I sent this to VA reps: Hello! My name is Isabelle, I am 16, I go to James W. Robinson Secondary school, and I want my voice to be heard. I hope your families have been doing okay during these trying times. I am reaching out because I think there needs to be a change in the laws. I am only a junior in highschool who doesn't have much power, but I am sure you have the power to fight. Virginia has a history of racially unjust laws. Most have been deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but there are still some pieces of legislation that are enshrined in the law. These are basically ineffective now, so why are they still there? I am writing to urge you people, who have the power to change, to fight to get rid of these null laws. It does not matter if we take or keep them, so of course we should take them out. Not doing so is highly disrespectful to the oppressed community and only shows how privilege can blind you. Words are powerful and I am urging you to get rid of racist laws. Even if they are outdated. If you would like to get back to me, please email isabellelee612@gmail.com. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this entire letter! Please consider what I've said and please consider getting back to me! Have a blessed rest of the week.

The general assembly has met up before to take action against these enshrined laws, but “By its own account, the commission’s work is unfinished. It deliberately skirted the politically contentious question of whether to repeal a 115-year-old law, still in force, that forbids localities from moving or removing war monuments, including Confederate statues, which are, for good reason, offensive to many Virginians. It did not consider other laws, much more recent, that may impose disparate and onerous burdens on African Americans who seek to exercise their constitutional right to vote in Virginia — for example, by requiring various forms of voter ID that whites are more likely to possess.”

“...prompted Gov. Ralph Northam (D) to establish a state commission that has issued an interim report urging the General Assembly in Richmond formally to repeal nearly 100 laws dating from 1900 to 1960. The laws sought to enshrine racially separate schools, neighborhoods, hospitals and streetcars. They forbade interracial marriage and erected barriers, including the poll tax, to African Americans’ access to the polls. As the nine-member commission discovered, having combed through old law books that are still not computer-searchable, the concerted legislative efforts of generations of elected officials, determined to maintain a system of racial “purity” in which whites were explicitly advantaged at the expense of blacks, make for sobering reading.”

Quotes from this article: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-well-past-time-for-virginia-to-purge-racist-laws-from-its-code/2019/12/13/94867096-1875-11ea-a659-7d69641c6ff7_story.html%3foutputType=amp