‘A DIFFERENT TIME’

Retired Doctor in Gov. Northam’s Yearbook Says He Regrets Blackface Photo

Appeared in Diana Ross costume in medical-school yearbook.

A retired physician who was photographed in blackface in the same 1980s yearbook featuring the racist photo threatening Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s career has said he regrets the incident. Michael Breiner, now an associate professor at the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine in Blacksburg, Virginia, owned up to the photo in the 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook in which he’s dressed as Diana Ross and has dark makeup on his face. The photo caption reads: “‘Baby Love,’ who ever thought Diana Ross would make it to Medical School!” Breiner said: “I had a lot of great African-American friends, I still do, and they gave me their blessing that this would not offend them.... If I had any inkling that this would upset them, I would not have done it.” He added: “Do I regret it now? Yeah, because it’s a different time. This was 35 years ago.” Northam is fighting for his political career after being accused of appearing in a different photo in the same yearbook that features one person wearing blackface and another dressed in Ku Klux Klan robe.

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