National media attention, which can harm as much as it can help, treated Farmville kindly during the recent Vice Presidential Debate.

For national reporters, the narrative was irresistible: A small town in the rural South that fiercely resisted school integration a half-century ago hosts the only VP debate in a 2016 election cycle in which our nation’s progress in race relations is the subject of much conversation and analysis.

Indeed, Farmville’s history was a big factor in Longwood University’s selection as debate host. Reporters, justifiably, explored Farmville as a microcosm of race in America.

The lazy angle would have been to portray Farmville as part of the “unreconstructed” South, a town where racism is more polite than it used to be, but still pervasive in community life. A book last year by a native daughter pushed that storyline, to the quiet chagrin of community leaders who see their town — correctly, from this writer’s vantage — as one that has fared far better than most at bridging the racial divide.

To Farmville’s credit, the national media mostly agreed. Reporters from The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and New York Times, among others, offered their takes. Where middle-class angst — which most pundits cite as the reason for Republican Donald’s Trump’s unlikely march to the Republican nomination — was explored locally, the economy and outsourced manufacturing jobs were blamed.

“Once a center of factories that processed tobacco leaves from surrounding farms, Farmville is now a place where many voters are concerned about jobs and the economy and willing to consider the Trump-Pence ticket’s message of bringing jobs back to America even though Tim Kaine is their current senator,” a Voice of America writer assessed.

Race was not ignored, nor should it have been.

The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin, a Hampden-Sydney graduate, offered a balanced account of Farmville’s successes and failures, concluding that our town, on the question of race, is a “reflection of the country.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, the former presidential candidate turned TV commentator, was more favorable, holding up Farmville as a model for the nation: “America must, as Farmville has, embrace its future … one nation under God.”   

STEVE STEWART is publisher of The Farmville Herald. His email address is steve.stewart@farmvilleherald.com.farmvilleherald.com.