If you’ve never had the impulse to darken your face to mimic another race, blackface can seem archaic, part of a racist form of entertainment people engaged in long ago. Sadly, that’s pretty naive.

“Blackface, particularly in white sororities and fraternities, is as common as cheerleaders on a football field,” according to Lawrence Ross, author of “Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses.” Ross is talking about young people in this present moment. Not middle-aged or older people getting in trouble for decades-old racist acts. A Google search for college students and blackface will bring up plenty of contemporary examples, including the University of Oklahoma white sorority girl caught earlier this year on Snapchat in blackface saying what sounded like the n-word.

There is a strange yet enduring appeal to blackface and racist tropes among certain groups of white college students who presumably should know better. Blackface has dominated the headlines for the past several days. Ralph Northam, the Democratic governor of Virginia, is roiled by controversy for yearbook pictures of a person in blackface standing next to someone in Ku Klux Klan robes and hood. Mark Herring, the Democratic attorney general, also revealed he wore blackface at a college party in 1980. Last month, Michael Ertel, the Republican secretary of state in Florida, resigned after photos surfaced showing him in blackface dressed as a “Hurricane Katrina victim” at a party. But these incidents are hardly an aberration or spectacles from the past.

“Eighteen- to 21-year-olds reflect the racism in which they grow up,” Ross said. It’s ridiculous to think that colleges and universities are some sort of utopia, free from the prejudices of the past. Students who grow up in predominantly white neighborhoods, attend predominantly white schools and become members of predominantly white organizations can end up insulated from how certain actions impact others, particularly people of color.

“You feel like you are safe to do these things,” Ross said of those in a “whiteness cohort.” In his research, he discovered racist photos in college yearbooks everywhere. In one particular instance, the university refused to let him use a yearbook image in his book because the former student involved is a big donor. Among the recent examples, he cites Paige Shoemaker, a white former student at Kansas State University, who wore a dark clay facial mask, took a picture and captioned it “feels good to finally be a (racial slur)” before sharing it on social media. In her subsequent apology she said, “I am the furthest thing from racist.”

That’s a refrain that comes up frequently when white people apologize for racist statements and behaviors. There is a type of cognitive dissonance in which people believe themselves to be good and moral persons and also believe that people who participate in racist acts are only those who are morally bad. But it’s possible for people to say and do racist things even if they don’t harbor a hatred for people of color.

Another frequent rationalization is that the stunt was simply done in fun with a lack of awareness of how offensive it is. But the accompanying commentary (usually in the photo captions) and context of when blackface is used on college campuses shows that the wearer is displaying some level of contempt, degrading or mocking black people.

“You can feign ignorance and offer rationalizations if you believe you don’t need to be subject to understanding racism,” Ross said. People don’t like to look at racism as being baked into our society and institutions. “They look at it as an individual issue.”

And even in blackface, that individual is never part of the problem. Ross said that in his research of 700 colleges and universities over roughly 70 years, he wasn’t able to find a single instance of black students wearing whiteface to denigrate white people on St. Patrick’s Day.

Blackface says: These people are mockable. I can mock these people because I am in a position of power.

As recently as last fall, NBC host Megyn Kelly said on national TV that she didn’t see anything wrong with blackface as part of Halloween costumes. She later apologized. As far as consequences go, she walked away from her show with $30 million, the remainder of her $69 million contract.

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A stranger contacted Raquita Henderson through a Facebook message wanting to meet with her because she liked her social media posts.

Henderson, a photographer who has 5,000 “friends” on Facebook, didn’t hesitate. She met the stranger for coffee about four years ago. Unless she gets some kind of weird vibe, she says she is happy to meet with anybody looking for some kind of connection. “I just want to be available for people,” she said.

Henderson said the woman seemed sweet. She was new to the St. Louis area and appeared to be struggling. Henderson told her to call if she ever needed company. She didn’t hear her from her for years until before this past Thanksgiving. The woman was having family trouble and needed some gas money to go stay with a friend.

“I can help you with that,” Henderson replied. She sent her gas money. A few months went by, and she received another request. The woman was living out of her car in January, and it was bitterly cold outside. She had found a place to live but needed money for the first month’s deposit.

“If you’ve got a solid plan, I’m sure we can help you,” Henderson said. She described the woman’s situation in a post on her Facebook page and asked if anyone could kick in some funds for her. Within four hours, she had a few hundred dollars. Henderson drove to where the woman was staying that night and handed her the money.

“She gave me a hug” and was very grateful, Henderson said. She messaged her a few times to say how much she appreciated the help.

Many of us might worry about being taken advantage of if a relative stranger asked us for more than a few dollars. I asked Henderson if she wasn’t a little suspicious about the request. She laughed.

“If people have a need, I try to fill the need,” she said. She credits her husband and best friend for keeping an eye out for her to make sure she isn’t getting hustled. “They will stop me from doing too much,” she said.

