GOP Candidate for Northam Senate Seat Blames Desegregation for Public Education Decline

While he is now seriously back peddling and - as seems to be the GOP norm, claiming that he meant something different - Wayne Coleman (pictured at left), the GOP candidate for the Virginia Senate seat formerly held by Lt. Governor elect Ralph Northam, blamed desegregation and school bus for the decline of public education.  Sadly, Coleman's attitude permeates much of the GOP base here in Virginia where increasingly city and county committee meetings ought to begin by all members donning KKK robes. And never mind that the Christofascist elements that support candidates like Coleman seek to have creationism taught as science and school curricula purged of anything that challenges their reactionary and ignorance embracing religious beliefs.  Here are excerpts from the Virginian Pilot on Coleman's batshitery:

The Republican nominee for an upcoming state Senate special election is retreating from remarks he made this week in a radio interview claiming compulsory busing to desegregate area schools "really was the beginning of the decline in some of the school districts."

Commercial freight executive Wayne Coleman offered that opinion during a Monday appearance on "The John Fredericks Morning Show" in response to a question from the host about fixing failing schools in Norfolk.

Coleman's reply:  "I'm old enough to have lived during the desegregation of the schools here locally. And busing children, in my opinion, around the different districts, getting them out of their local neighborhoods, really was the beginning of the decline in some of the school districts."

Coleman sought to clarify his comments Wednesday, saying a lack of precision in his phrasing has presented "an opportunity to misconstrue and mischaracterize their meaning."

School segregation remains a bitter chapter in Virginia's history, where resistance to integration remained intense in Norfolk after the Supreme Court in 1954 declared separate-but-equal schools unconstitutional.

Local efforts to stop desegregation, including closing schools, drew national attention. Even after a federal judge ordered Norfolk schools to desegregate in 1958, officials continued to fight to keep black children separate; 17 black students in Norfolk began at white schools the next February.

By the late 1960s, most Norfolk schools remained nearly all white or all black. Mandatory busing, a new approach to desegregation, began in Norfolk in 1970.

Eastern Shore Del. Lynwood Lewis, the Democratic nominee in the 6th Senate District, said Coleman's other "comments are unfortunate and they speak for themselves," in a brief telephone interview Wednesday.

Rodney Jordan, a Norfolk School Board member whose family was involved in the local civil rights movement, said that no matter what Coleman meant, his comments seemed to romanticize a time in history marked by discrimination and hatred.

Today's Virginia GOP is very ugly and it has only become uglier since the Christofascists became the puppet masters for the Republican Party of Virginia.   Not surprisingly, Coleman is no friend to gay Virginians and has promised to take strong stands for gun rights and against abortion and gay marriage. One can only hope that Coleman goes down to defeat.

Proper GOP uniforms