How Society Uses Politics to Decide What’s Racist

The reaction to Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s past use of blackface shows how racism gets defined by politics, not morality. Is that a good thing?

Ralph Northam wants you to know that he’s sorry. Sorry for donning blackface thirty-some years ago for a Michael Jackson dance contest. Sorry for the fact his page in a 1984 medical school yearbook includes a photo of someone in blackface standing next to someone in a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood. Sorry about the “hurt that decision caused then and now,” and for not “living up to the expectations Virginians set for me when they elected me to be their Governor.”

Sorry or not, calls for his resignation began even before he released a statement on the matter, with many prominent leaders arguing that Northam has, in the words of Joe Biden, “lost all moral authority,” and can no longer serve effectively as governor.

Northam’s decades-old racist behavior does not inherently suggest he lacks the moral acuity to govern now. If he is to be taken at his word—that he is not racist, ardently supports civil rights and is genuinely horrified by his past attitudes and actions—then his growth and maturation could be seen as evidence of his fitness for office.

This distinction, however, is immaterial because his moral failing in the past is a political liability today.

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