Yes, Virginia...

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam needs to take responsibility, own up to his failure to address his racist past until it was exposed, and set an example by stepping down.  Yes, people can change and his heart may be in the right place now, but he needs to see the bigger context - that this is a symptom of a bigger societal problem.

I’ve seen a number of people ask if they should be taken to task for things they did in their youth that could be construed as racist later in life.  The answer is yes, you should at least acknowledge it, do some soul searching and confront yourself over what led you to assume that was an okay thing to do.  If you can’t do that, you’re either an emotionally stunted jackoff or just okay with being a racist asshole.   And yes, before anyone brings it up, I am pretty embarrassed by and ashamed of being paraded around in a paper bag vest and headdress while holding an oatmeal tom-tom in kindergarten.  Well-meaning or not, it is something that I understand to be hurtful to my friends who are Native American.

With that in mind, Ralph Northam was 24 when the offending photo was attached to the page dedicated to him in his medical school yearbook.    That’s about fifteen years beyond any possible too-young-to-know-any-better mark, if you want to open that can of worms.

The photo isn’t of a little kid in well intentioned but ill-advised blackface doing an in-character oral report on the accomplishments of George Washington Carver.  It shows an adult man in full minstrel show attire leaning in to an adult klansman.   This is a joke to those two men - mocking and terrorizing  the descendants of slaves.   There is no context in which this could have occurred that this could ever be innocent in the mid 80s.   What the photo depicts are two white, southern, racist douchebags reveling in being white, racist, southern douchebags.

This kind of shit still goes on all the time on college campuses.   I guarantee you, some stupid frat somewhere started taking notes the moment the news broke and we will see recreations of the photo.   There needs to be consequences, otherwise the message to those assholes is going to be that one can be a racist shitbird in college and remain in office when exposed.

Oh, but Ralph now claims that he isn’t even in the photo.  He thought it was a different one of him in blackface as Michael Jackson until he saw it just the other day.  That still isn’t excusable at 24, and shows that he was still totally okay with the afore mentioned white, racist, southern douchebagggery being associated with his academic career for 35 years.   Also, that same yearbook also refers to a nickname of his that I will not repeat here.

Ralph says he wants to turn this into a learning moment.   He has only been in politics since 2007 and it wasn’t okay then. If he wanted a learning moment, he should have addressed a problematic history when he first entered the fray twelve years ago.

But hey, Ralph, let's have a learning moment.   Virginia is the state that hanged John Brown for the abolitionist uprising at Harper's Ferry a year and a half prior to the Civil War.   Brown was a traitor in his time, but he was also a rebel underdog who died fighting for the liberty and freedom of others.   The Virginia General Assembly doesn’t acknowledge Brown, but they did make national news for celebrating the legacy of Robert E. Lee while Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax - an African American - sat out alone in protest just two fucking weeks ago.  Lee was a traitor to our republic who fought to preserve a status quo that relied on and celebrated the kidnapping, rape, dehumanization and enslavement of others to attain that “gentler way of life” that the Cracker Barrel set like to talk about when pressed on the matter. If you didn't call for a learning moment then, don't call for one now.