State Senator Richard “Dick” Black. (Photo via Twitter)

Richard Hayden Black, the Virginia State Senator from the 13th District who goes by the nickname “Dick”, thinks that teenagers need to be protected from the number of times the book Beloved mentions “reproductive organs.”

State Senator Richard “Dick” Black. (Photo via Twitter)

In a correspondence with a constituent obtained by Gawker, Black called the Toni Morrison book “moral sewage.” Beloved is about a woman escaping slavery in the American South who chooses to kill her two-year-old daughter when they’re captured, rather than have her return to slavery. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988.

The exchange was over a bill that would require teachers to notify parents about classroom materials with “sexually explicit” content and provide “nonexplicit” alternatives.

The constituent, Jessica Berg, is an AP literature and language teacher at Rock Ridge High School in Loudoun County. She contacted legislators to voice her concern about the bill, nicknamed the “Beloved Bill” because politicians read aloud passages from the book at legislative hearings. Berg expressed her concern over the bill and voiced her love for the novel, which she teaches in her class.

In response, Black, a Republican, wrote this:

I was surprised by your personal advocacy of the book “Beloved.” That book is so vile—so profoundly filthy—that when a Senator rose on the Senate Floor and began reading a single passage, several other Senators leapt to their feet to interrupt the reading. Susan Schaar, the Senate Clerk, quickly had embarrassed Senate Officials rush the teenage Senate Pages from the Senate Floor in order to protect them from exposure to this moral sewage.

When the Senate adjourned, Ms. Schaar confronted the Senator who dared to read passage publicly; she was visibly shaken as she angrily chastised him for exposing the Pages to the disgusting material that you so effusively praise in your message to me.

Berg responded with some serious shade:

You miss the entire point and context of the novel if you only read specific passages. Slavery was an atrocious and vile time in our nation’s history and the reader needs to understand that in order to grasp the reasoning behind Sethe’s actions towards her daughter. But I am sure you knew that because you were an English major and have studied literature in depth.

Black wasn’t having it. “Slavery was a terrible stain on this nation but to teach it does not mean you have to expose children to smut,” he wrote in response.

Black’s office provided Gawker with documents tabulating the references to bestiality, breasts, reproductive organs (which they defined as “vagina/penis/inside part”), rape, and curse words in the book.

Since then, Black has been on Twitter defending himself using the hashtag #WakeUpAmerica

Governor Terry McAuliffe vetoed the legislation this week.

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