By David K. Shipler
A
significant question hovers over the furor surrounding Virginia Governor Ralph
Northam’s evident racism at age 25: Does a racist act justify a life sentence,
or can a person evolve? Are racist attitudes malleable or thoroughly embedded
in character? Is bigotry curable or merely discoverable, as through an old
statement, action, or photograph?
This
conundrum, which is larger than Northam, has been mostly absent from demands
that he resign. But it’s central to mapping ways forward from America’s
quagmire of bigotry. If individuals’ racial prejudices are impervious to
change, how does society make progress? Or if prejudice can be reduced, how is
that best accomplished? These are not new issues, but they take on urgency with
a President Trump who reflects and enables biases against an array of ethnic,
racial, and religious groups, from Mexicans to blacks to Muslims.
Unfortunately,
Northam has failed to lead the discussion where it should go. He has neither
acknowledged his sin nor chronicled his redemption. He has forfeited a teaching
opportunity that might have helped the public see how a person can confront and
revise his prejudices—if that is indeed his case. It is worth wondering whether
he might have salvaged his political career with candid introspection. Maybe
not, but it would have served the greater good, for the journey from racism
through reform is one needed by society as a whole.
Northam’s
sin was the inflammatory picture he evidently chose for his own page in his 1984
medical school yearbook. It showed two men standing side by side, one in
blackface, the other in the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan. Northam either was
or was not one of the men, depending on which of his ambiguous statements you
credit. In any case, he also admitted darkening his face with shoe polish on
another occasion, to imitate Michael Jackson in a dance. That touched a nerve
of racial history, when whites in blackface used to perform in minstrel shows
that mocked African-Americans as dumb, lazy, fearful, and ridiculous.
Relatively
few whites are sufficiently attuned to the overtones of history, the undertones
of stereotyping, and the innuendoes that trigger, for many African-Americans,
the long echoes of hatred. If nothing else beneficial has happened during the Northam
episode, the mainstream media have at least given a short course on the ugly
practice of blackface. It still endures occasionally in Halloween costumes and “ghetto
parties” on campuses, where administrators huff and puff and punish.
How to
remedy the scourge of bigotry often depends on how changeable people seem to
be. Since widespread redemption appears doubtful, the society has erected a
superstructure of inhibitions—both legal and cultural—designed to prevent
prejudiced thoughts from being translated into behavior. Violating anti-discrimination
laws carries legal penalties; violating cultural norms can mean losing a job, a
promotion, a friendship, a reputation. The results are anything but consistent,
as illustrated vividly by the contrasting reactions to Northam and Trump.
Northam’s Democratic Party denounces him, and Trump’s Republicans look the
other way.
