Minstrel Scandals; or, the Restorative White Properties of Blackface

In early 2019, a photograph from the 1984 medical school yearbook of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam featuring a blackfaced figure and a figure in a KKK hood sparked a minstrel scandal. Northam issued a contradictory series of admissions and apologies — yet, he remained in office. This incident models how minstrel scandals reproduce dramaturgical structures of blackface minstrelsy, simultaneously appearing to redress antiblack racism while working to restore the enduring racial structures of whiteness.