In the span of a few months, McAuliffe told two different stories about whether he knew Blackface was wrong |
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After publicly condemning Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's decades-old racist yearbook photo in February 2019 as "racist, unacceptable and inexcusable at any age," Terry McAuliffe, who is now running to succeed Northam, struck a different tone just a few months later, dismissing the photo as a youthful mistake -- and even denying it was Northam in the photo at all.
"Listen, even if it had been him in the blackface. You know," shrugged the former Democratic Virginia governor. "It was a dumb mistake 40 years ago."
"I grew up in New York. And in all fairness folks, I didn't know what blackface was. You know, I had not experienced, we had no racism issues, honestly, growing up in Syracuse," he said at an event promoting his book in July 2019.
CNN's KFile reviewed McAuliffe's remarks, which were made in an interview with the Hudson Union Society, a members-only social group in New York City, which hosts celebrities and well-known figures. A clip of the interview was uploaded to YouTube last January.
The interview came just months after McAuliffe, along with other Democratic politicians, called on Northam to resign after it was revealed Northam appeared in a racist yearbook photo from his medical school, showing one person dressed in blackface and another in the KKK's signature white hood.
"It doesn't matter how Terry McAuliffe feels," he added. "That photo that was in that yearbook was so offensive to the African-American community, that I can't be in their shoes. And we have just got to get past this. I knew, at a young age, blackface, 1985, you just didn't do it."
In July 2019, McAuliffe would tell the audience there for his book appearance that it wasn't Northam in the photo of his yearbook.
"He didn't do Ku Klux Klan in fairness," McAuliffe said. "It's now out he wasn't either one of them." …
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