leah wright is a professor.come back. -- >> always good to be here. >> why do you think this is a lesson that is never learned? >> so blackface is this long, long complicated racist history and it emerges as a way to dehumanize african-americans, it can be used more other racial minorities as well. we see it pop up there. it infused this idea of spectacle and ridicule around the idea of blackness. these are highly sexualized people and they deserve to be mocked and they don't deserve respect. we've seen this evolve over generations whereby blackface becomes something that, you know, one section of the population understands is bad, is racist, is hurtful, is dehumanizing and the other part of the population says, it just doesn't matter and they don't care and they think they can do this form of ridicule without being caught. >> many of whom if they don't even dress up, they don't fully understand or many of them claim that it's ignorant as their excuse, but is it given our nation's history? >> i mean, a lot of pe

he is a reporter covering identity politics for the "washington post and leah wright rigueur. she's a professor of public policy at harvard university's kennedy school of government. lae's also the author of "the loneliness of the republican." and welcome to you both. eugene, i want to ben with you here. middle east following governor northam's pictures surfacin from that year book, there was a strong collective call for h resignation. that subsided somewhat. unpack how that has evolved. >> i think what democrats in virginia have come to realize is the complexity of what's happening in their state at the top levels. you have the three most powerful lsliticians, all democrats, all in scandalo that a year ago democrats would have easilyi called for tr resignation over. i think what they have come to realize, though, is that if all three of these individuals lea office that the most powerful politician in virginia will be a rean, and we have to remember that, after the midteom elec there was some discussion about how virginia had finally turned blue consistently, and if these thr

joining me is leah wright, assistant professor of public policy at harvard kennedy school and author" and joyson johns, careen jean-pierre and jossy ross and contributing editor of indian country today, consultant jimmy williams and msnbc senior politics editor beth fewy. this should be an interesting speech. i'm going to go around the table and sort of talk about some of the significance of it. i'll start with you at the table, leah. lot of women running. the frontrunners if you just go by the buzz and the excitement around their candidacies appear to be the two women, kamala harris and now obviously elizabeth warren is going to come in big because she has big ideas about taxing, et cetera. what does she need to do today to get herself beyond the one thing people want to talk about her dna? >> so, elizabeth warren has to do the thing that she's best at doing, which is show has to talk about the little people. she has to talk about the people on the ground, the talk about main street and talk about americans. i mean one of their signatures in the areas in which she's excelled and dis