How Should Someone (I’m Looking At You, Georges) Own Up To Blackface?
by dsb nola on February 5, 2010
In last night’s mayoral debate John Georges denied Dambala’s claim (in the person of Roy Couhig) that Georges and his frat buddies at Tulane wore blackface (for annual parties) in the 1980s, or that Georges supervised the wearing of blackface as president of his fraternity. Predictably, Georges went with the bloggers-are-losers defense. He’s cowardly trying to run out the clock. If he gets into the runoff, and if reporters start asking him about it, he’ll probably do a modified Vitty-cent where he admits to a vague sin or two and then clams up. At best. If he doesn’t make the runoff, I bet he’ll never address it.
But how might a white guy own up to such racially insensitive actions from his past and still persuade voters he’s sincere and that he gets it–or, if he doesn’t “get it,” at least show that he knows he’s supposed to?
Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan in 1999 faced just such a situation. It was revealed that he performed in the early 1960s in blackface as part of minstrel shows for annual Kiwanis Club fundraisers. Here’s what Carnahan told an AP reporter:
I regret having been in them and I regret the insensitivity that’s shown, but I do think I have grown. I grew rather quickly, sponsoring civil rights legislation in 1965.
So how’d that play out for Carnahan? In 2000, three weeks after being killed in a plane crash, he was re-elected governor, beating John Ashcroft.
(h/t JC)
