What Do We Do with the “Ralph Northams” of American Politics?
Much of Virginia’s top political leadership, both Democrat and Republican, has been castigated due to revelations of racist costumes and mockery during their college years. Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, acknowledged his connection to a 1984 medical school yearbook photo that showed one man in blackface and another in a KKK hood. Also criticized for racist acts have been the Democratic Attorney General and the Republican Senate Majority Leader.
The now-ritualized response consists of quick condemnation by political foes (and often friends), words of apology, calls for resignation, and, in some cases, stepping down. It’s important to ask if this ritual is actually helpful. Does it provide healing and racial progress or just catharsis? To answer this involves asking two other questions: What constitutes a sincere apology? When is forgiveness appropriate?
In The Sunflower, his self-examination of forgiveness, famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal ruminated on these questions. As a concentration camp prisoner, he was taken to a dying SS soldier who wanted forgiveness for herding Jews into a building and burning them to death. Wiesenthal would not give it. In the book, he asks himself (and a wide range of contemporary ethicists, writers, psychiatrists, and religious leaders) whether he acted correctly. There was no consensus on this troubling question. His conclusion was that he could not accept the apology and forgive the soldier because that must come from those wronged. Only they had the power to forgive.
This standard is worth considering in Northam’s case and similar situations that will undoubtedly come to light. Many politicians (and others) have histories not unlike Northam’s. His case will not be the last.
While the specific individuals harmed by his racism may be impossible to identify, Northam has now spoken personally with many in the African American community to express regret. He has begun examining his values and actions in an effort to learn. He has committed himself and his administration to a thorough review of Virginia’s policies and practices to look for evidence of persistent discrimination and ways to remove it. His initial statement that "I am asking for the opportunity to earn your forgiveness” was a pledge but not a program, but there is evidence that he is acting on it.
If his efforts to apologize and provide some measure of restorative justice prove to be sincere, a test that only time will reveal, it will be up to the African American community to decide if he should be forgiven. Every member of that community in Virginia and beyond will have their own answer.
This “Northam Test” should be put in the context of two other considerations. First, the standard for forgiveness should fit the offense. Northam’s actions were shameful but not criminal. Calls for him to step down seem excessive. His actions were committed decades ago and nothing has surfaced to suggest that he has been guilty of racist or other acts of maladministration as governor. Impeachment or its equivalent (being forced from office) should be related to serious violations of his oath of office. Barring that, his past mistakes should not lead to vitiating the decision of the voters who elected him.
Second, Northam has pledged to learn and improve. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that the unearned suffering of African Americans under segregation was redemptive. It would, he suggested, instill sufficient guilt and shame in white Americans to lead them to change. Northam is a current test of this notion.
We have no less a man than Abraham Lincoln to see the potential for learning that we should look for in Northam. Upon his ascension to the presidency, Lincoln was a member of the American Colonization Society, whose purpose was to remove freed blacks from the United States because a multi-racial society was seen as undesirable and impossible. By the time of his Second Inaugural, Lincoln accepted not just citizenship for blacks but their integration into American society and the beginning of extending them the franchise. Lincoln had spent the Civil War asking himself what the carnage was telling him, and his changed views on race were part of the answer. Had we assessed him as a racist and demanded he not even run for president, the long arc of racial justice would have never received his historic help.
As a nation, America has never come to grips with the slavery that stained its founding, perpetuated itself with the Constitution’s help until the end of the Civil War, and then emerged in different but devastating clothing in the garb of segregation. America, unlike South Africa, has had no “Truth and Reconciliation” process during which its racist history could be brought into the sunlight and atonement considered. Every “Ralph Northam” thus just appears as another surprise in a nation that can only be surprised because it has not fully acknowledged its past.
Ralph Northam has given us, perhaps, a means to move forward toward the twin demands of justice and healing. We will soon see if he is up to the task.
Photo Credit: Mike Beaty
