General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I accept Gov Notham's apology [View all]Jarqui
(10,131 posts)He has yet to even apologize for the Coonman year book.
Forgiveness does not mean forgetting, nor does it mean condoning or excusing offenses.
I am also unaware if he truly has this racism problem behind him. What evidence do we have of that? Was his Lt Gov a token black to get him votes or did he truly regard him as they best person for the job? If he was that proud of him, why wasn't he in his campaign literature? Many unanswered questions here.
He can resign as he apparently will. He can apologize. And then he can go about straightening this out. And after he does, he can run for public office again. If he has truly demonstrated remorse and that he has changed his ways, then he might win that election and will have earned that forgiveness. Until then - until something like that happens, I'm not going to be so hasty to look the other way.
He is in a position of public trust and should be held to a higher standard. Before he got into that position, he would have been asked about skeletons in his closet. I'd be very interested to know how forthright he was about that. From the surprise of this story, not nearly enough.
There have been too many people badly hurt by racism in my lifetime. The racists need to be held to account with zero tolerance because gentler, more forgiving/look-the-other-way approaches haven't worked very effectively over the last 50 years of my lifetime. I'm fed up as I am sure the victims of this behavior are.
Tough love.