,
6 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
I hate to do this every time some racist shit from the 1980s comes up (and that Northam yearbook page is definitely racist shit). But here's a page from my high school yearbook in 1983 in Louisiana. We voted for Best All Around Blacks and Best All Around Whites. 
The thinking was that no black student would ever be smart enough to be best all-around and no white student would ever be athletic enough to be best all-around. I am not making this shit up. Teachers told it to us.
The 1980s were a pretty fucked up time racially, and not just in the South. Here's Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places, the 4th highest grossing movie of 1983. As far as white people watching were concerned, if Eddie Murphy was ok with it, it was ok. See? Fucked up.
I'm not forgiving Northam. He has to address it. He may have to step down. It really was a different time, a different nation, a different way of existing. The racial history of the country is complicated and awful. But let's not deny that it's better than it was.
We can see that by the fact that white people are appalled by the Northam photo now when, back then, it would have been seen by white people as a stupid joke and forgotten about. It was always wrong. But more of us know it's wrong now.
By the way, after they graduated, the Best All Around Black male became a lawyer, the female a real estate business owner. The Best All Around White male became a bartender. I don't know what happened to the female.
