Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. Reuters.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has been caught up in a racism scandal after a yearbook photo showing two people in racist garb emerged. Reuters. Northam has apologized for the photo which was found in his medical school yearbook. In it, one man is dressed in blackface and the other is dressed as a member of the Klu Klux Klan. It is unclear which man was Northam but the Governor did confirm that the photo was real. In addition, a 1981 Virginia Military Institute yearbook showed Northam had a nickname of "Coonman" which may be considered racist as well. Northam has come under bipartisan criticism for the photo but has resisted calls for his resignation. Northam is a Democrat and is also under fire for recent comments in support of third trimester abortion.
My Comment:
I uploaded the yearbook photo above so you can decide how serious this incident is. I'm of two minds of it. On the one hand I do think that going after someone 35 years after it happened is pretty lame. People change over time and digging through everyone's history is pretty terrible. Who among us hasn't done something incredibly stupid when we were kids? If we go through everyone's past with a fine toothed comb you will eventually find something that someone could be offended over. There isn't really anyone who can withstand that kind of scrutiny.
That being said, it also seems that Northam really was pretty racist here. Though I have always thought that blackface wasn't that big of a deal, dressing up as a Klansman is pretty over the top. Even if it's a joke, it's one that wouldn't have gone over well even back in the 1980's. And it's possible that it wasn't really a joke either. It's pretty possible that Northam really is a racist and hates black people.
That being said, racist edgy humor is a thing and it seems like this is what the yearbook photo is. Obviously the implication is that it's funny that a black guy and a Klansman would be hanging out together and that the black guy is probably in some trouble, which would be sort of funny in a very dark kind of way. It seems more likely that this was what the photo was about instead of a declaration of racism.
Still, in 2019 the culture has changed quite a bit and dark humor isn't an excuse anymore, especially when you are a member of the "woke" party. These people regularly freak out over "microagressions" and when confronted with something that's clearly pretty racist then they are not going to take it well at all. Either Northam was a guy that thought making racist jokes is something that was OK or he is in fact a racist who hates black people, neither of which is going to fly in the Democratic Party. And even if he was a Republican, I wouldn't expect the calls for resignation would be any less serious.
Do I think Northam should resign? For obvious partisan reasons, I would like to see a Democratic governor go down for any reason, but outside of that, is it the right thing to do? I think it's pretty obvious that Northam has lost a lot of support over this. Democrats are not going to put up with accusations of racism and there is basically no chance of Northam getting elected as well. If he were to win Democrats would stay home or even cross over to vote for the GOP candidate. His political career is over no matter what but he could decide to stay in power.
Generally I think that Northam probably should resign. Though I don't think people should be mobbed like this for something that happened years ago, he isn't going to have any support from his party and nobody is willing to defend what he did. You can't accomplish anything if you don't have support from your party or from the people and it seems like Northam has squandered both. If, for no other reason, he should quit just because he can't effectively run the state of Virginia with this scandal hanging over his head. From a purely practical standpoint, resigning is pretty much the only thing he can do now.
Northam was already in the doghouse for his recent comments on abortion. His comments on third trimester abortions was a huge error for him and cause a lot of problems for the Democratic Party itself. Without going into the ethics of abortion (i'm not touching that topic with a 30 foot pole), what Northam was advocating was either infanticide or very close too it. This caused the GOP to think of him as an almost literal demon and the Democrats to be angry that he put his foot in his mouth over a bill that had no chance to pass in the first place.
It makes me wonder if this racism scandal isn't revenge for that story. I haven't been able to figure out how the story broke in the first place but I am guessing someone got very angry about his comments on abortion and decided to start digging. If so, then it's fair to say that the abortion comments were the reason he ruined his career.
I do have to wonder how nobody found out about this until now. I mean, yearbooks are public things and he had to have gone to school with at least one person who didn't like him. And why didn't the Democratic Party find this? Do they not vet their candidates at all? You would think that someone would have figured out that this could become an issue and that it probably wasn't a good idea to let him become governor. Either they didn't know about it or thought it wasn't a big deal. If it was the latter, I think someone screwed up almost as much as Northam himself.
As for the Democrats, this is a pretty bad story for them. The coalition that holds their party together is already pretty weak and is mostly held together today by shared hatred of Donald Trump and his supporters. But the political establishment is facing challenge from economic leftists and from the "woke" faction. The "woke" leftists will not tolreate even the perception of racism and in this case it probably goes even beyond perception. The Democratic Party will have to do something and do something quickly or they risk their entire coalition falling apart...
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