And if I ever dressed like that at age 25, I would remember!

It was Halloween and he was dressed as ....I don't remember. It was an actual handgun.

1985.

I still don't get the connection. But okay. Whatever.

from the Democrats being the party of George Wallace and the Republicans being the party of Lincoln had been underway for nearly 20 years by then.

I know a lot of people are too young to remember that far back, but it wasn't ancient history.

We really, really need to improve our educational system, I think.

in 1984 I knew blackface was a bad idea. Donning a Klan hood would have been unthinkable, and I lived in one of the few places in California that actually still had a Klan presence.

But we were all aware of racism. It was unavoidable. Northam knew about it, too, even in Virginia. No question about it. He knew the Klan was a racist terrorist organization. That knowledge was inescapable. And he was 24 years old and in medical school. He wasn't some bumpkin living on a dirt road.

By 1984, being a racist was a voluntary act.

He also voted for George W. Bush. Twice. He's not a lifelong Democrat. In fact, I'm not sure what he is, exactly.

were going to run against him. Some people understood that racism and bigotry were unacceptable but, not all, e.g., Reagan:

REAGAN AND BLACKS; News Analysis

By HOWELL RAINES and SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES SEPT. 17, 1982

By denouncing Great Society programs of the Johnson Administration in a speech to a black audience, President Reagan provided fresh ammunition for critics who say he is trying to reverse the racial progress of the last 20 years.

The President's speech Wednesday night to a convention of the National Black Republican Council has also fueled anew the partisan debate over Mr. Reagan's personal sensitivity to blacks and his understanding of black history.

That debate gained force today because of the intensely negative Democratic reaction to the President's speech and because the speech coincided with a series of meetings in Washington this week by black groups that are sharply divided on the question of Mr. Reagan's racial attitudes.

Robert Neuman, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, predicted that the President's speech would drive his poll standing with blacks still lower and would provide an opportunity for effective attack on Mr. Reagan. ''We're going to capitalize on that,'' he said. ''We're galvanizing reaction.''

G.O.P. Cleavage Disclosed

Glossed over in the exchange of accusations was the fact that Mr. Reagan's appearance at the black Republicans' convention disclosed a cleavage between the White House political strategy for the fall elections and the Republican Party's official position on black recruitment.

Officially, the Republican National Committee is committed to using the Black Republican Council, which has 10,000 members, to recruit more black party members. But White House strategists believe there is little Mr. Reagan can do to win more black voters for the party between now and the elections in November.

more
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/09/17/us/reagan-and-blacks-news-analysis.html

-------------------------------------

And there's this:

Remembering Reagan’s Record on Civil Rights and the South African Freedom Struggle

To Ronald Reagan, the apartheid regime in South Africa was a valuable cold war ally.

By Pedro Noguera and Robert Cohen FEBRUARY 11, 2011

Sentimental 100th birthday tributes to Ronald Reagan rolling out this month would have us believe that the “Great Communicator” led America into a bright conservative era of prosperity, ended the cold war by getting tough with the Soviets and restored America’s confidence by flexing its military muscles abroad and reining in the welfare state at home.

But in addition to overlooking the dramatic increase in homelessness that occurred on Reagan’s watch, never mind the covert counter-revolutionary operations in Central America, promoters of Reagan nostalgia consistently ignore his record on race, civil rights, and South Africa. There, Reagan’s legacy is abysmal.

Early in his political career Reagan opposed every major piece of civil rights legislation adopted by Congress, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. And even if one tries to explain away this opposition on the grounds that it came early in the history of the civil rights movement or was motivated by a misplaced reluctance to empower the federal government, Reagan’s civil rights record during his presidency is tough to justify. As President, Reagan supported tax breaks for schools that discriminated on the basis of race, opposed the extension of the Voting Rights Act, vetoed the Civil Rights Restoration Act and decimated the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). When you combine Reagan’s political record with his symbolic stance on race issues—his deriding welfare recipients as “welfare queens,” his employing “states rights” rhetoric in the same county where in 1964 three of the most infamous murders of civil rights workers occurred, his initial opposition to establish a national holiday to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.—the Reagan legacy begins to lose much of its luster.

The part of the Reagan record that most impacted our generation of student activists during the 1980s was his refusal to support sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Evoking memories of America’s own Jim Crow past, images of South Africa’s police and military assaulting black civil rights activists sparked outrage on American campuses. Because American companies supplied vehicles and other technology used for these brutal attacks, students throughout the country called for the universities they attended to divest from companies that held investments in South Africa and helped to prop up the regime.

more
https://www.thenation.com/article/remembering-reagans-record-civil-rights-and-south-african-freedom-struggle/

the US to divest from South Africa; 'uppity' gays wanting equality (marriage wasn't even considered back then). The religious right (Jerry Falwell, etc.) were flexing their muscles in every way possible. This country wasn't all roses and pretty scents in the air. We perform a huge disservice by trying to paint the 80's as some pleasant time when we all sat down for tea together.

