Stumbled across a press conference of Northam on CNN while channel surfing. It’s the epitome of American politics, I think I’ve heard a dozen cliches in a few minutes. Dear gods.
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In second grade we were performing the fence-painting chapter from Tom Sawyer as a play. My white friend Josh was picked to play Jim and, you guessed it, he was put in blackface. The really weird thing is that they chose him because they didn’t want to be offensive by selecting the only black kid in our class. I definitely didn’t have the language to define it as cal it what it was then, but it has stuck hard in my mind to this day.
Point is, if I had ever been in blackface or a klan robe, I’m pretty sure I’d remember it. Vividly.
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His best defense would have been that he decided to dress up as curtains that year.
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No one ever said nor even implied otherwise.
I think they’re garbage opinions, rooted in willfully blind privilege and not actual reality by my standards, but you are totally allowed to think whatever you want, obvs.
There’s that privileged sense of entitlement again, that you likely don’t even recognize as being problematic;
YOU are not the person or the entire community of people being denigrated and offended, so it’s not your place to decide whether someone ‘deserves’ forgiveness or not.
It might be ‘your opinion,’ but it’s one that is both self-centered and utterly irrelevant, since you are not the aggrieved party.
But again, you’re allowed to be on the wrong side of the moral compass, and to defend bad behavior because it has no negative effect on you, personally.
That’s your choice.
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You know what? The internet is also a tool that has helped myself and many other people properly educate ourselves about the issues of racism, feminism, and class struggle (not knocking university, I have a degree too). Amazingly enough, I’ve seen many young people who’ve a good idea of right and wrong from studying these topics with the help of social media and academic information shared online.
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Real talk; I’ve made connections with people all across the world who are vastly different from myself, but they still hold the same kind of core values. Through them, I have been exposed to different life experiences, and learned so much.
The internet is a vastly powerful tool; and just like any other tool, it can be used wisely, or abused with reckless abandon.
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This guy has to step down. Democrats have to do all they can to push him out. Yeah there’s racism everywhere, but only one of the two major parties is standing up to it and atempting something like diversity and social justice. This is a test. If this guy is allowed to stay in office, it hands an argument (even if highly disingenuous) to republicans. To be fair democrats are screaming for him to step down but I guess it’s really up to him personally to step down because Im not sure they have legal position (do they?) to force him out.
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What bothered me the most about this is that he said yes I’m in that photo yesterday, then today he says no that photo was mistakenly put on that page. I can understand that you were stupid 30 years ago, I was stupid at that age as well. It’ll still have consequences, but at least you owned your mistake. Changing your story though, that’s why people hate politicians.
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Breitbart has had 6-7 Northham stories in the last day. The comments lean as you’d expect.
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If that’s all you have to shudder about at night just consider yourself lucky and call it a day. Google and Facebook don’t need to bother with blackmail and frankly this isn’t blackmail and he’s not a victim.
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What I briefly read is that he said had done some other blackface thing that year but not that one.
In this day of unrepentant idiots it is important not to block out paths for people to change and demonstrate they have changed… however so many issues with this incident that this may never be relavent.
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I suspect that the Washington Examiner has a thick file on Democratic candidates with exploitable racial animus.
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But on that note:
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For all the talk about Google, et al having a liberal bias, I can say that for a given news topic appearing in Google News, the Fox News and Washington Examiner stories sure get forklifted to the top an awful lot.
ETA: It makes me skeptical about (for example) the SmartNews app or whatever I’ve seen advertised on TV. It purports to bring news from “both sides” when I suspect they mean one.
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Many folks have that file.
Racist Democrats weren’t exactly rare in the 1980s.
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“It is definitely not me. I can tell by looking at it.”
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Can’t help but notice that Ralph Northam was perfectly positioned to talk about late term abortion and Virginia’s requirement for three doctors to sign off on the procedure. He is the governor; he is a doctor; and he is pro choice.
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Yes. But he and his team dealt with this is such an old fashioned, reflexive and ultimately wrong way. I think you can do a lot better. Just be honest. Say for example: “Yes this is me in the photo, this was me 35 years ago. It could’ve been most of you 35 years ago, and it still is many of you today. But it’s not me anymore, I’ve listened and watched and learned in those years, and I’m a different person than the ignorant teenager you see in that photo.” And so on. It’s not difficult, I thought of that in a few minutes, imagine what a couple of professional speech writers could come up with.
That they went back to the good old stand on a podium with your wife next to you, denying everything and speaking in cliches from decades ago, that’s just so lazy. There’s an opportunity here, and they fucked it up.
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Had he said that, it would have been both professional and more consistent, but it would still be bullshit to people who care about true equality and equitable representation in government.
He was a fully grown man in medical school, not some careless teen.
Furthermore, most people’s core beliefs and values don’t change that much over time, unless they actively and diligently work to transform their way of thinking.
I don’t care that it was 35 years ago, and neither will most people who fear that he’s not capable of representing their best interest.
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