In today’s Slate, Timothy Noah types: The Legend of Strom’s Remorse – A Washington lie is laid to rest, and goes after what he calls the ‘myth’ of Strom’s redemption.
For many years, there’s been a cherished Washington lie about Strom Thurmond. The lie is that Thurmond, though once a leading segregationist, later renounced that view as morally wrong.
…
But there never was any such expression of remorse or plea for forgiveness. Thurmond has never publicly repudiated his segregationist past, and with his 100th birthday and a Senate career behind him, it’s doubtful he ever will. The legend of Strom’s Remorse was invented, by common unspoken consent within the Beltway culture, in order to provide a plausible explanation why Thurmond should continue to hold power and command at least marginal respectability well past the time when history had condemned Thurmond’s most significant political contribution. Now that Thurmond is finally leaving Washington, the lie serves no further purpose and will fade away.
…
Is Chatterbox saying that the Strom of today (what’s left of him) is identical to the Strom who ran for president in 1948 on the pro-segregationist Dixiecrat platform? He is not. Clearly, Thurmond made shrewd accommodations late in life to changing times. In the 1970s, he became the first Southern senator to hire a black staff aide and to sponsor a black man for a federal judgeship. In the 1980s, he voted to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act (not because he agreed with it but in belated deference to “the common perception that a vote against the bill indicates opposition to the right to vote”). Strom also came to support making the birthday of Martin Luther King (about whom he’d once said, “King demeans his race and retards the advancement of his people”) a federal holiday. Thurmond didn’t do much else to promote equality among the races, but these token gestures were enough to demonstrate that he was no longer the 1948 Dixiecrat who had said, “There’s not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.” (Pedantic aside: Standard accounts of the speech render “Nigra” as “Negro,” but when listening to an NPR sound clip, Chatterbox wondered whether the word Thurmond uttered was “nigger.” In transcribing, Chatterbox gave Thurmond, who even in his worst days was not known publicly to throw that ugly epithet around, the benefit of the doubt…)
…
Let’s see.
In the 1970s, he became the first Southern senator to hire a black staff aide.
In the 1970s, he became the first Southern senator to sponsor a black man for a federal judgeship.
In the 1980s, he voted to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act.
He came to support making the birthday of Martin Luther King a federal holiday.
I donno, they may be ‘token’ to Timothy, but they seem kind of substantial to me. He also enrolled his children in an integrated school, which strikes me as a fairly personal level of at least tolerance.
I guess it would be nice to have a kind of ‘Paul of Tarsus’ public epiphany, preferably on Oprah, in which he renouced his evil ways.
Kind of like my desire to get my Republican friend to agree that some form of racial redress was good public policy.
Then again, he’s just married to an African American woman (and had children with her) instead. Which makes the moral high ground kind of hard to find here.
Some time back, the Senate Armed Services committee was reviewing candidates for Secretary of the Air Force, as I recall, and one of them was a black man, ex-Air Force, who was getting some heat from former colleagues as not quite up to it.
Thurmond voted for the guy (who lost). You could call it cheap, voting to show his tolerance when he knew it wouldn’t actually make a black man in charge of something.
On the other hand, if he were balancing political calculations, he must have figured he would edge out ahead by voting this way, which says something for his constituency.
Or he might just have been a nice guy that day.
‘I donno, they may be ‘token’ to Timothy, but they seem kind of substantial to me.’
That’s not the point. The issue is that everyone’s just let him kind of glide along on this; he never really said (unless you count votes as speech) that he was wrong.
Apparently no one thought to ever ask him.
It seems to be limtus test time.
So If Strom votes for these thing he is just being a token and it doesn’t mean anything because of Racism.
However it Lott votes against these things he must be a racist.
We can play this game many ways:
If Byrd votes against the war it is because he is anti-american
If Kerry votes for it he is being an oppertunist
If France votes against the Iraq resolution it is because they morally oppose war.
If Russia votes for it its because we bribed them somehow.
When I decide to take up mind reading I’ll be able to answer these questions. Lets put it real simple:
Strom is a US Senator not because of redemption or non-redemption it is irrelevent. He is a US Senator because the people of his state voted him in.
Ted Kennedy is a US Senator not becasue he did or didn’t leave a girl to drown in 1970 but because the people of Massachusetts voted him in.