I'm so glad you think "DEMOCRATS knew racism was wrong then" but, I think you need to do some serious reading of what was going on in the '80s instead of holding on to your idealized versions of that time.

rural areas of VA it still exists and rears its ugly head in almost every election, on the GOP side of the fence, of course.

And please, do not construe what I am saying about the '80s as a defense of Northam because it is not. Rather, it's a reminder that even today we're still battling for equality across the board just like we were back then.

The culture of a Presidency permeates the entire culture of a nation. How many times a week is there a discussion on DU, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, NPR, etc, etc discussing how our citizens are becoming dulled and immune to the outrageous lunacy of Trump and his brigade of flying monkeys?

School's yearbook? Were only dummies in charge of editing and publishing the yearbook? Did they have a faculty adviser to the yearbook staff? If so, how did that adviser allow the pictures to be published?

He and they were too intelligent to be able to plead ignorance. So what is left is racist.

said you have an idealized vision of what life was like in the '80s.

lollipops and roses.

In 1984 and '85, here's what I was involved with

http://www.wbur.org/news/2015/06/30/gay-boston-men-foster-parents

http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/06/17/how-same-sex-couples-got-right-adopt-massachusetts/ulOm76fNVLApennqpzrVsI/story.html#comments

And before that, I was the chief of staff to the Commonwealth's only black State Senator. In 1985 I was the Senior Investigator for the City's Fair Housing Commission. In 1991 to '94 I oversaw the desegregation of public housing in the City. Have any other clever little insults you want to throw at me?

But here's the finale, our conversation is over

must have come from hanging out with my gay father and his black partner.

I refuse to make any excuses for Ralph Northam based on the times back then. It was 1984, not 1934, and he's acknowledged now wearing black face to do Michael Jackson that same year.

Some simply refused to acknowledge the fact. Some still refuse.

He praised 'states rights'. Everyone knew what he meant--it was code for 'MS can do what it wants to blacks.'

Not to mention Tropic Thunder in 2008.

The joke was that the character was an idiot, not that it was a white guy pretending to be a black guy.

At least that is certainly what some people found to be funny.

quite mercilessly.

it can be appropriate and artistically effective. Tropic Thunder demonstrates this.

Had a white woman in black makeup and dressed as a man, and the black man in white makeup dressed as a woman.

It was dicey, but it worked. I'm not sure how it's aged though.

There was a sit-in at the Alexandria library in 1939 and similar sit-ins in Chicago 1942, in St Louis in 1949, and in Durham in 1957

A. Philip Randolph's original proposal for a March on Washington was in 1941

Rosa Parks famous bus-seat incident was in 1955, but Pauli Murray was arrested for a Rosa-Parks-style bus-seat incident in 1940

The 1944 arrest of Irene Morgan on an interstate bus produced a 1946 SCOTUS ruling, outlawing segregation in interstate transport. The 1947 Journey of Reconciliation was an effort to encourage enforcement of that ruling

Brown v Topeka was decided in 1954

I didn't become aware of it until the early 60s. In any case, 1984 was long after everyone was aware.

would never have partied like that.

and we've come a long way since then.

Northam's thing is bad...to be sure...but there was a LOT more open racism than we tolerate today.

When I saw the story, I thought it happened way back in the 1930's. Still no excuse whatsoever, but 1984? Jesus. I remember 1984. Racists had to hide their racism in most parts of the US or get called out. The guy needs to resign or be ejected from the Democratic Party. I can't even imagine anyone wearing blackface or a hood in 1984 (or at all, really), then daring to run for office, but here we are.

Also, this stinks like a right wing smear, but damn, if you ever wore blackface, then it's likely karma coming to bite you in the ass. I'd like to see the right wing assholes who are calling Northam out reflect upon their own racism. I'd like to meet a single conservative who isn't racist at least once in my life. They have no room for outrage here until they clean their own house. We certainly clean ours.

A white guy and in the south. No one I know would do that.

Prejudice is hard to get rid of.

I think some are better at hiding it

Archie Bunker's Place went off the air in 1983 and he'd lost his more bigoted attitudes (and much of his audience)

...I assumed it was from the '20s or '30s.

When I found out it was taken in 1984, I immediately and correctly identified him as a racist piece of shit.

In 1984 I was 23. The future Governor of Virginia was 25.

When he and I were little kids in the 1960s, Al Jolson's black face routine had been unacceptable for decades.

This is not a "that's how it was back then" situation.

workplaces were both racist and misogynist at that time

Not just in the south but also the midwest, the west and quite frankly even the northeast.
And that was in workplaces and I was a professional.

It wasn't blackface and n-words and b-tch in the work places.
But there were plenty of euphemisms, side-eye and gestures.

If it makes a difference, I was working with 90% men....so maybe you want to call it locker room talk. But the US was not a beacon of civil rights in the 1980s.

.... this shit was totally fucked bulllshit in 1984. David duke shit.

