Regarding the hateful image connected to Governor Ralph Northam, Virginia Democrat, it doesn’t matter whether he’s the figure in blackface, the one in Klan costume, or neither one of them.
He IS the one who chose to place that photograph on his personal page in his medical school yearbook. Among just four photos he used to define his personality, he chose one that recycles racist stereotypes while trivializing murderous violence.
In Northam’s own lifetime, the Klan had committed bombings and shootings of civil rights workers throughout the South. Conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was taken to task for stupid references to beer in his high school yearbook when he was 15; but no one in press or politics ever exposed Northam for treating racist violence like a joke when he was 25.
There’s a double standard at work that needs to end.