There’s a body of research that shows that those with less wealth give a greater percentage of their income than wealthier people. A 2014 survey by The Chronicle of Philanthropy found that those earning $200,000 or more per year reduced their giving during the Great Recession and its aftermath by 4.6 percent, while those making less than $100,000 increased their donations by 4.5 percent.

Researchers suggest one reason that the wealthy may find it harder to be more generous is because they see the utility of social connections differently.

Most people can imagine themselves in difficult situations in which they may need to rely on others. The rich are far more insulated from those sorts of concerns. The reasons why some groups give more than others are complex, but empathy is certainly tied to generosity. Neuroscientists at the University of Chicago discovered specific brain markers that predict generosity in children. Their research suggests that encouraging young children to reflect upon the moral behavior of others may foster sharing and generosity in them. Unsurprisingly, kids who grow up in families that prioritize giving time and money to others are more likely to be givers themselves.

In Henderson’s case, she knows what it’s like to get help when you need it. Around this time last year she had a water main break in her office. It was going to cost $3,000 to repair. She posted about her situation on her Facebook page and asked her community to book photography jobs from her, so she could quickly earn the money she needed. Her “friends” came through for her. They bought sessions as gifts for other people. One person bought 10 sessions and told her to give them out to people throughout the year.

“It made me feel appreciated and seen,” Henderson said. Her style of generosity ought to be seen, too.

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Two and a half years ago, the mom of a transgender daughter had a confrontation in St. Louis with a group similar to the one the Covington Catholic boys encountered in Washington, D.C., last week. The teenage boys from the Catholic school in Northern Kentucky sparked national outrage when their interaction with Nathan Phillips, an Omaha tribe elder, went viral. One of the boys said they were responding to a confrontation with a group of vocal Black Hebrew Israelites.

I've been thinking about the conversation I had with Julie Williams when I wrote about her and her daughters' experience with insulting, homophobic street preachers. They had been walking on Delmar Boulevard after lunch. The group spewed slurs at them when they passed by. Williams figured it was their right and kept walking. Then, one of the men called out to her, “You need ISIS."

Williams stopped. It had been three days since the mass shooting in a gay club in Orlando killed 49 people. Her 20-year-old daughter, who was with her, is transgender.

She's a mother with a child who will face state-sanctioned discrimination throughout her life. And strangers on the street are telling her that her daughter should be murdered.

What she did next stayed with me. Williams told her daughters to keep walking and wait for her farther down the street. She asked the man to clarify what he had just said.

“You will be blown off the face of the Earth,” she said he told her. He and the two other men with him were citing passages from Leviticus in the Bible. Williams, of Creve Coeur, Missouri, said what they said terrified her, and she had no way to gauge if it was a serious threat. She called the police, who were familiar with this group because they frequently stopped there to "preach."

Nothing much came of Williams' complaint. The group had a right to be there, and as vile as their comments were, they didn't directly threaten her or her daughter. At the time, I thought about how difficult that situation must have been for her. In a heated moment, Williams, a white woman, felt threatened and stopped to confront a group of African-American men, one of whom was recording the interaction. It could have gone sideways and viral any number of ways.

But Williams kept her cool. She didn't respond to their hatred with slurs or mock them in any way. She had the wherewithal to tell her daughters to move away because she wanted to protect them from any further abusive language. She also showed her vulnerable child that she would defend her -- that not all abuse should be ignored.

This is how a thoughtful (and brave) adult models behavior for their children. In this bitterly divided country, adults with composure who teach their children that it's possible to stand up for yourself respectfully may not be rare, but they just don't make the news and capture our attention the way bad encounters do.

There's something instructive in the interactions gone wrong beyond reinforcing what we already believe. Parents should ask themselves how they would feel if their son responded exactly like some of those Covington Catholic teens did toward a Native American veteran.

A large segment of the country would be horrified. Others say they would be proud. It's what the past two years have cemented: What horrifies one side delights the other. You can watch as many hours of video of that day as you want online to justify how you feel.

Perhaps the only surprising thing about that incident near the Lincoln Memorial is that there wasn't a single adult around Nick Sandmann or his friends to tell them that walking away would have been more respectful than standing there with a smirk while some of his peers jeered and did tomahawk chops. In the aftermath, when the students were criticized for their behavior, was there a single adult in their lives who explained how standing in an adult's face and smirking can make it look like you want to humiliate and challenge them? In Nick's case, his parents hired a fancy public relations firm to help him put out a statement and prep him for an interview on the “Today” show defending himself. He insisted that he did nothing disrespectful.

Was there an adult in his life who suggested he watch Nathan Phillips’ reaction to his behavior that day, if just to understand how his actions impacted the other human standing in front of him? Sandmann said in his morning show interview that he had nothing to apologize for.

If my children encounter someone shouting slurs at them or their friends, I hope they remember the story about Julie Williams.

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