I don't think it became something to be condemned until maybe 2000. It doesn't seem like it's been that long to me since it's gone out of fashion. I may be wrong.

It seems we do accept tRump. At least Republicans do. I don't see why we need to eat our own. At least he apologized. tRump or Kavanaugh never even admitted they did anything wrong and never apologized. They just like grabbing and beer....

I'm 58 and I knew that blackface and KKK robes were racist and would have considered people dressing up in them to be racists, even in 1984. Just because it was 35 years ago does not make it any less offensive.

In the south it wasn't

Even back in the '70's, there were white Southern progressives like my mother. I learned pretty quickly that racism, segregationism, blackface, and all that, were repellent and not to be tolerated.

I'm only two generations removed from the Klan. Not everybody thinks their filthy concept of 'heritage' is something to be revered and passed on.

I didn't know much about racism until I moved down south because the town I grew up in was all white. It was something I never thought about. I'd heard the words, but never experienced or used them. I only learned about racism when I was warned by my white coworkers that I was being too friendly with the black workers because this one older black man had taken me under his wing and would tell me stories of how bad it was before integration and how they had just recently been allowed to use the same rest rooms and drinking fountains.

I guess I'll just stay out of it...

for photos she had done in the past with another woman, which the pageant and much of the public deemed pornographic and disgusting.

She survived to have a fine career due to the content of her character and her persistence. In doing so she became a role model for a whole younger generation who insist upon their right to compete in life and not allow themselves to be sidelined by revelations about their past actions.

We are living in 2019 not 1984. What one does in real time should carry significant weight.

I personally believe in redemption otherwise I would have to support consigning myself and just about everyone I know and love to some christian fundamentalist hell.

And it was taken away (she resigned but it would have been taken if she had not) around June - July of 1984 (she is a distant cousin). Also, I am in my late 50s and no, blackface was reviled then just as it is now. KKK hoods were reviled then. I grew up in the upper Midwest and visited the South a bit. Blackface was verboten then, heavens even a little more than now. At that time we did not yet have Republicans yelling on and on about hating political correctness (that came in 1990).

and think she is a person who has made an important contribution to our culture.

...generations of nudies struggling for the right to work, house themselves, gain employment, achieve social justice.

...I was a young manager at the time, and was finding my political feet through Jackson's campaign. I was enmeshed in civil rights and black history. Open expressions of racism were not in fashion in that era.

Issues of race were very prominent at the time. Just putting this side by side with who I was back then and what I aspired to, I have to seriously wonder how someone can come from such a racist place and emerge years later as an accepted Democratic leader.

Is there no accounting for the value of those of us who refrained from racist expressions? It's as if defenders are protecting something of value to them in insisting he's 'grown' past his young adulthood. That only makes sense outside of the office of governor. I don't know why that's so hard to understand. What are defenders trying to preserve here?

He's now a fatally flawed executive. A lot of people in the black community object to his continuing in office. Pushing past their objections would be the ultimate indignity.

It's a beautiful, well-preserved historic town with the ghosts of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee looming large. While I grew up in a diverse DC suburb and can't in a million years imagine dressing up in blackface or as a klansman, I don't find it hard to imagine that a kid from rural Virginia, growing up in a Republican household (?), and indoctrinated at VMI would do so. This is not an excuse for Northam's behavior -- I just think there are a lot of variables. And while 1984 wasn't 1964, it was the age of Ronnie Raygun, Thatcher, AIDs, Bernhard Goetz, etc...

For what it is worth.

He was not a child and he was not a Democrat.

I still think upbringing and environment play major roles, so I'm not jumping on the castigate bandwagon. I don't understand how anyone could be "apolitical" and "underinformed" through the Dubya years, though, but I guess it drove him to the "D" behind his name. He's good on many issues but it's doubtful he'll survive this.

eom

His racist welfare queen tropes were BELIEVED far and wide at the time - I have the old Time and Newsweek mags as proof. The only people accurately placing them as racist myths in 1984 (out loud and in public) were Black. Many more people came around to admitting his racist tendencies in the late 1990s and early 2000s (before he became a saint).

I heard a pundit last night say "Dukes of Hazzard was a popular show at the time..." I was a young adult in 1984 and I didn't think the confederate flag objectionable as say, blackface THEN. It was just something people descended from slaves (like me) had to "put up with." It was the same with the confederate statues - disgusting to me, but "what were you going to do?" That was the thinking at the time because so many people in the majority found nothing wrong with paying homage to the confederate nation.

I am sure some people wore blackface and ridiculed Blacks in 1984 but where were they? I am sure it was in small white towns or in small, all white clubs, organizations, etc. How many black people were in Northam's medical school? How many black people were in his circle of friends? I was raised principally around white people and by 1984 blackface was not done - not at all in polite society. If it happened, it was in hidden environments because people knew it was incendiary and racist.

As for the movie Soul Man, yes, it was protested among Blacks in politics at the time. But, the movie was not him ridiculing Black people (like Al Jolson did in the past and like Northam's depiction which is the real purpose of blackface) it was the star pretending to be Black (being undercover, if you will) because he got into college due to lying on his application that he was Black. That was the explanation from the producers of the movie at the time.

Was trying to hustle since all his money was taken away. Trying to actually look like a Rastafarian seemed like a good way to make money. He was not trying to DERIDE BLACK PEOPLE - like Northam’s depiction. It is objectionable, but is not the same. Heavens, the movie is still relevant today.

That movie would not be produced now (not for the Rastafarian bit, but for the n words from Eddie Murphy) and we are better for it. But it is pointless to bring up movies (that were protested at the time) and say “see, it was acceptable...”. Some Black people protested it even though Eddie Murphy starred in it.

You didn’t don Blackface in polite (that means a society of white and black) society in 1984 unless you were a bigot who wanted to incite. For actual Blackface, see Mad Men - google Mad Men and blackface. This was to deride Black people.