When I was 19, I voted for Jesse Helms
I would not do so again four years later, and was deeply embarrassed and even ashamed I had previously voted for him. Why did I do so in the first place? Because I was a dumb kid who had grown up in a deeply red, conservative area. My vote helped re-elect this evil, evil man. By the time I left with my BA and headed to grad school, I was a completely different person.
A friend during this same time in college dressed up as Michael Jackson and danced to Thriller in a university talent show -- no blackface, but this very white Southern boy wore a jeri-curl wig. He grew up in Shelby, NC, and was related to notable resident Reverend Thomas Dixon, Jr., who wrote "The Clansman," a book "that glorified the Ku Klux Klan's vigilantes, romanticized Southern white supremacy, and opposed the equal rights for blacks during the Reconstruction era. Film director D. W. Griffith adapted The Clansman for the screen in The Birth of a Nation, which stimulated the formation of the 20th-century version of the Klan." His father was in the Klan, and he thought that was funny.
Four years later he became a social worker and then an Episcopal priest, and has spent decades in inner-city Baltimore helping the poor. He, too, is deeply ashamed of what he did and thought as a teenager.
I am not excusing racism, or any other ism at all -- I'm a gay woman and am not untouched by bigotry. But, non-criminal stupidity at 19 shouldn't negate the changed beliefs and values and deeds one does from that age on.
This does not concern Northam. He is more problematic.
= new reply since forum marked as read
