My advice to Gov. Northam

[pdsimdars]

I called and left a message and I emailed the office with my recommendation. Let's see if he gets the message and acts on it.
I said he should get the top civil rights advocates in Virginia and meet with them or talk to them and find out what the Number 1 civil rights issue is in Virginia. Then he should make a proposal for how to fix that issue and any others that might be there and challenge the state legislature to make a bill and pass it for him to sign.
That would signal to everyone that he is not the person he was then.
It's a win all the way around. He retains his office and civil rights are advanced.

[BluegrassDem]

1. A Democratic governor shouldn't EVER need or have to be persuaded to support civil rights

in some sort of deal. We're not dealing with Trump.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

2. If Northam had done that BEFORE he got caught, THEN it would've helped absolve him.

[bitterross]

3. So, then, on that logic. His voting record should absove him.

What is his record? He consistently voted against voter ID requirements. He voted against requiring drug testing for welfare recipients. He voted to increase minimum wage. He voted against the ultrasound requirements for women seeking an abortion. He voted against allowing adoption agencies to discriminate based on their religious beliefs. He voted for prohibiting discrimination in state employment based on sexual orientation.

If Northam was ever a racist and bigot, then his record clearly shows he isn't now. If he is a racist and bigot now, he's not a very good one with that record. A record that clearly favors the poor and disadvantaged. We all know that poverty and these laws he voted against disproportionately affect African Americans. Yet he voted on the side of African Americans every single time.


Actions speak louder than pictures.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

4. Good points. Something about this mass "piling on"

seems so wrong and so unbecoming of us. Yet he's been linked to such a horrible symbol of hate. This is a hard one. But in the end, it strikes me that forgiveness should inch ahead? If he had demonstrated any bigoted behavior since then, totally different story.

[Freddie]

5. We love to eat our own, don't we?

I know that’s not a popular opinion here.
Look at how the entire RWNJ universe leapt to the defense of very believable sexual assault allegations against one of theirs.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

7. Yes. Here's what John Lewis said about forgiving

George Wallace
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/16/opinion/forgiving-george-wallace.html

[Mr. Quackers]

9. What is weird is that it probably isn't "us."

Putin's goal is to destabilize America, republicans are the ones for this job, since they've always excelled in fucking up this country.

Less Democrats means more republicans.

The republicans rally around their own, right or wrong. Is that a winning strategy?

Well, President Dunce Fuckboy is still sitting his fat ass in the white house getting the place all greasy. What he has done to this country far outstrips a 30 year old picture. Sorry, this issue isn't going to shut down the government, it won't make the US a laughingstock in the eyes of the civilized world. It certainly won't overturn Roe v. Wade.

Kavanaugh sits on the SC.

Senate . . . you get the picture.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

13. "getting the place greasy!". Roflmao

[pdsimdars]

12. Isn't that exactly what the Russian trolls are trying to acheive?

Think about it. By judging him without discussion of his record, you play into their hysteria.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

14. And watch trump gloat is sickening too. Like a child

whose buddy gets in trouble and he doesn't. Not a glimmer of "wow that was so wrong" on his face

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

18. Yeah, that's the worst part.

[lostnfound]

21. Wish African American Virginians could vote whether he resigns or stays in office

As a past-50 white person, I’m clueless in some areas. I think I understand, and then five years later the culture evolves and I’m listening to Melissa Harris Perry or Joy Reid or Hitaji Azziz, or I’m talking to the AA colleague or AA housekeeper, and I realize I am still f’ing clueless. And then I grow some more.

There are many insensitiivities I’ve KNOWN to be abhorrent since I was 5. I spent time arguing with older male relatives when I was a kid about why there’d be nothing wrong with dating or marrying a black person. I’ve never tolerated people around me using racist labels, or making overtly racist generalizations. On the other hand, although I was excited to learn I’d have a black roommate in college, I must have chased her away with tone-deaf too-friendly comments...she left for another dorm after a week and 37 years later, I still regret whatever blind spot I had. And the ones I still have, maybe.

I hate Halloween and costumes, but dressing up like a famous black dancer in the 80s including color on your skin seems not different than changing the color of your hair. But i already know, I’m stupid, because I’ve seen my own blind spots before. I realize there’s a history behind blackface that makes it more than a costume, the way that the “n-word” is more than a word. I also realize that racist thinking was RAMPANT in the 1970s South — young white men of the 70s growing up in Virginia? The fault lines WITHIN white male culture in that era weren’t sensitive — they weren’t “woke” — they weren’t discussing “intersectionality”. They were young men whose own fathers had perhaps disagreed with each other over lynching, integrated schools, interracial dating, etc. Whose own fathers were probably in the 1970s still muttering about the good old days. What those men experienced was cognitive dissonance.

Northam did a wink-wink to racists by dropping Justin Fairfax from flyers in certain areas. That influences my thinking on the current revelation. He knew it would help him get elected.It’s Virginia. The rightwing made an issue of it — to weaken AA support for him.

It matters whether voting rights in Virginia are protected, and that Virginia moves forward in a positive, leftward direction. Any backlash dividing the left that results in rightwing government would be a disaster — including any weakening of African American enthusiasm for voting Democratic. It matters whether the rightwing is able to target and take down democratic leaders at will, using the media drumbeat to drive elected democrats out while leaving racist Republicans like Steve King in office.

But what really matters is: what do African Americans in Virginia want. They have the most at stake, and I would trust their judgment more than anyone else. What will do the most to advance the causes of African Americans in Virginia? Justin Fairfax as governor, or reliance on an uneasy coalition that elected Northam? They are absolutely in the best position to judge that.

In edit: the Virginia Black Caucus has asked him to resign, and that’s sufficient reason in my mind, as they are probably pretty representative of black Virginians.

