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1. A theory as to why Northam's white friends in med school called him "C**nman." It was because he, unlike most of them, had actually gone to school with black people. White classmates registered their uncomfortability with that by "teasing" him for being "down with the folk."
2. At first glance this might make look Northam look good. In segregated Virginia he was like "yeah, I went to a desegregated school and you didn't." But no, this is not good. Because when his racist classmates called him "C**nman," he didn't shut them down, he played along.
3. He adopted the racist nickname as his own (as evidenced by its appearance in the yearbook), simultaneously capitalizing on the authentic "cred" his inter-racial schooling supposedly gave him, while also being complicit with the racism of his classmates.
4. I can hear the drunk 80s white med students talking now..."haha, C**nman Ralph can moonwalk! It's like he's really from the hood, hahaha when do you get your welfare check Ralph? Hahahaha." Meanwhile Ralph laughs along with them.
5. I'm sorry, but it's hard for me to see any explanation for the "C**nman" nickname that's not very bad not only by today's standards, but by 1984 standards as well.
6. If Ralph truly respected those young men he played with on his HS basketball team, he would have shut down that "C**nman" talk in med school immediately.
7. Just to reiterate, this is a *theory* based on the available evidence and my experience living as a white person in segregated America in the 1980s. More details may emerge to undercut or complicate this theory.
