I agree with Joseph Epstein. This morning I sent this around to the Center for Equal Opportunity’s email list:
Thoughts on the Northam Controversy
Events are happening so quickly here — that is, in the matter involving Virginia governor Ralph Northam and a photo on his page in his medical school yearbook — that I suspect whatever I write now will be overtaken by them, but nonetheless here are a few thoughts:
1. Context is everything. No photo is inherently offensive: After all, many news organizations are publishing the present one, simply to show what the controversy is about. The other extreme would be if the caption were, “I like the KKK and I don’t like black people.” The photo here falls between the two extremes, and the argument, I suppose, is that the photo makes light of something that ought not be made light of: racism and, in the case of the KKK, racial terrorism. That’s offensive. Okay, fair enough.
2. But do we know who made the joke? Northam now says he is not in the photo, and so perhaps the yearbook editors chose it to go with the quote that Northam submitted. The quote is, “There are more old drunks than old doctors in this world so I think I’ll have another beer.” The two figures in the photo are each apparently holding a beer can. A CNN story found “more racist and objectionable images in the yearbook” — that is, more offensive attempts at humor — which suggests that the yearbook editors could indeed be to blame.
3. But apparently Northam knows that he is still vulnerable because he did indeed appear in blackface around this time, even if not in this photo, namely when impersonating pop singer Michael Jackson in dance contests. But here again, context is everything, and not every appearance in blackface is equally offensive.
4. Bear in mind that this yearbook was published 35 years ago. Is the new rule to be that you cannot hold public office if you did something that might now be considered racially offensive at any time in your adult life, no matter how long ago it was?
5. Which brings us to my last point: I have no particular love for Governor Northam (I voted against him and I’d be happy for him to resign over his defense of late-term abortions last week instead), but what’s at stake here is the Left’s ultimate desire to disqualify from public life anyone who has ever done anything that it decides now is politically incorrect. That’s a scary prospect.