And had total control what appeared on my yearbook page under my name. My father had passed away in the previous year, unexpectedly, and I was in a daze. I put up a score of Richard Strauss's Don Juan, and some other stuff, while a classmate picked out some quotes for me.

I went off to the George Washington University, that classmate who helped me out with the yearbook page quotes went off to Tufts. He later founded a small pez-dispenser trading web site now called eBay... (Yes, it was Pierre Omidyar, and he was a great guy to hang out with, I considered him a friend, we were the only two foreigners in the class)

The point is that I remember the time very clearly, and cared what was on my yearbook page. I don't know how anyone in their right mind would have allowed themselves to be identified on a yearbook page with that photo...

I can say that maybe he's a wonderful human who just made a bad mistake, but I can't say he would be a good leader. That photograph was bad enough to break the trust of many people, including me.

Even though it was 40 years ago, that insensitive action means to me he can't relate at all to POC and possibly anyone who doesn't fit into his world or demographic.

He was in the Navy in WWII, and served with men of all races. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in a pretty heavily Italian area, but it wasn't isolated from people of other races. He'd regularly encounter people of all races in daily life - at the store, on the subway, on the bus, etc.

If you would've asked my dad about, for example, African Americans, he would say he had no issues with them or anyone else, live and let live, that sort of thing. I never saw him treat any person, of any race, with disrespect, or in a biased way. But, if he had some reason to get angry or pissed off about someone, anyone, he'd go right to the racial / ethnic slur without batting an eye. It made me cringe every time. I tried a few times to tell him what he was saying was prejudiced/racist, but he would say, "no, its not, I'm not a racist."

Your statement "People understood that racism and bigotry was unacceptable, even if they personally were still racists and bigots." reminded me of his cognitive dissonance. Yet, even though my dad was never in politics, if he would have been, I would never believe that he would let race affect his decisions in office. He just wasn't that kind of person, despite his open prejudices.

I guess without actually knowing Gov Northam I don't know if he is more like my dad, or really espouses hateful, racist feelings. This is why I think there needs to be more than just the picture. I went to his wiki page, and he has a lot of positive political positions I agree with: supports abortion rights, thinks confederate statues should be removed, tried to raise the felony theft threshold, opposes the death penalty, opposed right to work laws and tried to get the min. wage to $15, opposes private schools and wants community college to be free, accepts climate change, improved family leave, favors the reinstatement of gun control measures, supports the ACA, opposed Trump's recinding of DACA, favors decriminalizing pot, and supports redistricting to remove gerrymandering.

I realize that's just a wiki page, but I don't have much else to go on, as I don't live in Va. and can't spend hours researching the guy. If you ask me to measure up the photo vs. his positions and actual record, I am not seeing enough justification to ask him to resign. To me, even if I paint the photo in the absolute worst possible light (raging closet racist at the time), its hard for me to say he is currently that man, based on his positions and actions in office thus far. I did see the campaign flyer with and without Justin Fairfax, but I have personally worked on people's campaigns, and I have never, ever seen the politician themselves using Photoshop to create flyers - that is, literally, someone else's job. And while you can say "but he has to approve them!" in real life, that's just not factually true. I saw a lot of campaign material with the "Approved by so-and-so" which so-and-so never saw before it was released. It just happens.

What I also feel (and I admit this is more of a feeling than something based on facts), I don't want any more repeats of Al Franken. I am not saying this is exactly like Franken's case. But, if you boil it down, its "concluding something about a man, based on a photo, and a lot of commentary from others". I am a skeptic. I need more than this photo before I will call for his resignation or presume to judge him. Personally, I'd like to hear from Justin Fairfax on this, although I can understand him keeping himself far away from this controversy.

Way more than now, in fact. Even the Republicans would not approve something like that photo.

The whining about PC only came with Rush Limbaugh, who did not come to prominence until the 90s.

I do not care who this guy is or how old he is or was then or when it was this is never right. NEVER. Anyone old enough to be in medical school at that time should have known better.

It is creeping me out to see so many people talking about equality issues and excusing those we think are on our side. Nobody who does this about any race, LGBTQ folks, women or anyone are NOT our friends. It feels like the other side. I remember discussions here about the other side doing this and how disgusting this was. My only hope is that we are overun with trolls or this party is ceasing to mean much.

I was 31 in 1984. The very thought of someone doing this by then was disgust. Women and LGBTQ were still fair game then but blackface was not something anyone with any sense or caring ever did.

The lengths people are going to here to downplay this is illuminating, to say the least.

The Vietnam War was already history in 1984. I was almost 40 years old in 1984.

It WAS history in 1984.

I knew that the picture I've seen was wrong then. Would I have participated in such behavior if I'd been in a group situation where such things were going on? Possibly but I doubt it and hope that I wouldn't have and would have for sure known it was wrong at the time. He apologized for that picture yesterday. Then today he claims it wasn't him in the picture. Who apologizes for a picture they apparently haven't even seen unless there is more behavior out there to corroborate the behavior in the picture?
He needs to go.