Earlier this week, the online newspaper The Hill published an article regarding the Sons of Confederate Veterans membership list that was recently leaked. Sons of Confederate Veterans is a neo-Confederate organization that has closely aligned itself in prior with the Ku Klux Klan, and among those listed within its ranks was none other than Virginia Delegate Scott Wyatt (R-97). 

The Sons of Confederate Veterans previously endorsed a book entitled The Ku Klux Klan or Invisible Empire, written by propagandist Laura Rose Martin who hoped it would encourage young white Southerners to incite acts of violence against Black people. The Daughters of the Confederacy, a female-led organization in parallel to the male-centered Sons of Confederate Veterans, also took to promoting Martin’s work. The Daughters of the Confederacy, however, are more well-known for their attempts to rewrite history surrounding the Civil War and slavery. The Daughters of the Confederacy erected over 400 statues throughout the South, paying homage to Confederate leaders as an attempt to bolster the false narrative of the “lost cause”. The group’s efforts also led to various history books that glorified the Confederacy and promoted alternative versions of American history in public schools across the country. Many of these textbooks were still in use as late as the early 1980s in various public schools across the state of Virginia.

The important question to ask here is, “does associating with a neo-Confederate group makes someone a white supremacist?” The short answer is yes. The long answer is also yes.

The Confederacy and any group that promotes and glorifies its symbolism is racist. Why? Because the Civil War was about slavery, and the Confederacy’s “cornerstone rests,” in the words of its first and only Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, “[…] upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

The Sons of Confederate Veterans website claims, “The citizen-soldiers who fought for the Confederacy personified the best qualities of America. The preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South’s decision to fight the Second American Revolution.”

Wyatt’s association with a vocal white supremacist group that actively seeks to glorify a violent and treasonous rebellion compromises his ability to serve in public office in the United States. This should not be up for debate.

Earlier this year, State Senator Amanda Chase was censured and stripped of her committee memberships for her support of the January 6, 2021 Capitol Insurrection. For the past few years, her bigoted version of firebrand politics has sewn futher division in the fabric of our Commonwealth alongside figures like Delegate Dave LaRock and former Chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors Cory Stewart. Unfortunately, their overt bigotry has allowed other white supremacists to live in the shadows while holding public office.

The difference at play here is the fact that Chase was condemned by members of her party and politicians across the aisle alike. It begs the question: why is the same not happening for Wyatt?

Virginia is the birthplace of Sons of Confederate Veterans and the former capital of the Confederacy. In the past four years, Democrats in the Commonwealth have lauded the changes they have brought to Virginia from Medicaid expansion to marijuana legalization. But Wyatt maintaining his seat in the House of Delegates without any semblance of consequence for his blatant support and participation in a group that has aligned itself with the KKK in the past shows that the changes have only extended so far. 

As long as a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans holds a seat in the House of Delegates and continues to serve on committees, the Confederacy will still hold power in Virginia.

The burden falls on the Democratic majority in the House of Delegates to censure Delegate Scott Wyatt and strip him of his committee memberships. Anything less is unacceptable. The Confederacy and its racist cause lost the war more than a century and a half ago, and it’s time to force them to release their ever-weakening grip on power in Virginia.