How is that in opposition to what I said?
for a while Michael Jackson was the biggest pop star in the world. Based on that I figure more than a few white guys dressed up like him for Halloween.
Huh? It’s quite clear to you that the school had nothing to do with the yearbook. Well, the school itself thinks it did. How is that not clear?
It don’t get that from the text at all. They are conducting an investigation to see wtf happened and they are sorry for any hurt caused. They will have some policy changes as a result. It’s been reported that the students put that old yearbook together without any official involvement of the school.
For him to be innocent, we have to assume that someone submitted a racist photo to the yearbook in his name, and that he never found out about his own yearbook page for all of the decades since then, and that he also didn’t bother to check the pictures before his first response, and that his first thought on hearing the accusation was to think of another offensive (though not as much so) thing that he really had done. I’m not buying it.
It’s starting to make me angry how many people are starting to make excuses for this shit.
This was in the 1980s. Blackface was a thing at most the 1960s. Everyone knew that blackface was wrong. I’ve literally grown up knowing blackface was wrong because I was born in the 1980s, and I live in a town that just started getting black people in it in the 21st Century.
There is no excuse for this. Anyone who wore blackface knew what it meant. And they are too old for a “youthful indiscretion.”
Sure, they can make amends and apologize. It’s not impossible. But it has to do be done with the acknowledgement that what they did was wrong and that they have to make up for it. Not all this crap where we try to pretend that it was no big deal.
It is. It will always be, and anyone who participated in this vile bullshit needs to deal with it.
Unless it was entirely self-published and unofficial, I cannot see how this is possible. And since they did actually cancel the yearbook in the 2000s, it does seem that it was official.
The fact that they could cancel it means they had at least some control over it. No, it doesn’t mean that they directly approved of anything that went in. But it’s still the school yearbook with the school’s name on it, published on behalf of the school. They had to have allowed this, and they have to have not stopped it when this crap was put in–at least, until they did actually stop it.
Hopefully, when the school canceled the paper, they already did some investigation to see what went wrong to allow it to happen. Hopefully this new investigation will build on that and find what went wrong in the school itself. I’m pretty sure we’ll wind up finding at least one person working for the school who knew but let it pass.
It was self published and unofficial according to accounts that I read from contemporaries of Northam. The apology from the school was more along the lines of “we should have been more aware and told our students to stop using our name for this kind of shit”.
I remember seeing a few white guys dressed up like Michael Jackson at Halloween when I was in college. NONE of the ones I saw were in black face. Dark curly wig, red pants and jacket, sequined glove? Yes. But no black face. And this would have been around the same time in the 80’s and in Texas. So not exactly Virginia but not really a world apart.
ETA: I was born in 1962 and grew up in Texas, which was a slave state and a part of the Confederacy. Black face, much less a Klan outfit, would not have been looked upon as a benign thing in my rural high school or at the Baptist University I attended.
Cosigned. I grew up in neighboring North Carolina, and to the extent that I ever heard of blackface it was as a historical relic. I later lived in Missouri, where our Democratic governor Mel Carnahan got in some hot water over his youthful blackface history. But although he was about the same age as Northam in his infamous photo (which he survived politically, with the aid of prominent black Missouri pols), that was in 1960, which is not only 24 years earlier than 1984, it’s far more than that in cultural/historical terms.
So if you wanted to dress up as Michael Jackson in 1984 you had to set your hair on fire.
Apparently Tom Hanks and Ted Danson hadn’t gotten the memo.
Seconded.
Just so we’re clear, Northam’s blackface gag isn’t the most disturbing revelation; it’s that he (or someone) dressed up ostensibly as a blackface standing right next to someone dressed up as a Klansman. And his nickname at his previous school was “coon man.” Sorry, but there are just too many things wrong with Northam’s past to ignore.
It’s entirely possible that Northam has matured and outgrown racism - I can believe that, but I still don’t think that matters in and of itself. And that’s actually what prompted me to make the now infamous comment that got me pitted. It’s incredibly condescending, paternalistic, and a host of other adjectives for someone who is white to assume that because he holds political opinions that may, in some way, contribute to the wellness of black Virginians that he gets a pass on what is clearly racially insensitive behavior. The underlying message and tone seems to be “Yeah, I know you’re upset, but you people really should be grateful for my political positions and what I’ve done for you. Just be glad that I kinda pretend to care about you, because it could always be worse.”
Had Northam handled this somewhat differently maybe there’s a case to be made for his defense. But now he’s just straight up making denials and defenses that are, at best, highly implausible and that strain credulity, which to me shows that even now, he doesn’t take the grievances of those who feel insulted by his association with that photo very seriously. It’s just adding insult to injury.
This is a rarity in American politics–
A state-level non-Illinois, non-New Jersey, non-Louisiana major political scandal.
…non-South Carolina, non-Kansas, non-California…
but I guess I can’t say non-Virginia.
:rolleyes:
I don’t see this as a winning move. It may keep him in office short term, and may keep democrats in power there for the short term, but I see this causing long term damage.
Interesting piece. Most Republicans think he should resign. Obv. But the interesting part is that a very solid majority of black Virginians want him to stay in office.
That’s pretty significant.
It’s pretty much the same split as Democrats polled but I think it does show that black Virginians aren’t especially angry about this.
As I said upthread, I don’t think he should resign over this. He’s got ten years of public life to judge him on and one stupid move from 30 years ago shouldn’t trump that.