Illustration by Chris Visions
Born to a white mother and black father at Chippenham Hospital in 1984, I grew up living in two worlds. One was suburban and mostly white, while the other was urban and predominantly black.
After my parents divorced, my mother retired from Richmond Public Schools as an accomplished elementary school teacher and ESL instructor, and raised me in Chesterfield County so I would have access to a better quality of education. My father, stepmother and half-siblings lived in the city of Richmond, where my paternal roots are embedded.
As a youth, I absorbed my mother’s memories of witnessing Ku Klux Klan marches in her hometown of South Hill and my father’s stories of growing up in Hillside Court, which became a hub for gang activity in the ’80s and ’90s, putting Richmond on the map as one of the nation’s most dangerous cities.
Yet, no matter which side was guiding me in the moment, both urged me to use civility and collaboration. I moved between my two worlds with relative ease until 2003, when I got my first gut punch of reality during my freshman year at the University of Richmond.
When I was set to appear as the abolitionist Sojourner Truth for a Women’s History Month re-enactment at the campus commons, UR administrators said we would have to move the program, citing its potential to disturb lunch traffic. But soon afterward, the school allowed the College Republicans to hold an “Affirmative Action Bake Sale” in the commons, where students of color were asked to buy baked goods for 80 cents while the white students paid $1.
Watching my campus spotlighted on CNN as fellow students created a one-sided narrative around affirmative action was an experience that ruptured my comfortable duality. As integrated as I had believed my life to be, that year I stopped thinking of myself as a mixed-race kid and took on the black label proudly. It seemed clear to me that in Richmond, a person’s access to privilege was decided according to their race.
Fast-forward 15 years, two degrees, a daughter, a divorce and a career change later, and I’m again straddling two worlds as metro Richmond’s narrative change officer with the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) project through Initiatives of Change USA. The W.H. Kellogg Foundation launched TRHT in 14 cities nationwide to help the country move away from the old storyline of white supremacy by telling the truth about history and writing a new, more inclusive version.
I see this happening in Richmond’s conversations about reinterpreting the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue, with the efforts to acknowledge the wrongs inflicted upon the enslaved Africans who passed through Devil’s Half Acre, as well as with the renaming of schools and the efforts to memorialize those whose remains were dumped into a 19th-century medical school well at what is now Virginia Commonwealth University.
Yet stories of inequality persist in educational opportunities for our students, in the disproportionate arrest and imprisonment of African-American men and women, in the high rate of evictions affecting communities of color, in continued concentration of poverty, and in segregated housing.
As troubling as these issues are, the conversations we’re having around them give me reasons for hope.
Today, I use the word “community” to encompass metro Richmond — not only the city — because of the shift I’ve witnessed in the last couple decades.
As we build the narrative for our region, we need to ensure that we don’t replace the old falsehood with a new one.
Growing up in “Richmond, Virginia, 23236” (now called North Chesterfield), I, like others in that ZIP code, used the disclaimer that I actually lived in Chesterfield County. Chesterfield residents did not want to be linked to the violence they associated with the city, and Richmond residents shunned the exclusionary culture they saw in the county.
Now, as young professionals, families and empty nesters move back into the city, Richmond’s identity is being redefined. The “RIC” label for the 804 area that I grew up hearing on Power 93 has all but disappeared, displaced by the rise of artistic and restaurant-savvy RVA.
As we build the narrative for our region, we need to ensure that we don’t replace the old falsehood with a new one that touts our attributes while glossing over the damaging effects from generations of slavery and segregation. How do we chronicle our past in a framework that all Richmonders can buy into? Only by valuing all people equally and making space for diverse stories — even the painful ones — will we ever be able to read from the same book.
An organizer who helps evolve narratives and policies, Chelsea Higgs Wise is co-host of the radio show “Women and Politics” on WRIR 97.3 FM. She also launched a podcast titled “Race Capitol” and is a regular contributor to RVA Magazine. She serves on the Richmond Behavioral Health Authority Board of Directors and Richmond Social Services Advisory Board.
