attached mail follows:
LOTT YEARNS FOR JIM CROW DAYS - By Michael Roberts
(African Sun Times, December 12-18, 2002)
In a stunning remark, even for a man long associated with the most backward
and reactionary sections of the Republican Party, the incoming Senate
Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, said that “if the country [USA]
had followed our lead, we would not have had all these problems over all
these years, either.” Lott was referring to his home state’s support in 1948
for the presidential run of Senator Strom Thurmond at a
celebration marking the 100th birthday of the longest serving senator in
United States history.
Lott also said that “I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond
ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it.” What Lott did not
say was that when the good senator ran for the presidency of the United
States in 1948 he ran as a member of the segregationist States Rights Party.
Thurmond was then the governor of South Carolina who at that time was one of
the most rabid proponents of Jim Crowism and who ran on a platform of
segregation and outright racism.
During what was the most racist political presidential campaign in United
States history, Thurmond said that “all the laws in Washington and all the
bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our
churches.” It is this kind of anti-Black
white supremacist ideology that Lott felt compelled to associate both his
home state and himself with as Thurmond celebrated his 100th birthday.
But Lott’s statement is not so off the cuff as one might think, and he’s
certainly not to be taken lightly. He was selected by the GOP controlled
Senate as its leader despite public knowledge of his strong ties to white
supremacist groups and his consistent
racist and inflammatory statements during his nearly three decades in
Washington. He has close links with an ultra-right white supremacist group
called the Council of Conservative Citizens that is the successor to the
White Citizen’s Councils of the segregated 1960s.
Moreover, Lott’s praise for a man who later in his life claimed to be a
“reformed segregationist,” and in particular his 1948 presidential run must
be examined in the sober light of day. Thurmond ran for the presidency with
the blessings of a breakaway faction of the Democratic Party in the South
that had close ties to the outwardly racist States Rights Party that was
known as the party of the “Dixiecrats.” He was the
blue-eyed boy of a pro-Confederate group that formally declared “we stand for
the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race.”
In essence, the split within the Democratic Party was between those who
wanted America to remain segregated – a position that Thurmond supported –
and those who
wanted the party to adopt a more progressive civil rights stance in keeping
with the changing times and the fact that the party wanted to woo the Black
vote to its side. It was after that that Thurmond became a Republican because
the GOP’s stance on segregation was more in line with this ideology of Black
race hate.
You might well ask what’s all this 52 year old history got to do with modern
day politics in 2002?
Well, first of all Lott’s statement was not criticized by the Bush
Administration or the GOP and only two members of Congress from the
Democratic side had the guts to call for Lott’s resignation and retraction of
an insensitive statement. The Democratic
charge was picked up by former Vice President Al Gore but none of the ranking
Democrats in Congress uttered nary a word. This entwining of ideological
positions
between the GOP and the Democrats reflects yet another convergence of their
views and policies that run counter to the logic of the average American.
Except for a wishy-washy formal apology for his statements after a few people
outside of government criticized it, the mainstream media has not said a
thing about Lott’s pitch for Jim Crowism, and his identification with a man
who epitomized the notion of
racial segregation and the fact that he did not want “Negroes in our churches
and in out homes.” Indeed, old habit die very hard and for Lott to embrace a
position that has been resident in the garbage heap of history for these past
52 years not only speak volumes
to his views but underscores the rabid hidden feelings of racism still alive
and well within the highest levels of the GOP.
And the Bush Administration’s silence on the matter is all the more deafening
in the context that Lott’s position represents the deep-seated bigotry and
anti-democratic racial bias of the GOP and the Administration. Of course Lott
would remember the days
when Blacks could not vote in Mississippi and when it was all right to burn
wooden crosses and dress in white sheets while hanging “Nigger boys” from
the nearest elm tree.
Lott’s nostalgic longing for those days and accusing Americans of missing the
boat by not electing Thurmond who would have made sure the problems that
plague America these past years would not have happened is also very
revealing. It begs the question: what are these problems? The answer is “the
Negro Problem.”
Just how Thurmond would have handled these problems Lott did not say but one
does not have to have an overactive imagination to come up with an educated
guess.
One of the things that Thurmond and the Dixiecrats opposed was the advocacy
by groups like the NAACP pressuring the federal government to enact
anti-lynching legislation. These proposals urged the federal government to
intervene when corrupt and
racist local state law enforcement officials – and governments – encouraged
white mob activity against hapless Black people. Lott must know that his home
state that he so proudly says embraced the policies of segregation was one of
the most vicious killing fields in the South, carrying out thousands of
lynchings of Blacks usually on the slightest of pretexts or just to have some
fun.
Indeed, Lott’s remarks served to educate the public on something that many
believe had died with the Civil Rights Movement. It demonstrated that the
present climate in the United States is poisoned by the Republican Party’s
rabid brew of racism, militarism
mixed in with the toxic spice of ultra-right Christian fundamentalism and
white supremacist ideology. No, Mr. Lott did not have a slip of the tongue –
in one unguarded moment he revealed his true nature.
Dr. Chika A. Onyeani, Author
"Capitalist Nigger: The Road to Success"
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
The African Sun Times
463 N. Arlington Avenue, Ste 17
East Orange, NJ 07017-3927
Phone: 973-675-9919
Fax: 973-675-5704
email: afrstime@aol.com
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