls show a tied race between him and Youngkin, a former CEO of the private equity giant Carlyle Group who has made education a central issue in his campaign. Virginia law prohibits governors from serving consecutive terms.
Youngkin has seized on a remark by McAuliffe at their last debate, where, while defending his vetoes of the bill, the former governor said he didn’t think “parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
In the Youngkin ad released this week, Murphy recalls working with Virginia legislators to address her concerns about the book.
“As a parent, it’s tough to catch everything,” she says. “So when my son showed me his reading assignment, my heart sunk. It was some of the most explicit material you can imagine. I met with lawmakers. They couldn’t believe what I was showing them. Their faces turned bright red with embarrassment.”
McAuliffe, Murphy adds, “doesn’t think parents should have a say. He said that. He shut us out.”
“Beloved” centers on a Black woman haunted by the young daughter she killed to spare a life of enslavement. The book, later adapted into an Oprah Winfrey film, has since been a staple in high school curriculum, though scenes of rape and bestiality have triggered complaints from activists and parents like Murphy.
Since the ad’s debut Monday, McAuliffe and his allies have framed Youngkin’s strategy as an effort to ban books by Black writers, though the realities involving the legislation are more nuanced. Democrats also see an opportunity to tie Youngkin’s attack into their core argument: that the Republican candidate is a newer version of former President Donald Trump, who used racist rhetoric in his campaigns.
“In the final week of this race, Glenn Youngkin has doubled down on the same divisive culture wars that have fueled his campaign from the very beginning,” McAuliffe said in a statement late Monday. “Youngkin’s closing message of book banning and silencing esteemed Black authors is a racist dog whistle designed to gin up support from the most extreme elements of his party — mainly his top endorser and surrogate, Donald Trump.”
Youngkin has not campaigned with Trump, but Democrats — including former President Barack Obama last weekend during a rally with McAuliffe — have criticized him for not doing more to distance himself from Trump’s rhetoric. The Republican has called for auditing voting machines, a pitch that plays into Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
“People wanting to ban books about slavery and racism, that’s who Glenn Youngkin has said he will stand up for if elected. That’s who Glenn Youngkin wants to elect him,” Louise Lucas, the Democratic president pro tempore of the Virginia Senate, said on Tuesday’s call with the state party. “While this kind of rhetoric that has been coming from Glenn Youngkin is disgraceful, it’s hardly new.”
Lucas, responding to a question from a reporter, also rebuked the Democratic legislators who supported the “Beloved” Bill.
“I would hope that they have learned the lesson over time that these are truly attempts to try to silence the voices of Black authors and turn us back to a time when the works and the progress of Black people will not will not be recognized,” she said. “And for those of us who know our history, we’re just not going to stand by and let that happen.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
