So
this kind of blew up last night (via the
Virginian Pilot):
A photo from Gov. Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook shows him and another person in racist costumes — one wearing blackface and one a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood, though it was not clear which person was the future governor.
Hours after the 35-year-old photo came to light Friday, Northam apologized for his decision to appear in it. Elected officials and activist groups from across the political spectrum called for him to resign.
By this morning,
major Democratic figures at the state and national level - including Julian Castro, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden - have made calls for Northam to step down.
Virginia's state constitution has it the Lt. Governor - currently Justin Fairfax, who is Black - will step into the Governor's office and appoint his own temporary replacement (a permanent Lt. Governor to serve out the rest of the 2 years of term will be voted on in November).
There are a few shocking things about this story. Mostly to do with the fact Northam's yearbook has been out there for ages and it's only now coming to light. In this day and age of aggressive Oppo Research in elections, you'd have thought some Republican snoop would have caught this and presented it to Northam's political rivals BEFORE Northam won the governorship. (I am hearing stories however
that researchers DID find this, but thought it was a fake created by other GOP operatives...)
The one thing that isn't shocking - at least to me - was that there was something this racist in the personal history of a White boy who grew up in the traditional South.
Northam's own background has him growing up in the 1970s and 80s, post-Civil Rights Era of the 60s, where racism was still entrenched in a lot of social, educational, and professional institutions across the South. He attended Virginia Military Institute (which has a history of racism and sexism - not allowing girls to enroll until 1996) and had a school nickname of "Coonman" in 1981. He went to a Virginia medical college surrounded by drunken white frat boys (and yeah,
I've noted THAT problem before) who, anecdotally speaking, tend to be arrogant with a good amount of stupidity aimed at pulling cruel pranks, bullying disguised as hazing, and mockery of others.
Northam may have grown out of it, when the time came and he went to work as a doctor and then got into politics and then worked his way to the Governor's seat. Much of his public record has been consistent with the stance of a centrist Democrat in the modern South, supporting pro-choice positions (he's currently under fire from the Far Right for statements made about late-trimester abortions), education reforms, and protecting voter rights. However, something like this in his past - something that seems a consistent pattern of his youth - makes it harder not only for Blacks to trust him but for the state (and national) Democratic leadership to argue in good faith on social and economic reforms fighting racism.
It's troubling, but it's out there now. That trust is gone.
Look, we just had a scandal here in Florida where
the appointed Secretary of State Ertel turned out to have worn a racist costume in 2005 that mocked Hurricane Katrina victims. He did this stunt at the age of 35, well aware of the cruelty he was promoting and doing it anyway, As soon as the photos got out, he had to resign because nobody could trust him being fair overseeing elections in a contentious battleground state like ours (even though Ertel's work history as an Elections Supervisor - fighting against Rick Scott's voter purges - seemed scandal-free).
Ertel's background is about the same as Northam's. Born in Jacksonville, FL and having lived here for much of his life - except for his time studying at University of Maryland before joining the Army and serving during the 1990s - Ertel has been immersed in the same cultural mess that other Southern Whites grew up in. As much as Northam probably thought it was funny or cool to dress up racist, Ertel thought the same thing. A lot of Southern Whites (and gods help us, more and more Whites nationwide) probably have thought the same thing.
This is where having hundreds of years of the same social messaging, the same mental conditioning, just gets into everything like the rotting stench of death.
Southern Culture is a thing, after all, it's NASCAR and College Football and Daisy Dukes and Grandma's Moonshine Whiskey and Redneck Jokes and Pecan/Peach Pie and Dirt Roads under Spanish Moss trees down by the creeks where kids in coveralls fish for dinner. It's also a
rabid history of lynching and
vagrancy laws and
entire Black towns getting wiped off the maps and Jim Crow and ongoing voter suppression and
Confederate Battle Flags shoved into everyone's faces.
It gets to where White folk don't
ever see it as a problem, because after all being White in the South has its privileges. White kids grow up in a culture that allows for mocking of minorities - especially Blacks - and embracing the mindset of "rebellion" AND "status quo" that the Confederacy/Lost Cause has come to represent. And then they have kids and pass the privilege onward.
This is where every White person who grew up south of the Mason Dixon line needs to re-examine every childish, seemingly harmless prank or joke they ever pulled while as children and teens because I guarantee - myself included - there is at least one moment of racist stupidity and cruelty stuck on your soul's track record. I fear that I have one, and the troubling thing is
I cannot remember because for me - and likely for a lot of other Whites -
it's been so easy to forget the slight or damage done. The weapon of racism never got aimed at me, after all...
Meanwhile, I may have noted how Ertel's behavior fit a mostly Republican attitude towards race, Northam's standing as a Democrat doesn't change my argument. For every modern Democrat caught pulling racist shit - and yeah, I know Robert Byrd was KKK and a Democrat, but he's DEAD now
and he recanted - there's still a ratio of 5 or 6 modern Republicans pulling equally racist shit or in
Rep. Steve King's case, racist shit that's
worse.
There
were a number of Far Right pundits crowing earlier about how the Democrats were hypocrites in having Northam exposed as a racist, but when the Democratic response properly called on his resignation those same pundits are trying to flip the narrative to hide their own hypocrisy on the matter. Like this is all still a game to them... It still doesn't excuse the Far Right of their hatreds, as much as it doesn't excuse Northam's cluelessness or Ertel's cruelty or anyone else's blithe ignorance regardless of party affiliation.
The hypocrisy of racism,
the pain of racism, this is all on full display right now. It's been out there before Reverend King exposed it to the world shaming our nation onto a better moral arc, and it's still been there all this time of the rest of us trying to build a better loving world.
The damage of racism - even the tiniest bit that was meant to be funny, which turns out never really funny after all - is piling up. This is something a lot of White folk - myself included - need to acknowledge and step away from.
The first step in getting better is admitting you have a problem. And the addiction of White Privilege can be a hell of a drug.
