It Looks Like the Black Community May Have Saved Virginia from Getting a Republican Governor
Now that a poll has come out showing that 58% of black Virginians think Governor Ralph Northam should stay in office, it looks like Democrats are likely going to respect the wishes of the black community and allow Northam to stay in office
The Democratic Party’s circular firing squad almost got Northam. Most Democratic officials who spoke up about this wanted him to resign. Now it looks like the black community saved the day — since it appears that, if he resigns, he might be replaced by a Republican governor, who would not govern in their interests.
I noted that the vast majority of people I conversed with on Twitter wanted Northam to leave, before that poll was published. I wonder if Twitter will shift opinions also.
Twitter is an interesting but strange environment. I sometimes wonder if half or more of the accounts there are bots or aid trolls, hired to do a Divide and Conquer program on Democrats. Right Wingers often pretend to be black or Democrat, in order to push Republican policies and to divide and conquer Democrats. So it’s likely that some of the supposed black people and supposed Democrats rage tweeting about how Northam should resign, were really Right Wingers. Right Wingers even use stock photos of black people for fake black person Twitter profiles, a practice known as “digital blackface.”
Before the poll came out, there was nothing so easy for white U.S. Democrats to bear, as the misfortune of Ralph Northam losing his career, reputation and friends over something he did 35 years ago — a mistake for which he recently apologized.
Democratic politicians initially probably figured they were helping their own careers by agreeing with what they thought was the consensus — pushing him to resign. The sole person who was going to suffer then was Northam. He was going to be the fall guy for systemic racism, because he or someone else put a photo of two students — one in blackface and one in a Ku Klux Klan costume — on his medical school yearbook page 35 years ago.
While such behavior is widely known to be racially insensitive today, it may have been commonplace 35 years ago in Virginia — the state where Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, was once located. In fact, photos of this sort apparently were commonplace in his medical school’s yearbook until 2013.
As white liberals often do, most were all ready to push racism deep down below the waves, throw Northam overboard, and then sail off as if everything was fine. It’s an often used strategy that allows liberals to feel good about themselves without taking any risks. Yet it certainly isn’t a method for reducing racism. It’s a way to make one guy the scapegoat for the sins of all of Virginia’s white society decades ago. And it’s a way to avoid uncomfortable conversations about race.
Here lies what Jungian psychologists refer to as the shadow — a generally unacknowledged side — to the Democratic party. Democrats, while empathic toward minorities and people seen as vulnerable, are sometimes cruel to one another. Some refer to this as “the circular firing squad” or “Democrats eating their own.”
The measure of whether we are against racism should not be how willing we are to be cruel to individual politicians — or how willing we are to abandon people for whom photographic evidence turns up that they were doing the same things everyone else around them was doing long ago. The measure should be how much we are willing to do and risk to decrease racism now.
Forgiveness of less severe offenses can help. Also needed are frank discussions of events that occurred during the history of racism. Maybe a program like truth and reconciliation in South Africa would work. What were the expectations in behavior around racism 35 years ago in Virginia? That’s a question that could stand some discussion.
Many people say “Northam’s response to the incident is why he must resign.” Yes, his response was awkward. How is the average person’s response to such situations better? It’s not. The response would be clumsy for most people in this situation. We have to get used to awkward conversations if we want to make progress.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring’s response to his own issue about having costumed in blackface was judged by most people as more genuine — but perhaps only because he was second, not first, to come forward. Also, he came forward due to a memory he had. He wasn’t taken by surprise when a photograph was made public, that he himself didn’t even remember. He had time, and had information about Democrats’ reactions to Northam’s response, that he could use to craft a better response.
A number of people have said Northam should have spoken as Obama did in his famous speech on race.
That would have been ideal. However, President Obama is an eloquent orator. If that is the standard by which Democrats will be judged, most will fail. Obama also had a team supporting him. He wasn’t isolated and hated by Democrats. No one was asking him to resign as Senator. In fact, he was running for president, and was going to win two terms. The situations couldn’t be more different.
Humans love to erase history, as if it’s a solution. For Democrats, demanding that Northam resign was trying to erase the history of racism. It was pretending that racial insensitivity in choosing party costumes was unusual in Virginia 35 years ago.
Many listeners wanted Northam to stick to the same story. But what if, after conferring with his college roommate, he changed the story to try to be more accurate than he had been initially? “Too bad” say the critics. “It didn’t sound sincere because he changed his story.” People may be objecting to the truth, by insisting on a never-changing story about events from long ago.
As a writer, I have often found that fiction is believable. Sometimes it’s those parts of a fictional story that happened exactly that way in real life, to which readers respond “That’s not believable. That could never happen.” Most people are not good judges of the accuracy of stories about situations where they weren’t present. People who expected the isolated hated Northam to give a great sounding apology in a highly stressful situation are unrealistic.
