Virginia's Racist Past Is Present

[DonViejo]

11:35 A.M.

By Zak Cheney-Rice

The narrative that we are encouraged to accept in the United States about white people’s youthful dalliances with racism is as follows: That was then, this is now, and I have changed.

And is that so unreasonable? Surely wearing blackface at a college party does not predict an eternity of racist behavior. Nor does it necessarily preclude future repentance, or even an eventual commitment to anti-racism.

It is this narrative that Ralph Northam and Mark Herring want Americans to accept about them. On Wednesday, Herring — the Democratic attorney general of Virginia — admitted to attending a party almost 40 years ago wearing what can be best described as blackface. “In 1980, when I was a 19-year-old undergraduate in college, some friends suggested we attend a party dressed like rappers we listened to at the time,” Herring wrote in a statement. “[Because] of our ignorance and glib attitudes … we dressed up and put on wigs and brown makeup.”

This revelation would be less explosive (if we had even heard it at all) had not Northam, the state’s Democratic governor, first admitted to and then denied appearing in a 1984 medical-school yearbook photo that depicted a man wearing blackface standing next to a man in Ku Klux Klan robes. Northam did admit he wore blackface on a separate occasion as part of a dance contest the same year, where he dressed as Michael Jackson. (His wife dissuaded him from demonstrating his “moonwalk” at the press conference.) Calls for Northam to resign have gone unheeded since the news broke on Friday, no doubt partially because his supporters fear the fallout: Should the governor leave his post, followed by Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax — who faces sexual-assault accusations from 2004 — and then Herring, the top three officials in the gubernatorial line of succession would be gone, leaving Kirk Cox, the Republican speaker of the House of Delegates, to govern the state.

“I imagine we’re not praying enough,” delegate Lamont Bagby, a Virginia Democrat, told the Washington Post of the party’s predicament.

more
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/ralph-northam-mark-herring.html

[questionseverything]

1. all three need to stay, beg the forgivness of their constituants

continue with their progressive agendas

and then battle it out in future primaries

[brush]

2. Bet that 4th-in-line repug has racist stuff in his past too.

Don't worry, we'll keep digging until we gt to an AA woman office holder with no blackface or sex assault accusations in her past.

I'm exaggerating but the situation in Virgina is dire. Fairfax has a chance at surviving if he can prove he and the woman had contact after the alleged incident If not it remains a "he-said-she-said" where nobody wins..

[Blue_Tires]

3. kick

[Brawndo]

4. It's a narrative I do not accept

Losing Democratic control of the state of Virginia is awful, costly and a setback for our party. Losing the moral high ground, being hypocrites, injecting energy into whataboutism and sending a terrible message to PoC in our party nationally is unconscionable. IMO defending this behavior (no matter how long ago) may keep us Virginia but lose us far more than one state in the future. Integrity doesn't always feel great but it's worth having.