The Root: "On Well-Intended White Folks: Thoughts on Gov. Northam & the Making of a Public Image"

[Empowerer]

On Friday night, as news broke about the pictures that were in Northam’s medical school yearbook, I was stunned. However, what struck me the most was not the pictures themselves, but that the pictures were carefully curated by the governor. As an adult, after what he witnessed with the desegregation of schools, those images were what he chose to represent who he is. He selected them like Barbara Rose John’s portrait. As I thought more deeply about the news story, I started wondering if he single handedly curated this yearbook page. The answer (contrary to what news reports are saying) is no. In many ways, the page from the yearbook was co-curated by this country. That medical school yearbook page is vintage Americana. America is white folks in blackface, Ku Klux Klan members, and white dudes with carefree poses in front of a classic Corvette. The Corvette is America’s sports car. The KKK is America’s hate group. Jim Crow is Americas legacy. In 1984, when that yearbook page was put together, an aversion for blackness and a celebration of white supremacy was so accepted, it wasn’t questioned by the medical school who put the yearbook together. This means that the underlying sentiment behind the picture was endorsed by an institution that abides by the Hippocratic Oath that all doctors take “…to partake of life fully and the practice of my art, gaining the respect of all men for all time” while not valuing the life of black people and not caring to gain their respect.

Today, as everyone indicts the governor for his racism and everyone professes to stew in anger at how he has let down his constituents, I am most disturbed by the ways that we allow folks to construct progressive public personas that are allowed to mask a problematic past even as the country endorses the past and the masking. WE have allowed people to use buzzwords like equity and social justice to mask their racism. WE have allowed sitting next to the right people or hanging the right painting to erase things they have done that cause pain. WE have failed to allow folks to face their history and the part they play in what they profess to fight against. It is easy to advocate for something without acknowledging that you are part of what caused it. It is easy for the governor to denounce the hatred in Charlottesville without acknowledging that he is a branch of the tree that the hate there grew from.

Today, the unearthing of that abhorrent picture from the governor’s yearbook leads every black constituent to be framed as the Jim Crow image in the photo. It brings black folks in Virginia and beyond to feel the terror of being led by a Klansmen. Black folks will always question if this is how the governor sees them. They will never know who is leading them. Is it the local boy who learned from desegregation or the man who hates black people?

When a curated progressive persona reveals itself to be a new iteration of the same old racism, it hurts. It takes the wind out of the sails of black folks who thought they were headed to a promised land of equity and freedom with the support of an ally.
www.theroot.com/on-well-intended-white-folks-thoughts-on-virginia-gov-1832292286/amp

[OnDoutside]

1. So someone raised in a culture of bigotry and ignorance has no reason

to see the error of their ways and change, because they'll be taken down for their past anyway ?

[Empowerer]

2. Did you read the story?

[loyalsister]

3. The controversy is revealing

It reminds me of something Martin Luther King wrote. "have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice."
To defend Northam in the interest of loyalty is to denigrate the outraged responses to any racist acts or symbols.