The Moral Atrocity of Blackface (!?)

and the President and Policies You Are Not Allowed to Mention

The last straw for me was Terry McAuliffe.  Here is a man who got his start in Democratic circles by raising millions of dollars from highly self-interested corporate interests around the country for the Clintons and for Democrats in general.  In gratitude to the donors he touted neoliberal policies that, under Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, clause by clause, line by line, bill by bill, shoveled money to the One Percent--so much so there is no money left for health care, for infrastructure, for wind power, public transportation, or for the Other 99 percent.  And he got his political reward:  Governor of Virginia.  Now he is running for President and he wants to secure the Black vote the Clintons seemed always to have locked up.  No brainer:  kick your own Lt. Governor under the bus.  Join the mantra:  Governor Northam must resign!  the moral outrage!

But do you get the feeling there is something missing from this picture?

One thing missing is the 800 lb. gorilla sliced out of television's portrait of Northam.  Trump, of course, is an active racist, performing racist acts as President.  His sin wasn't putting on blackface 35 years ago.  It was the dog whistle of lying about Obama's birthplace, his response to Nazi violence, calling Mexicans "rapists," the atrocity by a sitting US President of separating children from their parents, some, apparently forever, and then deliberately sitting on his hands.  Male chauvinist?   What was it he said on the bus about women and famous men?  But the current rules of television don't permit anyone to point this out.  Yesterday on MSNBC the Rev. Al Sharpton (who lately seems to have has lost the silent "g" and "u" and "e" at the end of his surname that made me want to listen to him long ago) spent an hour bashing Northam without once mentioning the racist at the top.

When was the last time you heard Terry McAuliffe or Al Sharpton, or any other prominent Democrat currently calling for Northam to resign, insist, as a matter of moral principle, that Trump should resign?

The underlying question here is why it is a strict rule on television that a commentator cannot contrast the blackface of Northam or the alleged sexual misconduct of Al Franken, against the much more brazen and truly harmful racist actions of our President?  And why do guests go along with the prohibition?  If a picture of Northam in blackface in a yearbook 35 years ago is so morally outrageous that you must openly call for his resignation, what might your moral obligations be to act in responding to Trump's racism and the children who will never see their parents?  Why won't Jake Tapper or George Stephanopoulos ask this obvious question?

The other thing that is missing is an awareness of the difference between symbolism and real-life action.  This, perhaps, is even more troubling than the missing contextual contrast between Northam and Trump.  The Democratic Party has in the past 30 years gotten very adept at feeling black pain, or the pain of any mass injustice, while doing nothing about it.  This feels like one of those moments.

If Democratic Party leadership seems to be saying, "spend your energy ousting someone who 35 years ago had a picture taken that seems insensitive today," isn't the corollary that you need not spend your time forcing raises in minimum wages and reversing the growing tide of restrictive voting laws and police shootings that truly hurt Black lives?  Democrats have gotten away with this for a long time.  Time to put the sins of Al Franken and Ralph Northam firmly in the context of the very real, not symbolic, atrocities in American politics today.  Don't tell me who should resign.  Tell me what are you, Mr. or Ms. Democrat, going to do about the racially biased ills and non-racially biased ills that afflict this country?