There's Yet Another Virginia Politician Facing Questions About Blackface Photos in His College Yearb
By MOLLY OLMSTEAD
FEB 07, 20196:33 PM
On Thursday, the Virginian-Pilot reported that the state’s Senate majority leader had overseen the editing of a college yearbook that included a number of offensive slurs and images, including photos of students in blackface.
Sen. Tommy Norment, who has served on the state legislature since 1992, was the third high-ranking Virginia politician to face accusations related to blackface in the past week. It started last Friday, when a photo surfaced of Gov. Ralph Northam’s 1984 medical school yearbook page featuring a man in blackface and another man in a KKK robe. (After initially apologizing and admitting his mistake, Northam reversed course and denied that he is either of the men). Then, on Wednesday, state Attorney General Mark Herring, who had recently called on Northam to resign, confessed to and apologized for dressing in blackface at a party in 1980 while a student at the University of Virginia. Meanwhile, sexual assault accusations against Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax became public on Sunday. (He has denied the allegations from a 2004 incident.)
It has been a week-long dumpster fire for Virginia politics, and it continued on Thursday. Norment’s 1968 yearbook from the Virginia Military Institute featured a high volume of racist material. Published the same year black students were first allowed to enroll at the school, it included the N-word, according to the Virginian-Pilot, and also featured slurs directed at Asians and anti-Semitic jokes.
Norment, who is now 72, said in a statement he was “not surprised that those wanting to engulf Republican leaders in the current situations involving the Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General would highlight the yearbook from my graduation a half century ago.” He added that blackface is “abhorrent in our society and I emphatically condemn it.”
More:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/virginia-senate-majority-leader-college-yearbook.html
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