What they are doing to Ralph Northam is so terribly terribly unfair. [View all]

[grantcart]

Being held responsible for something that was probably not intentional 35 years ago, so unfair.

He will probably have to resign his office and return to private medical practice. I understand that the medical school he went to is among the country's leading invitro/fertility schools which produced the first "test tube" baby in the US. Their doctors are in high demand in a very lucrative market.

Northam will probably suffer through re-establishing a private practice and only earn $ 300k this year. It will probably take him two years to get back at the $ 500k level.

Very unfair.

I have always hated unfairness. I remember 1973 I read about a police officer in my hometown in Spokane who came upon a black 14 year old burglary suspect who was exiting through a window on the side of the house and chased him for about a block and then discharged his weapon in the fleeing youth's back killing him before his body hit the sidewalk.

I went down to the next city council meeting and in the open comments section read the newspaper article to the city council and asked if the city had a "use of force" policy and that if it was within the standard procedures for police to discharge a weapon when there was no lethal threat.

Some discussion occurred. I pressed the issue stating that I didn't think it was fair that a 14 year old should lose his life over a stupid act. More discussion. It was difficult to defend and the final comment was "even if it was outside the standard procedures sometimes unfortunate things happen, life isn't always fair".

I agreed that life wasn't fair but asked if the city council would feel the same lack of interest in following up the issue at hand if it was a white 14 year old boy that was shot to death 4 blocks from their home.

My final comment was that "acquiescence to the bitter unfairness that life can bring shouldn't be affected by the color of a child's skin or the neighborhood he is in."

About 10 years before that I was with my brother at a pool hall when some shoving elevated into a brief fight and within 6 minutes three police cars arrived followed by a detective. The atmosphere in our little group certainly changed when the police discovered that we had the same last name as their dentist who treated police officers with a deep discount. The call to my dad assured him that his sons were not the initiators and we had a funny exchange while the others were taken in the cars so that their parents could pick them up at the station. When you are 10 years old a root beer float bought by a police detective who is telling you how your father saved the front teeth of his son and then wouldn't take a penny for it is just about the most delicious thing you could ever have.

Fifty years later I marvel how little reaction occurs to the unfairness that people of color face every day. Hundreds of thousands of DACA children who never broke a law, hundreds of thousands of law abiding TPS holders all of whom have done nothing but are threatened with life crushing "unfairness". Daily recitations of African Americans who have to defend going to a picnic, entering a building or babysitting for a friend. It is like the unremitting pounding of the surf. After 5 decades you just can't believe that we still have to go through this shit.

Ralph Northam is suffering a little embarrassment, a little discomfort and after he resigns he will return to a very substantial income and be embraced by the white community in Virginia who remembering their own youthful indiscretions think "there for the grace of God, goes me".

My advice to Northam is to resign today and join Drs Without Borders or the UNHCR and work in refugee camps. He will learn what real unfairness is. He will make more of a difference than he would as Governor. He will also regain pride in his contribution to the alleviation of suffering.

And the real irony is that should he take the advice in the paragraph above in 10 years he could write a well received award winning book which might be featured in a full length movie because Ralph Northam was on a track for success when he entered medical school. I always wonder what that 14 year old boy might have grown into if we operated in a universe where the unfairness of life wasn't intentionally structured so that one part of society is cushioned against the slightest unfairness and one part of society is expected to face a daily battle against unfairness.