Chesterfield Earns Kudos on Racial Inclusion from Times-Dispatch’s Leading Black Voice Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Posted by Conaway B. Haskins III in Uncategorized.trackback
In a move that probably raised a few eyebrows in these parts, The Times-Dispatch’s Michael Paul Williams gave a nod to Chesterfield’s apparently progressive record in municipal hiring. Contrasting the county’s experiences with the on-going controversy surrounding Henrico’s heavily-white government leadership, the Times-Dispatch columnist held that
“Jesse Mayes, Chesterfield County’s first black supervisor, gained his election in 1984 without the benefit of such a lawsuit. Today, 10 of the 88 senior managers in Chesterfield County are minorities, or 11.4 percent. Given Chesterfield’s smaller minority population, its hierarchy is more representative. They’ll deny it, but somewhere south of the James, folks are suppressing giggles. Chesterfield, despite surpassing Henrico in population, continues to sustain the most hits in the image war with its seemingly more sophisticated suburban cousin. We’ve kicked Chesterfield around quite a bit over the years — who could resist all the ammo they provided? But maybe we owe them an apology. Billy K. Cannaday Jr. was its school chief before his recent elevation to state superintendent of public instruction. Chesterfield also has a black deputy county administrator and assistant county administrator.”
In the course of the column, Williams manages to do two interesting things. First, he acknowledges that conventional wisdom about Chesterfield being a bastion of unrepentant lily-whiteness and minority exclusion is not quite on-point. The county has a diverse population, including upwards of 60,000 African Americans. Put another way, Chesterfield has one of the largest black communities within any individual jurisdiction in Virginia.
Second, Williams acknowledges that the RTD has been somewhat unkind to Chesterfield at times. The perception of an anti-Chesterfield bias is one that county leaders and residents have held for years, and Williams’ column validates their sentiments. With Chesterfield having some of the region’s highest household incomes, one has to wonder if this is an example of the RTD shifting its editorial and reporting policies to match its market. Maybe seeing 75,000 (and counting) homeowners as current and potential new readers makes picking on the region’s highest-wealth homes less appealing.
It will be interesting to see if the RTD’s product reflects Williams’ newfound revelations going forward. If so, it will signal real change; if not, it will just be status quo. At any rate, with this mea culpa in black and white, I can imagine Greg Pearson laughing up a storm somewhere in Chesterfield.
Good for Chesterfield. Being a native of Sousthide Virginia (Cumberland) I find it shamefull that local goverments in the region (wich is probably atleast 40 % African-American) have an abysmally low number of minority professionals on thier staffs.
School staff/administration tend to be better in this region in regard to this matter, but as far as the local government staff, it’s indeed appears to be little effort to correct this…
New School Superintendent in Chesterfield….the gender or race of the super shouldn’t matter, only their ability or presumed ability. The school board did well in some ways with Cannady but there were many before including the Alaskan folly where their thinking wasn’t so clear or good.
For those who think color matters, Chesterfield has one of the smallest proportions of minorities in its schools of the major counties around Richmond’s metro areas yet two minority male supers in a row.
I would like to have been a fly on the wall during the selection process to hear the school board’s actual thinking process.
It doesn’t matter what the color or gender are unless selection is for the wrong reasons. What we haven’t had yet is a competent female school superintendent in Chesterfield, black, white, pink or mauve.
Our school system is wildly expensive and needs some spending discipline in many people’s eyes…look at the cost of schools during the politically correct and adept Cannady’s reign just for starters.
Centers of Excellence and their cost and many other issues are far more important than the ethnicity of the super and it’s these issues which still and constantly need addressing.
Are they being addressed with the new guy or is he the continuation of a trend?
Lance
My guess is that Chesterfield is simply color-coding a few certain positions, rather than showing any heart-felt fairness. But I suppose that’s better than nothing.
Columnist Michael Paul Williams failed to mention that Colonel Jesse Mayes was elected in a district that, at the time (1984), had a rather significant African-American voting population. Its not like the surly old coots in Salisbury voted the man in.
If Chesterfield were really fair — not that they are now –they’d also see that the large population of Hispanics residing in Dale and Bermuda districts are properly represented. (Kelly Miller would have a heart attack. Sorry, Kelly.)
Larry,
I agree…it’s sort of tokenism on Chesterfield County’s part though better that than the reverse I suppose as you said. I see no real interest from the BOS or the school board in anything but business as usual for anything but more or less ceremonial reasons. It seems strange that men are appointed to run the school district in the counties regardless of color. The person selected is heavily run by the school board and not really a free agent…more of an administrator working for the board so it’s easier for them to do that.
Last time I looked, something like 73% of the teachers in Chesterfield were women and there are women with PHDs around who can run entire school systems. The woman running the Richmond schools is a piece of work who learned from Rod Paige, The Houston Miracle man, how to defeat the SOLs and I’m not a fan of hers not because she’s a woman but because she isn’t very good when you strip the Rod Paige techniques away.
I’m sure the new guy is talented but so are virtually all of those trying for these jobs. Isn’t it time a woman ran the Chesterfield County schools?
Lance Pearson