From the article:

The Klan existed. No person of color looks like those gross caricatures.

And the purpose of the caricatures is to dehumanize black people.

After all, if multiple people were wearing blackface in that yearbook there must have been something going on in society to make them believe it wouldn't be as objectionable as the norm. It would be interesting to check 1984 yearbooks in general, or from the same region. I have to say I'm struggling to come up with anything. Normally I can recall situational influence but 1984 is sort of a blur because I was out of college and new to Las Vegas, and obviously that was a wild change. I was not following politics at all because Reagan was that incumbent whose party had been in power only one term. I understood that scenario would not fail twice consecutively.

I imagine that young right wingers were quite emboldened during 1984, and particularly once it was obvious Reagan would succeed, similar to aftermath of 2016.

I remember that Thriller was massive when I first moved to Las Vegas in spring 1984 to bet the USFL. Several late night casino lounge acts were doing tributes/spinoffs of Michael Jackson and Thriller. I sat there and watched them, but mostly to get a feel of my new town and not necessarily the content.

I tried Googling for perspective but everything is swamped with Northam stuff. One tidbit I did find is that 1984 was supposed to be "International Anti-Racism Year." But it seemed to be British based, not well known, and kind of a flop.

This was probably the most interesting link I found. PBS ran a 1984 documentary called, "Power and Prejudice in America," examining southern blacks who organized toward gaining political power. But the best quote in that article doesn't explain Ralph Northam as much as possibly describing what happened to Andrew Gillum:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1984/06/25/power-and-prejudice-racism-at-work/08c54030-a040-4434-8b1f-aed9443dd5ff/?utm_term=.de2d2ee4a69a

"By then, pollster Patrick Caddell and the late Chicago Tribune columnist Leanita McClain have talked about the racial divisiveness that figured in the election of Chicago's mayor, Harold Washington.

"Closer to the election, whites who are even not racists become nervous over the power change and end up voting for the white candidate," Caddell says.

It's a quick and interesting read.

from my birth to 1962. In about 1960 the local American Legion Post put on a Minstrel Show at the local high school. It was all in good fun. Keep in mind that there was exactly one African American family in that town at the time, and I have no idea if they attended or what they might have thought.

I don't recall a lot of details of the show, but remember that it included a lot of jokes and routines that were certainly very racist. At the time I thought it was okay, but I was only about 12 or so, so what did I know? Even a few years later I found the memory of it to be quite uncomfortable.

I seem to recall that a year or so later there was discussion about doing a second minstrel show, but it never happened.

My point is, that a good two decades before this yearbook photo, at least some of us understood that this kind of thing was unacceptable.