He was in the photograph. But which person was he? He wouldn’t say. Then he wasn’t in the photograph. Then he wasn’t in the photograph, but he had dressed up in blackface. And then he had dressed up in blackface, and, as CBS News discovered, one of his nicknames in military school was “Coonman.” The Internet Archive has the yearbook. Methinks there’s a pattern here.
I’m reminded me of what I would sometimes say to students who had engaged in academic misconduct: “You have one chance to tell me the truth.” I remember, in some cases, hoping that a student would admit to plagiarizing so that I could explain the need to work hard on reading and writing skills and overcome deficits from earlier education. I would’ve helped with that. Instead I would hear a student deny what was painfully obvious.
If Ralph Northam had spoken frankly about his past, about attitudes he had grown up with, about shameful choices he made as a much younger man, it might be possible for the citizens of his state and country to understand, forgive, and, as they say, move forward. But his shifting explanations and refusal to answer an obvious question (blackface, or Klan costume?) mean that he must resign. He had one chance to tell the truth. And he blew it.
I’ll play whatabout for one paragraph and ask whether it’s fair for Northam to resign when the likes of Steve King and Donald Trump remain in office. It isn’t. But giving Northam a pass would make it all the more difficult to insist that racism has no place in public life.
The larger questions that I haven’t heard asked in the Northam affair: How did that photograph — in 1984, no less — ever get into a medical-school yearbook? And why, in nearly thirty-five years, did no one ever object?
*
February 6: The New York Times has an article about yearbooks at Northam’s medical school, Eastern Virginia Medical School. Says a former student, “The practice of letting students run a yearbook unsupervised should have just been shut down.”
[“You have one chance to tell me the truth”: yes, it’s a line from Cops. But I was looking to offer a second chance, not to bust someone.]
Saturday, February 2, 2019
Re: that governor
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comments: 5
I am reminded of the time I had to tell a consultant that his student's thesis had been copied directly from a book I had just read. It was a fluke that he had shown the paper to a group of us teachers who were using operant conditioning with our nonverbal residents. What tipped me off was that she had even used a very poorly-constructed sentence from the book; wouldn't you think she would have cleaned that up?
Just her bad luck, eh?
Best paragraph:
"The larger questions that I haven’t heard asked in the Northam affair: How did that photograph — in 1984, no less — ever get into a medical-school yearbook? And why, in nearly thirty-five years, did no one ever object?"
Good post.
I do wish people were as concerned with policy-created economic problems as they are with human foibles. But, good post.
Elaine, I had several experiences of discovering plagiarism by chance in pre-Internet days. Once by idly pulling out a volume from a lesser-known encyclopedia while hanging out with my kids in the library. The student had staunchly denied everything. You can imagine his response when I showed him the evidence.
Art, thanks.
That was in 1971--'programmed learning' was the big new thing, The student had advocated for training parents to use operant techniques and included a 'manual' which she had lifted unchanged from the resource I had just read. The consultant (psych prof at Emory) said that, unfortunately, the manual was the only good part of her thesis. He told me he'd phoned her advisor and said, "X has something to tell you," and then returned her paper with a note saying, "When you thanked me for my help, you must have meant I taught you to read."
I am still feel the shock that someone could be so blatant. And dumb.
Sigh. Plagiarism and the Dunning-Kruger effect often go together.
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