[bitterross]

22. It's not really a hard one.

Why is this a hard one?

35 years ago he allegedly appeared in a picture. One that was so non-offensive at the time and place it was taken it was published in a med school yearbook.

Think on that fact for just one moment. The community values of the school and city at the time and place it happened didn't get him kicked out of med school as it most likely would today. No, the community values of the school and the time were such that it was published in the yearbook without question. So by the standards of the community in which he lived at the time he, if it is him, did nothing offensive.

Now, 35 years later, people are judging him by today's standards. That's not fair.

It's not hard at all.

The piling on by people here is disgusting. Every attempt I've made to try and help people see that he, like me, lived in a very different time and place in the South in the 1980s. People think that everyone had already progressed past the whole town being white and that African Americans and their advocates were everywhere by then. That this sort of behavior would have been called out by people as it would be today. That's just not the case. It's STILL not the case in a lot of places.

[exboyfil]

27. Seriously I have to question that medical school

I knew in the late 70s/early 80s in high school in Mississippi (granted on the Gulf Coast) to not go there.

I was a little oblivious to what was going on at the time. I had moved from Southern California to Mississippi after 9th grade. I went to a recently merged high school that had once had students from a majority white and a majority black high school. Maybe the issue was tip toed around. I can only remember one incident. We had a band come and play in our auditorium. They had a Confederate battle flag displayed. After the band played, apparently some members of the band got into a fight with some of the black students. If I remember correctly, sympathy was definitely with the students and not the band.

[lostnfound]

28. Younger generation Vs older

My post above discusses why I think Northman’s resignation, or continued governorship, ideally should be determined by African American Virginians.

Not confident in my own ability to judge, because I have had blind spots in the past.

But I also wrote about cognitive dissonance, and essentially, the evolution of “community standards”. You, like me, are old enough to remember the climate of the 70s and 80s?When white people wore a costume to mimic Michael Jackson, they weren’t necessarily mocking him. There was plenty of admiration of his talent, especially his dancing ability. If a guy could do the “moonwalk” and was trying to find a costume, it is not inconceivable that in his own mind, there was even something self-deprecating about one’s own lame efforts to dress up and pretend to be “like Michael Jackson”. NO ONE could dance like Michael Jackson.

The idea of trying to color your face as part of a costume? I wouldn’t have done it, primarily because I have always been creeped out by having anything like makeup on my face. But most people would have seen it as just an accessory to a costume — the more features you could add that echoed your character, the better. People would have laughed along with the costumed person at the absurdity, but they weren’t laughing at Michael Jackson or at black people. The absurdity of their friend, acting like someone he wasn’t.

Role play is part of how people walked through social change, in the 70s.

[exboyfil]

29. I wore Alice Cooper's green make up

to a Halloween party in 1978 when I was 15.

I think you might have a point. I am not sure that I would try to wear make up to look like another ethnicity though.

How about cosplay with black, red, and yellow representing alien or fantasy races?

[EffieBlack]

33. No one wears jet black makeup to imitate another ethnicity unless it's to insult them.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

6. Something also seems wrong about everyone

Trying to get their name out there first. "Resign!" "Ya, I said it before you!" "No I said it publicly before you!"

[Oppaloopa]

8. Thank you for your comment. I did not know this. He should have admitted this. Apologize sincerely

right in the beginning instead of repeatedly lying. Oh and Michael Jackson never had a black face. He needs to go. Lying stupid conduct at 24 . Repeated lying now. What a embarrassment.

[exboyfil]

30. Really on Michael Jackson not having a black face?

One of the most tragic things about Michael Jackson is whatever drove him to do the plastic surgeries. You look at his brother Jermaine Jackson and you see a handsome black man who has aged gracefully.

[whopis01]

10. He also voted for George W Bush twice. n/t

[Butterflylady]

16. That implies to me

He is not a good decision maker.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

19. That says a lot.

[bitterross]

20. Well then, let's burn him at the stake.

Oops, seems like we're already doing that.

[whopis01]

23. It isn't about him

He is not what is important here.

It is not about punishing him. It is about having a Democratic governor who can effectively represent and govern all of his constituency. Northam can no longer do that.

[whopis01]

24. You were the one who brought up voting record as a measuring stick.

I was merely adding in additional information regarding his voting record.

[3Hotdogs]

15. Based on this, he should stay.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

17. Nope.

[Empowerer]

25. Voting the way non-racists are supposed to vote doesn't make him some kind of civil rights champion

It's what any decent person is SUPPOSED to do. It does not in any way absolve him of his past actions.

What stopped him from reaching out and proactively championing real civil rights changes as the OP suggests before now?

Saying "he doesn't seem to have done anything racist since he did that really racist stuff as a grown man but now that he got caught, I'm sure he would be willing to go out of his way to do something really good on civil rights" doesn't cut it.

[AncientGeezer]

31. His voting record...GWB twice?

[OldManTarHeel]

11. He's Not Going To Survive This

and the longer he lingers the worse it will get for him.

[Vogon_Glory]

26. Good advice, but this board's keepers of the flame

won’t have it. Governor, I’d suggest you repent, pray for guidance, and ask for guidance from those of your constituents you’ve offended. The best way to undo the damage from that costume is to live it down.

[Vinca]

32. I think he's too damaged at this point. To first apologize for being in the photo and then to

say he wasn't in the photo is a bit much. If you have to call people to eliminate yourself from something like that it's not a good message. It gives the impression it wasn't that much of an uncommon occurrence in your life and that's disturbing. It drives me kind of nuts, though, because you look at the GOP and good old Steve King is still there and his overt racism is on display daily . . . along with Donald Trump's.

[pdsimdars]

34. I read in one post that he has a long, progressive record on these issues. . . .

which means -->> mindless feeding frenzy.