The Scalawag Scholar's Notes on Virginia 2012: A Skeptical Commentary on the Frauds and Fables of the Virginia Gentleman - Softcover

Yates, Larry Lamar

9780981947112: The Scalawag Scholar's Notes on Virginia 2012: A Skeptical Commentary on the Frauds and Fables of the Virginia Gentleman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0981947115 ISBN 13: 9780981947112

Publisher: Social Justice Connections LLC, 2012

The Scalawag Scholar's Notes on Virginia illuminates the Frauds and Fables of Virginia -- stories of fine knightly men who act nobly and efficiently in every situation, while all those who differ with them act deplorably. As a rebel against the white South -- a scalawag -- I share the fruits of years of observation and study, and what I have learned from almost 50 years of Virginia activism. These pretty myths are the patter used by generations of con-men using the title "Virginia Gentleman" to distract us from their abuses. This book details these abuses, from inventing the white race to refining the business of slavery, from backing into a terrible civil war to trashing the soil they praise as sacred, and more. On the positive side, you will also learn how others, the people he enslaved and those he claimed to love and idolize, principled white "Race Traitors" and the native residents, affirmed humanity despite him. I have visited every region of Virgina as a tourist, as an expert organizer, and as a student of history and the natural world. There are hundreds of Virginians and hundreds of places in Virginia that I love and respect. I hope that these Notes will help us draw strength from the whole rainbow of Virginia strengths and values, not just self-serving Virginia tradition. This book responds to each of 21 Frauds and Fables of the Virginia Gentleman in detail and also includes a bibliography with over 250 sources, from 400 year old texts to recent news stories and the websites of organizations active today.

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About the Author:

I’m Larry Lamar Yates, author of Scalawag Scholar’s Notes on Virginia, and owner-operator of Social Justice Connections LLC. At 62, I have been making and watching Virginia history for 48 years. I have traveled and made connections throughout Virginia. I am a hard worker who is not afraid to cross racial and cultural lines, but I like to think my best contribution is encouraging strategic thinking in grassroots movements, by raising questions like “What happens if the dog catches the car?” The Scalawag Scholar’s Notes on Virginia applies my strategic thinking to Virginia’s history. I began my social justice and anti-racist commitment in the mid-1960s as an earnest teen marching to end housing segregation in Virginia’s Washington suburbs. Later, I was founding Executive Director of the Virginia Housing Coalition, and am in the Virginia Housing Hall of Fame for my work there. (I didn’t know there was one either.) I was the first national organizer of tenants in at-risk privately owned assisted housing, and an early user of e-mail for organizing. In all my many other organizing jobs, I focused on assisting people to take political action on their own issues, not on scoring points as an advocate for them. I am also pretty funny at times. This book reflects my humor and my desire to clarify issues for folks so that you can act on your own. My previously published writing includes a chapter on housing organizing history in A Right to Housing: Foundation for a New Social Agenda, my response to David Horowitz's attacks on reparations for slavery in The Debtors, published by Caucasians United for Emancipation and Reparations and a chapter in Accountability and White Anti-Racist Organizing: Stories From Our Work. I live with my wife Carol in Winchester, Virginia, and previously lived in Richmond, the Washington suburbs and the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, and in Thailand and Vietnam as a child. I belong to the Justice Coalition of the Northern Shenandoah Valley, the National Writers Union, the NAACP, and the National Organizers Alliance. I am also the author of Bloodroot Cantons, a novel of alternative Virginia history. It’s a story, as a novel is supposed to be, but it swims in the same depths of race, power and our ability to change history as the Scalawag Scholar’s Notes on Virginia. Both books are published by Social Justice Connections and available from this source. I take really good photographs and I’m a better dancer than most people expect.

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