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1. Also, real talk: If you're a white person of a certain age (basically 35 or above), the chance you have something racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic in your past is really high, because all that shit was baseline acceptable. I do (which I will detail in the next tweet).
2. In high school, I wrote several stories that had homophobia as a comedic device, and at least one "white savior" story where a white person literally came out of the sky. None of these stories have, shall we say, aged well, which is why I don't share them.
3. Likewise there are almost certainly less than hugely enlightened stuff I wrote in my early pro career as a columnist. If someone wanted to go looking, they could probably find me saying stuff I would not say now (and do not think now). But it exists!
4. If I were confronted with any of this stuff now, what I would say was that I wish I hadn't written that stuff then, but I did and it's part of my history. It's up to others to judge if and how far I'm come from there.
5. To be clear, this is not an attempt to excuse Northam's black face and KKK picture: That shit's horrible and he's got to deal with it. My point is to note nearly all of us white folks have things we have in our past we'll need to confront. Some more than others.
6. My way of dealing with it is to say: Yup, I had to go through my own learning curve. I'm still going through my own learning curve. I will get things wrong, still. Hopefully after I fuck up, I'll correct and move forward. I'll be doing that probably until I die.
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