The photograph in Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s 1984 medical school yearbook, which shows one person in blackface standing next to another in Ku Klux Klan regalia, is stunning and devastating.

Often when these racist images or statements resurface, the knee-jerk response is to say that people need to remember the context of the times. In fact, Northam himself used this excuse.

While he backtracked on his earlier statements and denied being in the photograph Saturday, Northam did admit to darkening his face that same year to resemble Michael Jackson during a dance contest — a move he attributed to “the place and time where I grew up.”

Well, in this case, the context makes the photograph even more troubling. What was going on with race relations in the early 1980s? It certainly wasn’t the 1950s. The civil rights movement was alive and well. As the Reagan Revolution pushed American politics to the right, the civil rights movement pushed back on matters of social justice, making it clear that the gains of the 1960s would not be easily reversed. Read More

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