The U.S. as a whole and minorities will all benefit, now that it looks like Northam, through the grace of the Virginia black community, will be forgiven and allowed to stay in his job.
Why? Because we need frank, open and inevitably awkward conversations about race, to progress toward a more just society. We also need to have realistic expectations and an accurate understanding of past events.
Democrats needs a process for forgiving people whose apologies for insensitivity 35 years ago don’t sound smooth and perfect in everyone’s eyes. This should especially be the case when the person has shown no signs of racism in recent decades, and has worked as a competent and well liked Democratic official for years, as Northam has.
The effects of how such situations are handled go far beyond the fate of particular government officials. They extend to the larger community in its efforts to understand racism in the past and reduce it in the present.
In discussions with some black individuals about Northam’s situation, I have found that some black people are tired of educating white people about racism. They want to resign from that and not be obligated. Fair enough. I agree. White people should educate each other about racism.
However, if white people are going to do that, there needs to be an atmosphere of openness — where people who committed minor offenses long ago, in a social network where no one objected to what they did, will not be severely punished.
If we want to reduce racism, we shouldn’t be doing what Democrats have been doing. Ask anyone you know “How would it work if I were to educate you on an issue that would help us to have a more just society?” Suppose they say yes. Then ask “Okay, since you weren’t knowledgeable about this issue before, you made a minor mistake decades ago by committing Hallowe’en costume racism. So the way for you to learn is to give up your career, reputation, good name and friends, for the good of your nation. We just can’t bear to have a person doing your job, who committed a minor offense 35 years ago.”
Try it on someone and see. The most likely response is that the person will tell you to get lost — and not in polite language. If this is how we educate people on racism, then no one is going to sign up. That’s especially true if the person is going to be even more isolated and severely punished for talking awkwardly about it, or “changing their story”, as the person and their college roommate struggle to remember what actually happened 35 years ago. Everyone is going to be terrified to talk. Silence will prevail, except when photos surface from decades-old yearbooks.
If this is how Democrats educate well liked duly elected officials who committed minor offenses long ago, Democrats will have no chance of success in ever educating Trump supporters about racism, many of whom commit more severe offenses, and are doing so in the present.
Since most black people don’t want to educate white people, then white people need to stop expecting black people to be backseat drivers while white people educate each other. Most white Democrats seem currently to be forming their opinions and strategies by asking black people what they think and what they want white people to do, and then simply agreeing with that — without further thought or research. Now that it’s known that black Virginians want Northam to stay, it seems as though white people will be reversing their opinions.
However, white liberals still have research to do, about racial issues like the ones surrounding Northam. And we ought to also be forming our own independent opinions, based on whatever we discover. Most white liberals have been acting as if the only problem is how to be politically correct by agreeing with minorities — not how to reduce racism.
Black people know whether they are offended by the photos. However, they aren’t experts on the white community in Virginia 35 years ago. White people ought to be delving into history books and other records that can inform us about that.
Also, white people who lived in Virginia in the usual segregated fashion decades ago, can tell us about those times. Did such photos raise any objections whatsoever from anyone in the medical school that Northam attended 35 years ago, or from anyone else he knew? Or would they likely have raised objections in most such environments at that time? That is an important part of this picture.
One way to reduce racism is to forgive people for minor offenses that occurred decades ago, when people may not have even seen these behaviors as offensive yet — to allow them to learn and change, rather than to be stuck being labeled “racist” forever. Otherwise, we ignore history by harshly applying 2019 standards to 1984 events.
TV stations could help us out here by hosting frank conversations about race with white people who lived in Virginia 35 years ago, with black people from Virginia, with racially mixed groups of people and with people from other states. Many such conversations may be awkward — which probably will make the more useful, not less. If people are not emotionally impacted by such conversations, they will be of limited use.
The U.S. had an election in 2016 in which one candidate was bashed severely for her flaws, because her opponent’s team and the press kept pointing out constantly how far she fell short of perfection. Her opponents often used lies to add imaginary flaws to the mix, and reporters who lacked objectivity repeated those lies, even in mainstream media. In the election, her main opponent acted as if he were the superhuman savior of the working class. Some voters believed this and elected him. The result is in the news daily for all the world to see.
If we hold unrealistic expectations for our leaders, and if we cruelly aim a circular firing squad at them, we will get the leaders we deserve. Competent honest human leaders won’t be able to fulfill such demands. However, some con artist will surely come along and promise to fulfill our unrealistic expectations. The result is likely to come closer to fascism than to a just society.
