This week, with controversy swirling around the top three Democrats in Virginia, former FBI Director James Comey gave a reminder that he spent most of his career working for Republican Administrations by writing an op-ed claiming that it was clear in the 1980s that blackface was offensive.  Of course, taken to its logical conclusion, this position would mean that two of the top three Democrats should resign for having worn blackface and, since the third currently has a sexual assault scandal, the coincidental effect of Comey’s opinion that everyone knew that blackface was wrong in the 1980s would be placing the Republican Speaker of the House in the Governor’s mansion even though Democrats swept the statewide vote and the Republicans only have the majority in the House due to winning a coin toss to break a tie in one race.  My memory of growing up in the 70s and early 80s in the South is very different from the picture painted by James Comey.

When I was very young, my father’s job made him relocate from his family’s home city to a new city.  For most of the early and mid 70s, we would drive once or twice a year over the partially completed Interstate 10 to visit the grandparents and other relatives.  On the way back home, we would typically stop for breakfast at Sambo’s.  This restaurant chain was actually named after its owners.  However, the restaurant had noticed that Sambo was the main character in a British book written in the late nineteenth century called “My Little Black Sambo.”  This book was your typical British Imperialism book from that era about a Hindu boy and a tiger.  Looked at in hindsight, the book and the restaurant décor was very offensive.  But in the early 70s, Sambo’s was actually very successful and uncontroversial.  That would end by 1980, and the restaurant chain mostly disappeared in the early 80s — either changing the name to another franchise within the same company or going out of business.  It is easy to look back and ask how anybody ever thought that the association of the restaurant with the story was a good idea, but, notwithstanding the fact that I was a voracious reader as a child who was interested in politics and the civil rights movement from a young age, it was not clear to me at the time that we were frequenting this restaurant.

The same is unfortunately true about black face.  While today it is clear that black face (originating from an era when blacks were not allowed in the arts for a variety of reasons meaning that whites would put on black make-up to portray black characters — usually depicted in stereotypical fashion) was wrong for a variety of reasons, this realization came very late.  As a counter to James Comey, I offer the movie “Trading Places” — one of the top comedies of the early 80s (released in 1983).  What does “Trading Places” have to do with the current controversy?  One of the key portions of the movie has our four main character (a WASP stockbroker, the stockbroker’s butler, an African-American petty criminal, and a hooker) boarding a train having a New Year’s party to steal a crop report from a private investigator working for the two villains of the movies (the two brothers who run the brokerage firm).  To hide their identities, our heroes pretend to have different identities.  Jaime Lee Curtis (playing the hooker) dresses up as a slightly ditzy Swedish exchange student; Denholm Elliott (playing the butler) dresses up as a drunk Irish priest; Eddie Murphy (as the petty criminal) dresses up as an African exchange student in traditional tribal clothing; and — significant for this post — Dan Aykroyd playing the stockbroker dresses up in blackface as a Jamaican exchange student.  Needless to say, this scene would never be written that way today.  It is chock full of the worst stereotypes.   Back in the 1980s, however, there was no controversy about this scene, and the movie itself was critically acclaimed receiving a Golden Globe nomination as Best Comedy of the year. 

It is fair to require politicians today to apologize for dumb things that they did decades ago.  But it’s not fair to disqualify people for doing things — particularly as young adults when they were less informed — that were socially acceptable at the time.  In the current controversy, Governor Northam has more to explain — not the appearing in black face on his own — but that the other figure in the yearbook photograph was wearing a KKK outfit.  Whatever one may say about blackface in the early 1980s, the KKK was clearly a controversial organization associated with racism.  At the present time, Governor Northam is denying being in the photograph and further information is needed as to why the yearbook editors put that photograph on the Governor’s page on the yearbook.  

One thing that I do agree with James Comey about — this controversy should be about more than what two dumb twenty-somethings did over twenty-five years ago.  In the criminal justice system, one thing that most judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys agree upon is that people under twenty-five tend to do a lot of stupid things that should not ruin their lives (barring serious violent offenses that pose a danger to the community) and that they should get the opportunity to learn from their mistake.  And there have been notable politicians who took racist positions early in their political career before changing their minds and becoming dedicated supporters of civil rights.  The bigger issue is how does Virginia and the rest of the country move on from this controversy.  There is still a lot of institutionalized racism in this country — monuments to people who fought to oppress African-Americans and schools, parks, and government buildings named after these people.  In my own state, some Republicans have proposed a “Right to Remember” amendment to our state constitution to prevent local governments from dismantling or removing these memorials to racism.  And there is a lot more beyond these celebrations of institutionalized racism that needs to be changed to combat the remaining racism in this country.