Said Jilani: "Why Does Ralph Northam Deserve No Mercy?"

I'm inclined to agree with much, but not all, of this. Here's something good:

   Perhaps just a few years ago, Northam’s apology and Saslaw’s defence would have been enough for the governor to be able to move on. We have all done things we’re not proud of in the past, and our most offensive and obnoxious moments do not encapsulate our lives. But given an American elite culture that is regressing to a secular version of old puritanical norms, whereby sinners are branded for life and there are political points to be scored for casting them into hellfire, it is not surprising that Northam was immediately deluged with calls to resign.   ... 

   ...there is a curious dissonance between the message activists are promoting—that an offensive gesture from 35 years ago should permanently end a man’s career in politics—and their campaign around America’s system of mass incarceration. When it comes to criminal-justice reform, progressives are preaching that the aim of the system should be rehabilitation, not punishment, and that criminal behaviour is forged by social influences, rather than the result of bad choices by flawed individuals. They preach a Christian message of hating the sin but loving the sinner.

I was just wondering, actually, what would happen if, ten years hence, someone found out that I'd written something saying that I wasn't sure how bad blackface was. Will that be a fireable offence in academia in a decade? Actually, I'm not entirely sure it's not a fireable offence now...