horribleness
By CARLA HALL FEB 04, 2019
First, we had Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam confessing to being in either blackface or a Ku Klux Klan robe in a photo on his medical school yearbook page. Then he denied doing so, but volunteered that he did slather on some shoe polish to imitate Michael Jackson. Now we have movie star Liam Neeson dropping his bombshell confession that he once wandered the streets, armed with a club, wanting to kill a random black man years ago.
A website’s expose forced Northam, 59, to confront his past or, at least, his yearbook version of his past. Neeson, 66, unearthed his past practically unbidden in a 17-minute hotel room interview with writer Clemence Michallon for Britain’s Independent newspaper. Neeson is energetically promoting his new film, “Cold Pursuit,” a tale about a man seeking revenge for the death of his son at the hands of drug dealers.
On the surface, neither of these anecdotes (and that word seems too lighthearted for all this) seems to have much in common beyond centering on a white man of un certain âge who should have known better than to do what he did when he did it. And as reprehensible as costuming yourself in blackface is, it’s not as dangerous as hunting for a black man to beat up. But they’re both about some unsettling racist urge that seems to be tattooed under the skin of far too many white people in the modern era — and by that I mean by 1984, the year that Northam’s yearbook photo came out.
The difference here is that Northam, for all his liberal politics and his black church-going, has just acted like a dolt trying to explain himself. Neeson, on the other hand, confessed that what he did was horrible. And it was.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/enterthefray/la-ol-liam-neeson-racist-20190204-story.html
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