IMHO, the outfits are offensive; the picture is exhibit A. No picture, no resignation.
It’s useful for highlighting their hypocrisy, but the truth is that the hard Right don’t care. They sacrificed principle and a moral compass for winning long ago.
24 Likes
Hat + Red = Hatred.
21 Likes
the right to life crowd wants to get rid of northram by any means necessary.
however, he is in the pic
4 Likes
I do find it interesting that he admits to being in the photo but won’t fess up to which he was.
As if we’re not going to find out anyway.
5 Likes
“His whole life has been about exactly the opposite and that’s what you need to examine, not something that occurred 30 years ago,” said Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax). “While it’s in very poor taste, I would think no one in the General Assembly who would like their college conduct examined. I would hate to have to go back and examine my two years in the Army. Trust me. I was 18 years old and I was a handful, OK? His life since then has been anything but. It’s been a life of helping people, and many times for free.”
I was 13 in 1980 when I discovered a photo of my dad (a pastor who supported desegregation) dressed as Aunt Jemima for a risque Halloween party. Even I knew then that it was wrong, and it’s changed my view of him forever.
Life isn’t a game, and there’s no takebacks. If Northram was truly sorry, he’d have owned that shit long ago, and worked doubly hard to sacrifice his privilege and entitlement.
31 Likes
After a hurricane ravaged my grandfathers home some of us were salvaging what we could and found on top of a china cabinet KKK memorabilia and confederate stuff. Shock was an understatement.
He was a man of the cloth as well.
The relationship suffered until his death.
30 Likes
Agree entirely.
“Growing up and seeing your parents’ flaws is like losing your religion. I don’t believe in God anymore. I don’t believe in my father either.”
― Nicola Yoon
Unfortunately, far too many people apply unlimited forgiveness to their family and friends while reserving absolutely zero for anyone else.
I also enjoy this little bullcrap in the quote you chose:
I would hate to have to go back and examine my two years in the Army. Trust me. I was 18 years old and I was a handful
No one goes to med school at 18. Med school is for 21+ year old students, if society should entrust you to cut on people they can also hold you to the standard that you shouldn’t be running around in a hood or in blackface.
15 Likes
Indeed, if his actions in medical school are something that should be dismissed as a youthful indiscretion that has no bearing on the man he is today then why should we continue to recognize the medical degree he earned during those same years?
If you want the rights and privileges of adulthood you don’t get to dodge the responsibilities of adulthood.
18 Likes
In the words of the Rock;
No, really:
It doesn’t matter which person he is.
It doesn’t matter that the photo is 35 years old.
It doesn’t matter that he claims to be “a different person today.”
Both “costumes” are equally racist, and demonstrate his utter lack of respect for POC.
You noticed that too?
Suddenly all our usual suspects and would be devil’s advocates are so damn quiet…
33 Likes
Ugh. Why do so many people seemingly find it so hard to not be pieces of racist garbage?
16 Likes
What does matter is that after doing this, his white privilege allowed him to attain the office of governor. At least every person who owned the yearbook knew about this, and nobody said a thing, until now.
25 Likes
Honestly he’s halfway in their camp already. He voted GWB for President in both 2000 and 2004.
11 Likes
Yeah, that was my first thought as well. A medical school thought this appropriate and worth immortalizing, no less - we’re not even talking about dumb high school students here, for whom it would be bad enough.
It’d be nice to think that’s why it ended up in the yearbook: “Check out this awful picture! To hell with that asshole. Put the picture in the yearbook. Let’s make sure he’s haunted by it.”
Someday I really hope they serve the same function in old photographs…
But only if the one doing it is a Democrat, unfortunately.
Yeah, I was going to say… But that’s how these kinds of defenses often work. Look at defenses of the Trump kids. “Oh, he was just a kid who didn’t know any better at age… mumbles… 41.”
19 Likes
I do not understand how anybody thought this was ok. I graduated in 1990, not that much after him, and no one in my class would have thought of doing this. Not, of course, because no one had those impulses, but because putting something like that in what amounts to a public document is putting a ticking time bomb under your career. Incredibly bad judgement. And that’s before we get into the actual content, which is cosmic asshole level shit.
15 Likes
Oh I’m 100% certain the editor who included it finds racism amusing. It’s just poetic justice that his or her racism is the undoing of another racist.
11 Likes
That’s how that shit works; it’s a helluva drug.
13 Likes
Based on posture the one with the KKK outfit.
3 Likes
Back then it would have been a career booster.
Just as dicussions of sexual harassment make me wonder if I’ve ever unknowingly made someone feel harassed, this made me wonder if I’ve ever done anything along these lines.
My instant reaction was “definitely not,” but then I remembered something that might get close if I’d been in front of the camera. In college, I and some friends decided to grow beards for the yearbook. Then, after getting our pictures taken with beards, we cut off portions of our beards and had more pictures taken. Some of us went to mutton chops, some went to goatees, one person went to left-side-of-face-bearded. The final step involved two of us getting down to Hitler-mustaches, carrying a sign with the name of a rival school that we thought of as somewhat fascist in flavor, and doing the heil salute.
If either of them went into politics and had their pasts scrutinized, I wonder what would be made of that picture.
1 Like
Northam’s high school class had a majority of black students (according to a WAPO article). The picture was 10 years after he started high school. Any arguments of being young and not understanding what he was doing are complete bullshit.
The only explanation is being a racist ass that was proud of being a racist asshole
8 Likes
