I was plenty stupid when I was young, but Ralph Northam was a special kind of stupid.

The record states that I graduated from Floyd Central High School in 1978. Of the 1,300 or so students in the top four grades at the time, perhaps a half-dozen were African-American and Latino -- and I might well be exaggerating.

It is a dead certainty that far more of my contemporaries were aware of Stonewall Jackson than the Stonewall riots, because LGBTQ was neither an acronym of record back then nor a component of the curriculum.

It simply cannot be overstated: Diversity was not a default condition in the locale of my upbringing. 

At the same time, I count myself fortunate to have been raised by parents who displayed few outward manifestations of prejudice or intolerance. My mother began her studies at the University of Kentucky during the period of its integration. My father's philosophy of life revolved around working hard, doing your duty and being honest. He seemed generally colorblind according to limited criteria, although I suspect he made exceptions. Some of his friends sure did.

Ever since the Ralph Northam scandal broke, I've been trying to recollect whether anyone ever "did" blackface during my time at FCHS. It seems likely in the context of the time, and yet I can't remember any instances of it. I cannot recall feeling the urge to do so myself. Extending the perimeter of shaky memory to four years at IU Southeast, did blackface occur? I don't think so, at least in my immediate vicinity. My group at the time was capable of incredible feats of obnoxiousness, and we desperately wanted to BE the Deltas in Animal House, but minstrelsy (see below) wasn't a part of it.

Be aware that these ruminations aren't to be regarded as backslapping, and I'm making no claims to perfection. We all have a long, long way to go, and as an individual, all I can do with any degree of certainty is improve myself, and to be a positive influencer when the opportunity presents itself.

It's more like an immense sigh of relief that amid my many transgressions and personal issues over the years -- these are numerous and distress me greatly -- at least I was never as terminally stupid as some guy who was otherwise smart enough to be a damn doctor.

There Is No Argument for Ralph Northam to Keep His Job, by Elie Mystal (The Nation)

I’m pissed off that I have to write about soon-to-be-former Virginia governor, Ralph Northam. It’s 2019 and I have actual work to do. There’s no way I should have to stop what I’m doing to join the “national conversation” about why dressing up in blackface disqualifies you from a leadership position in society. They don’t make astrophysicists pause their search for a unified theory of gravity to convince an idiot cat to come down from a tree. The emotional labor this society puts on black people is exhausting. Nobody should have to waste time explaining why Doctor Blackface can’t have his career anymore, and black people shouldn’t be charged with administering the final dose of morphine to put Northam out of his misery.

This is a killer paragraph at The Economist.

Mr Northam has so far resisted calls for his resignation, which have come from every major Democratic presidential candidate, both of Virginia’s senators, its Democratic congressional delegation, the Virginia Democratic Party, the state’s Legislative Black Caucus and its chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). Nancy Pelosi, Douglas Wilder (Virginia’s only African-American governor, who served from 1990 to 1994), his own attorney-general and Terry McAuliffe, his predecessor, have also called for Mr Northam to step down. Waiting in the wings, meanwhile, is Justin Fairfax, the state’s 39-year-old African-American lieutenant-governor. Mr Fairfax has sensibly remained quiet, neither calling for Mr Northam’s resignation nor offering any public statements of support.

A working knowledge of minstrelsy is helpful to understanding the idiocy of blackface. Like other aspects of history's usefulness in navigating the present, it helps to actually pay attention to the homework assignment.

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History of Minstrelsy (University of South Florida) 

This exhibit explores the history of minstrelsy, its significance in American history and theater, and its enduring legacy. Utilizing materials from the USF Tampa Library's Special Collections African American Sheet Music Collection, it is possible to trace the history of blackface minstrelsy from its obscure origins in the 1830s to Hollywood jazz superstardom in the 1920s.

Minstrelsy in America, for all of its frivolous humor and popularity, was an exploitative form of musical theater that exaggerated real-life black circumstances and reinforced dangerous stereotypes during the 19th and 20th centuries. The fact that blackface minstrelsy began in the antebellum period and endured throughout Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Great Migration, with performers collecting and adding cultural aspects from each era to their performances, hints at the impact, popularity, and complexity of the minstrel show.

White supremacy and the belief in black inferiority remained at minstrelsy’s base even though the structure of the performances and subjects discussed in the music varied over time. The genre shaped the nation’s views on race for over a century and reinforced white superiority well after the abolition of slavery. While some today assume that minstrelsy’s blackface has roots in the American South because of the genre’s focus on black degradation and slavery, minstrelsy was born and evolved initially in the North.

For the majority of whites living in the pre-Civil War North, slavery and black people were a distant reality, one that evoked mixed emotions. If slavery was the commodification of black labor, minstrelsy, with its focus on presenting authentically black songs and dances, was the commodification of black culture. However, the depictions of blacks in minstrel performances were exaggerated, dehumanizing and inaccurate. Instead of representing black culture on stage, blackface minstrel performers reflected and reinforced white supremacy.

After emancipation in 1865, African American performers, seeing minstrelsy as an opportunity for advancement, contributed a humanizing element to their portrayal of blacks even though they also performed in blackface. Black performers during the Jim Crow era combined blackface with the newly popular genre of vaudeville and brought a black political agenda to their stage performances. During the 1930s, minstrelsy lost its widespread popularity to jazz but could still be seen in aspects of American society such as film. The popular film The Jazz Singer (1927) was about a white man wanting to become a blackface performer and featured Al Jolson, the most well-known performer of the decade. At the time, the film was the biggest earner in Warner Bros., and its success indicated that the age of minstrelsy in American history was far from over. Even in the twenty-first century, the racial stereotypes derived from minstrel shows can still be seen in popular culture.