Why I Can't Run for Office, Either

It didn't seem like that big of a deal. We all knew it would be embarrassing, at least for that moment. But later?

Turn back the clock to January, 1970. There I was in a small liberal arts college in Appleton, Wisconsin, having just joined a fraternity. No biggie: Thousands did that every year.

But thousands didn't submit themselves to a "slave" auction. My frat joined with a sorority to have their new pledges auctioned off to the highest bidder. Ostensibly, it was for a charity. So we shrugged and went through with it.

I must say that to have been put on display like that didn't feel especially good. It brought some humiliation with it, though in a temporary, flippant way. But I felt it. I do remember that.

Right after it had ended--at least, the white kids' part of it, for no fraternity nor a sorority member, to my recollection, was black--black students held a mockery of it on the same stage. I recall that a number of us were taken back by the display, as if we were somehow being insulted.

Well, yes. There was an insult being delivered--to them. It gradually dawned on me--admittedly, not immediately, largely due to the simple fact that I had not grown up with black kids in my schools--that what we were doing was to bring back one of the ugliest reminders of perhaps the worst part of our national history. And, after all, in public, just the way slaves were actually auctioned off in the past (granted, we weren't checked for our functional body parts as in those days).

I do not recall if it was done in subsequent years, but I don't think it continued past my senior year there. Gratefully, someone with more awareness drew a line and said no.

And so: Because I willingly, though not terribly sensitively, went through with such mockery, would that eliminate my political chances of being nominated for or elected to public office? Would I be branded a racist? Would there be no possible way I could redeem myself?

More to the point: Is 49 years not enough time to put between the event and the present day? If not, what would? Would I have to wait another year for the golden anniversary and free myself from adverse branding?

I'm not asking for a friend. I'm asking for those who have had things revealed about their past. Like, maybe, the governor of Virginia, who confessed to having worn blackface 35 years ago. Like, maybe, the attorney general of the same state, who apparently did the same thing at about the same time.

They're already in significant public office. Should they now resign because they got caught a little more than a year after their elections? The behavior wasn't criminal, as opposed to the lieutenant governor, now accused of two sexual assaults. But it was mean-spirited, if not simply dumb.

Yet, has nothing they have done in the name of racial equality or equity in the 35 years since able to make up for those awful decisions? Wouldn't they, instead, have the possibility of assuring the black communities of Virginia that they would get more attention than they've been used to getting--which, in the final analysis, can't be a bad thing since the governor's position has been limited to a single, four-year term?

All things considered, then, do they deserve a break? Or are they endlessly compromised unless they quit and try again, more appropriately branded as recovering racists?

Thinking back, there wasn't a mean-spirited bone in my body about the "slave" auction in which I participated. So it could reasonably be called mindless, if not dumb (not pointing fingers, either, at the organizers of the event). Had I had more awareness, I suppose I could have taken a stand and refused to get involved. But that would have exposed myself to ridicule, at least from my fraternity brothers. That would have been a tough choice for a very recent pledge.

I was just 18. I wasn't much younger than Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexually assaulting Christine Blasey Ford at a party at Georgetown University. I was of today's legal age (though not at that moment, for legality at 18 was a year away by constitutional amendment). I was supposed to be able to make adult-level decisions, though.

I'm not running for anything, nor do I have plans to do so. This recollection had nothing to do with that decision, either. I don't view myself as a recovering racist, though. Considering what I learned in college, how I taught my social studies courses with emphasis on the civil rights movement and became inspired by that to move up to the national leadership of the National Education Association, interacting with people of color en route, that label would be inaccurate.

I wouldn't even believe I had anything to defend, either. Not because of something that happened, that I did not start but did not stop to consider its impact, 49 years ago, wet behind the ears though I was. Maturity is never a straight line for anyone.

My racial awareness can be traced to a moment even before that, too--by my dad, as well as the civil rights movement, of which anyone growing up in the '50s and '60s had to be aware. But that's for another time. Meanwhile, if this sad situation in Virginia has caused more people than just Yours Truly to recall moments when they could have done a bit better, so much the better going forward--as long as we do utilize it to go forward.

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark