The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
No, Gov. Northam Shouldn't Resign Because of 1984 Blackface/KKK Photo
A 60-year-old is far removed from the 25-year-old he once was.
[UPDATE: For more, including the analogy some have drawn to the Kavanaugh allegations, see this follow-up post.]
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Republican Party of Virginia Chairman Jack Wilson, and others have called on Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam to resign because of his 1984 medical school yearbook photo, in which he and a classmate are shown in blackface and in KKK garb. (It's not clear who is in which costume.) That doesn't make much sense to me. It's 2019, 35 years later; what Northam thought was in good taste when he was 25 says next to nothing, I think, about his beliefs and actions today, when he is 60.
I don't think the photo actually endorses the KKK; it seems like a stupid joke more than a political statement. Nor does it seem to endorse hostility to blacks; some blackface displays do, others don't, and it's not clear that this one was understood that way. Some believe that all blackface is offensive; but even if that's so, that just tells you that Northam, when he was 25, did something offensive. How relevant is that today?
People will doubtless ask me: What if this were something offensive to the group I belong to? Very well, if I saw a medical school yearbook picture of someone in 1984 of someone wearing a Nazi uniform, alongside someone dressed as a religious Jew with fake curls and a hooked nose, I'd say: Yes, 35 years ago, this person did something in bad taste, which many people understandably find offensive. So?
Indeed, even if Northam had actually expressed hostility to blacks back then, I don't think that says much about him today. People change their views, and their actions, a lot over three and a half decades. Judge the man on what he is doing now, now on what costume he wore and what yearbook photo he chose -- or even what he may have believed about race -- in 1984.
