‘What will we tell them that we did in regard to standing up for white supremacy?’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam desperately clings to his seat of power despite evidence of a racist past, his allies on the Left have now taken a bifurcated approach in shirking their moral obligation to hold him accountable.
On one hand, black activists in the state this week delivered a list of demands necessary for “reconciliation” in order to support to the embattled governor. With three years remaining in his term, Northam already has promised a dramatic departure from the “moderate” platform he ran on.
Meanwhile, sympathizers in the media—who earlier tried to deflect by falsely accusing the state’s Republican senate majority leader of racism in his 1968 yearbook—struck out on a new tactic of trying to normalize and downplay the allegations against Northam.
Radical Demands
On Wednesday, a group called the Virginia Black Politicos protested in front of the governor’s mansion in Richmond. Although they claimed to be calling for his resignation, they instead delivered an ultimatum, outlining their list of demands if Northam refused to leave, as he has indicated he will.
Among the conditional requirements for allowing Northam to stay:
- The removal of all Confederate statues and memorials from public spaces
- The creation of an Office of Equity and Inclusion
- The decriminalization of marijuana
- A racial hiring quota of 25 percent people of color
- Preferential budgeting treatment for the states five historically black universities, including a guaranteed $5 million for each
Not satisfied with addressing items that related directly to issues of racism, the group claimed also to have allied itself with other radical leftist organizations who tacked on their own agenda items:
- Establish a renewable energy agency
- Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (note: this is coded language for a push to constitutionally codify many feminist causes—including abortion—and LGBT issues, protecting them from any Supreme Court challenges)
- Use executive power to implement mass clemency, with an emphasis on incarcerated blacks
- Eliminate funding for “budget measures that increase harm to youth of color,” such as school resource officers
- Undermine federal immigration enforcement and use state budget to grant illegal immigrants access to funding for litigation purposes
Already the governor has signaled his effort to comply with some of these. He reportedly was assigned by his advisors to read works of black liberation literature, including Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations.”
He also issued a statement this week touting the fact that he—following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Terry McAuliffe—had granted voting rights already to more than 10,000 convicted felons.
Although many of the conditions seemed unachievable for Northam, who even before his leadership crisis was obliged to work with a slight Republican majority in the state legislature, the extortion of the governor—demanding substantial policy and budgetary concessions to forgive his personal deficiencies—underscored the conflicts of interest and the political turmoil that will enmesh him moving forward.
Echoes of Charlottesville
The group making the demands on Northam was led by Charlottesville City Councilor Wes Bellamy.
Bellamy also was at the center of the storm in the buildup to the tragic protests in the city a year and a half ago, after he led the push to remove statues honoring Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson from two city parks.
“What will we tell them that we did in regard to standing up for white supremacy?” he said during Wednesday’s protest at the governor’s mansion. “What will we tell them and their colleagues and their pupils in school that we did in the year 2019 when our governor decided to make fun of our people?”
Bellamy is no stranger to scandal himself; he was forced to resign from a teaching position when it was revealed he had made anti-white, homophobic and misogynist statements on Twitter, but he nonetheless kept his job as the city’s vice mayor.
Among those calling on Bellamy to resign his position with the city was Jason Kessler, eventual organizer of the “Unite the Right” rally, who addressed the council in December 2016, eight months before the rally.
Although there was little demand for removing the Confederate statues, even in the uber-liberal college town, and while going against the recommendation of a blue-ribbon committee tasked with studying the cost for removal, Bellamy prevailed in February 2017 with a 3-2 vote from the all-Democrat city council to remove the two statues and rename their respective parks.
Objectors justifiably wanted their voices to be heard, questioning among other things the city’s authority to remove the statues, but Bellamy blatantly disrespected them, even giving a black power salute while one citizen spoke during a public comment period.
As backlash against the removal drew the attention of more demonstrators, prompting Kessler to organize the “Unite the Right” rally, Bellamy responded by attempting to revoke its permit to assemble.
