The Virginia Blackface Scandal Is Only Getting Worse
Excerpt: They should have set House of Cards in Richmond. To bring you up to speed . . .Governor Ralph Northam has a college yearbook saying his nickname was “Coonman” and a medical-school yearbook that depicts on his page someone in blackface and someone in a Klan outfit. He insists that he doesn’t know how he got the nickname, that he’s not either person in the picture, that he did not select the picture, and that he had never seen the picture before — but only after stating on Friday, “I am deeply sorry for the decision I made to appear as I did in this photo and for the hurt that decision caused then and now.” On Saturday, he insisted that he had been mistaken. He admitted that he did wear shoe polish as blackface on a separate occasion to imitate Michael Jackson. Almost every Democratic lawmaker in the state called for Northam’s resignation over the weekend, but there’s been only quiet murmurs of an effort to impeach him. The man who would replace Northam if he resigned, Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax, faces an accusation of sexual assault from Vanessa Tyson, a professor at Scripps College in California. She named a specific date and offered a graphic description of the encounter in a lengthy statement. Fairfax insists the 2004 sexual encounter in a Boston hotel room was consensual. He claimed that the Washington Post declined to run an article about Tyson’s accusations because of “significant red flags and inconsistencies within the allegations,”; the paper said it did not find inconsistencies but simply could not find evidence to verify or contradict her account. The National Organization for Women called on Fairfax to resign after Tyson came forward, saying, “We always believe and support survivors.” The man who would replace Northam and Fairfax if they both resigned, Virginia attorney general Mark Herring, apologized yesterday for wearing blackface while portraying a rapper as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia in 1980. Herring said on Saturday, in response to Northam’s yearbook photo, “It is no longer possible for Governor Northam to lead our Commonwealth and it is time for him to step down. I have spoken with Lieutenant Governor Fairfax and assured him that, should he ascend to the governorship, he will have my complete support and commitment to ensuring his success and the success of our Commonwealth.” Herring is now in the awkward position of arguing that wearing blackface in medical school demands departure from office but wearing blackface as an undergraduate does not
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