"Honor is a debt . . . behavior one owes . . . to those whose esteem one cherishes" with apologies to Tom Clancy

When the news first broke that Dr. Ralph Northam, Democrat, 73rd Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, had posed in blackface while in medical school and allowed the image to be published in his medical school yearbook, I, like many of his fellow liberal Democrats, called for his resignation.

Things only got worse when the Commonwealth's Attorney General admitted to doing the same thing.

I then remembered a boy I knew in Danville, Virginia, the "Last Capitol of the Confederacy" and, in its day, "The World's Best Tobacco Market."

Born during the last years of World War Two, he learned from his family, John Wayne, and other people, near and far, and oh so worthy of "respect" to call Germans "Krauts" and the Japanese "Japs" and hate them.

By 1953 he had earned from family, friends, movies and that new medium, television, that Koreans were "Gooks," and their godless Chinese allies "Chinks." He learned to hate them as well.

In church, he learned that his 4th-grade Jewish classmates were all damned for their ancestors' roles in killing Christ.

He learned that black people, then referred to as "Negroes" in polite society, were also damned by God, speaking to us through the same verses of scripture used to justify slavery.

In Danville that meant water fountains, waiting rooms, hospitals, schools, and nearly everywhere else except for some strange reason, the public library, then housed in the all but sacred Sutherlin Mansion, the actual site of Jefferson Davis's last cabinet meeting. The City Fathers got around THAT problem by simply removing tables and chairs from the library.

He thought the slaves in "Gone with the Wind" were both funny and real.

He listened to Amos 'n' Andy (played by two white men) on the radio, and then watched the "Catfish" and his friends on TV.

He thought "Satchmo" and Bing Crosby's on-screen relationship was just dandy.

Everyone laughed at Polish jokes.

By the time he was in high school, he'd met friends and teachers whose esteem he treasured, and who pointed out the errors of his ways.

By the time he was in his second year at UVA, he knew better and began to try to make up for things he'd thought, and said, and done earlier.

I was that boy. And without the help of others, friends, wives, pastors, teachers, I tremble at what I might have become.

Intellectually I think I know the roots of my easy surrender to the prejudices I grew up with. I also know that they never really go away. One learns to recognize them when they rear their ugly heads and do the best one can to do better than one did before.

So, what about Northam? His behavior, like my own, was, is and will remain contemptible.

I know it, and I truly believe he knows it as well and has spent a good portion of his life trying to do better, all the while knowing deep in his heart that there is no wiping away the past.

I believe that, in such cases, to ask for forgiveness is demeaning.

Instead one apologizes to those one has offended and tries to earn forgiveness through one's life and work.

In Northam's case, if polls are to be believed, the offended parties, members of Virginia's black community, are disproportionately willing to forgive Northam.

I know I am. I also know that's easy for one in need of forgiveness for his own sins.

So I'm with Northam in his refusal to resign. He and I will live the rest of our lives bearing a burden, his by far the heavier and his the greater opportunity to do good.

He'll do more good as Governor than not, I am sure. . . and every day he'll be reminded of who he is and what he did . . . and he'll soldier on, doing the best he can.

My Roman Catholic friends call that penance . . . and there's a sacrament that usually follows . . . if one asks.