When the courts reinstated the group’s permit, Bellamy continued to foment tensions by making inflammatory comments. And on the day of the fateful rally, as police attempted to disperse the protests by declaring an unlawful assembly, Bellamy intervened, telling the police to back off and allow the violent clashes to continue.
Party Politics vs. Principle
Eighteen months after Charlottesville was thrust into the national spotlight—and contorted by opponents of President Donald Trump into evidence of racism due to his condemnation of violence on both sides of the dispute—it seems actual evidence of racism has become much less of an issue for the current Virginia governor.
While most national Democratic leaders unequivocally called for Northam’s resignation in the immediate aftermath, few seem to have pressed the matter beyond their public statements, making it increasingly clear that party politics outweigh principle.
Likewise, the national media, ignoring the fact that Northam’s page featured a person dressed in Ku Klux Klan regalia, shifted its focus intensely to the issue of blackface, bolstering the governor’s dubious claim that he wasn’t depicted in the image on his yearbook page but that he had dressed up as Michael Jackson in a separate incident.
A spate of “explanatory” articles in outlets such as USA Today put soft focus on the issue with rundowns of past celebrity blackface scandals, while simultaneously redirecting the attention from Northam’s scandal.
Others took steps to diminish and normalize blackface altogether. Pew Research Center released a survey indicating that a third of respondents thought blackface was acceptable in some circumstances, such as Halloween costumes, even though the media seemed to reject this argument when Today show co-host Megyn Kelly was forced out simply for defending blackface Halloween costumes on air.
Student newspapers, such as the University of Virginia’s Cavalier Daily—representing the Charlottesville school where Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring admitted to wearing blackface at a party—pored over past yearbook editions to find more examples of its widespread use.
The Cavalier Daily investigation found evidence of racism and cultural appropriation “peppered” throughout past yearbook editions, including, alarmingly, what appeared to be a photograph of a staged lynching in the 1971 edition.
Photo of what appears to be a staged lynching found on the Chi Psi fraternity page in the 1971 edition of UVA’s official yearbook, Corks and Curls. @cavalierdaily pic.twitter.com/aVwC9rGx1Q
— Nik Popli (@Nik_Popli) February 8, 2019
In response to the article, the student editors were invited to appear on CBS Evening News, while the story was picked up by outlets such as NPR and The Washington Post.
But the student journalists’ commendable investigative efforts made only a single reference to Northam in the opening paragraph. Rather than lending itself to an even greater charge for the governor’s removal, the article seemed tacitly to downplay his racist conduct and imply, falsely, that it was commonplace and acceptable to dress that way at the time of Northam’s 1984 yearbook.
Swaying Perception?
The media’s efforts are, no doubt, designed to sway public perception for Northam and Herring.
As Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax faces even more serious allegations of having sexually assaulted two women, the ouster of all three would result in a transfer of power to state Republicans according to the state’s succession order, elevating House of Delegates Speaker Kirk Cox into the office. It is unlikely, though, that the current blackface scandal against Herring would warrant his resignation, barring further allegations.
A poll released last Saturday by The Washington Post in coordination with George Mason University showed an even split over whether Northam should step down, while a majority of black respondents supported the governor by an almost 20 percent margin.
New @PostPolls Virginia survey: Northam approval 43/44, even split on resignation, 47/47 https://t.co/XGcxRcRK1a
— Steven Shepard (@POLITICO_Steve) February 9, 2019
However, low sampling numbers and a high margin of error cast some aspersions on the data. The survey sampling also favored self-identified Democrats over Republicans by an 8 percent margin (33 to 25 percent) while nebulously claiming that 39 percent identified as independents.
Moreover, The Post‘s emphasis on unexpected support for Northam glossed over the responses to several other questions. More than 70 percent of respondents disapproved of his handling of the photo controversy, and even more said that his denial of being in the photo was not credible.