(ThyBlackMan.com) Ralph Northam has to go! There’s no way he can continue as the Governor of Virginia. This is a painful sentence to write, but a necessary one. I’ve covered the Governor at a debate, a ribbon cutting, and a few other small events. I’ve met him a handful of times. I sincerely thought he was the real deal. He came off as a kind and caring person, but he has to resign. I was fooled. We all were fooled.
Governor Northam is the kind of politician older Black activist have always been skeptical of. They show up in Black churches just before election day singing hymns and talking about how bad racism is in order to win votes, but they avoid taking the same message into communities where people of color are marginalized. His past actions, coupled with the multiple statements he made regarding his year book, work to validate the distrust many communities of color have for politicians- irrespective of political affiliation.
Think about this; Ralph Northam was 9-years-old when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated. He came of age at a time when people were marching and dying for the right to exist. The Klan mask and Blackface only mean one thing. He was 25-years-old when the incidents at the center of this controversy happened, and now he’s asking us to believe he just saw his medical school yearbook for the first time.
This doesn’t mean the Governor hasn’t changed. He might have, but he has no credibility on an issue that affects all Virginians in general, but specifically the almost 20% of Virginians of African American descent. Ralph Northam has shown up at numerous Black churches throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia speaking out against racism, all the while never telling the truth about how race shaped his early life. Imagine someone showing up at Synagogues throughout the Commonwealth talking about anti-Semitism while hiding the fact that they willfully participated in anti-Semitism.
Last week was easily the worst in his administration’s history. It started out with him tripping over himself concerning Delegate Kathy Tran’s abortion bill, and now he is facing calls for his resignation by many of the Virginia (and national) politicians who helped him ascend to the office of Lieutenant Governor and ultimately Governor. I’m sure he wishes he could return to the good ole days where the most controversial issues he had to deal with was the amount of money he’s taken from Dominion Energy and his tacit support of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
The most noble thing he can do is resign and save the Commonwealth from the media circus that would follow impeachment proceedings. I wish the Governor all the best moving forward. All of us have made mistakes and done things we’ve regretted. He, like all of us, should be given a second chance, but he has to do the work necessary to warrant it. The Governor seemed more embarrassed this came out than upset at how it made people feel.
Staff Writer; Danny Cardwell
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