Ralph Northam posed for that photo 35 years ago and let's be honest, people just weren't aware back then how injurious and insulting that would become. These public shamings, where people have a frenzied rush to chew up and spit out the targets of our righteous indignation, serve to push us into our respective corners, and it's further exacerbating the tribalism that is tearing our country apart.
Ralph Northam is a pediatric neurologist and has devoted his adult life to healing children, especially within low-income communities. He was a doctor in the U.S. Army for 8 years and tended to wounded during the Gulf War, men of all colors and creeds. Even after being elected lieutenant governor of Virginia he continued to work as a pediatric neurologist. We know that as governor, he expanded Medicaid to hundreds of thousands of uninsured Virginians, a disproportionate number of whom are minorities. We know he used his position to reinstate voting rights to former felons. We know he has pushed hard to improve the quality of public education, particularly in traditionally African-American communities. We know his pastor is African-American and, although Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax could undoubtedly have been elected with any running mate, we know that it was important to Northam that he be succeeded by an African-American leader. Northam strongly condemned the White Supremacists in Charlottesville.
I think that rather than look at a photo from 1984 and judge any man, not only Northam, based on a moment in their life that they made a bad decision, that we should see the person they are today and judge them by their deeds now rather than those of 35 years ago. If I, even for one second, was convinced that Ralph Northam was in any way a racist, I would put my name on a petition to have him step down immediately. I'm just not convinced that he's a racist at all. I looked at the way he has conducted himself as a physician and as a Governor for Virginia. What I've seen is a man that has done well for Virginia and not only for Whites, but for the Black community as well. Do we really want to see a man forced to pay a heavy price for one bad decision made 35 years ago while erasing the positive changes he's made for the State of Virginia? Will punishing this man for a mistake in judgement made while in college do anything at all to erase racism in this country.
I just don't see racism in Ralph Northam. A racist would have never accomplished so much to benefit the communities he serves that are so racially diverse if he were.