John McCain is a US Senator not because he didn’t do anything wrong as a member of the Keating 5….
Barney Frank is a Congressman not becasue he didn’t know a gay prostitution service was run out of his office …..
Trent Lott is a US Senator not because of redemption over his past views…..
Hilary Clintion is a US Senator not because (enter favorite choice here)
In a republic people have the right to make bad decisions. If the people make bad decisions then they get the government they deserve.
And as far as a litmus test, this vote means this, this vote means that.
Remember Hitler didn’t eat meat. That does’t make Vegans Nazis
Castro has given up smoking, that doesn’t mean that the American Lung Society loves dictatorship.
“(unless you count votes as speech)”
for me, actions usually speak louder than words.
“He also enrolled his children in an integrated school, which strikes me as a fairly personal level of at least tolerance.”
Let’s see – while there are exceptionally few schools (even private) that aren’t
integrated” in that they don’t deny entrance to blacks, there are plenty that don’t actually HAVE any blacks… how many sneators TODAY still send their kids to schools like this? I don’t actually know, but I would guess that there are plenty. The above statement alone is more than sufficient for me – either he is “reformed”, or he’s so politcally calculating that he would sacrifice his own children (if he really believed integration was evil, then sending his children to an integrated school…).
The thing nobody seems to be saying about Strom, Lott, and nearly every other post-Civil Rights era southern GOP politician is this: It doesn’t matter if they are, themselves, racists. What DOES matter is that they routinely pander to racists, solicit their votes and use proxy issues like the Confederate flag and affirmative action to signal their solidarity with them. Lott has always been a master at this, and his core audience in Mississippi knows he can’t (until now, at least) just come right out and say what he really thinks. For the most past, southern pols use this important consituency like the Dems use African Americans, but if Conservatives want to have a legitimate discussion about race, they have to purge their ranks not just of racist pols, but racist voters, too. Lott’s apology was meaningless because he didn’t do it in front of the White hate groups he’s always courted. If he’d said to them, “I ws wrong and you guys are,too, and if you are a racist I don’t want your vote,” maybe he’d have some credibility. But so far the only candidate for anything who ever came right out and said DON”T VOTE FOR ME IF YOU ARE A RACIST was, I think, Ross Perot. And that’s just sad.
Dan–
Here we go again with talk about “proxy issues” and coded messages, and Captain White America’s Secret Segregation Decoder Ring.
I’m opposed to affirmative action, at least at the university level (in business I’m more ambivalent). I don’t give a rat’s ass about the Confederate flag, and I’m inclined to regard people who think it’s important as having nothing better to do.
Does that mean I’m pandering to racists? Does that make me a opportunistic power-grabber? Am I using A.L.’s comments section to send secret messages to my vast network of bigoted minnions(Get more beer and ammo Bubba, the Klan meetin’s tonight)?
Maybe, just maybe, southern Republicans oppose AA for the same reasons northern Republicans do. Maybe they think of the Confederate flag as representing history, not as a sort of American swastika. Maybe their voters agree with them–for entirely non-racist reasons!
It isn’t my fault that racists agree with me some of the time, any more than it’s Chuck Hagel’s fault that Saddam agrees with him some of the time. Give the whole anti-south bigotry thing a rest and stop trying to divine the motivations of people you’ve never met.
Dan –
I don’t know, but I find the requirement for a public ‘mea culpa’ kinda creepy.
I’m not sure why, and need to think about it a bit more, but the image that comes to mind is the Cultural revolution and ‘self-correction’…
A.L.
What A Mess
The Republicans have given themselves three weeks, until January 6, to figure out whether having a leader who laments the
>> The thing nobody seems to be saying about Strom, Lott, and nearly every other post-Civil Rights era southern GOP politician is this
And what fraction of the white Dems from the South are significantly different?
And, if we’re going to talk about race, really talk about race, we get to talk about the racism exhibited by more than a few of the Black Dems.
When I read AL’s description of Thurmond’s record since he became a Repub, I realized that he was channelling a Repub leader in a parallel universe, a leader who was, like Lott, talking about Thurmond at his birthday.
I suspect that the opening was something like “Strom Thurmond has been a political force through some of the most important times in American history. I’m particularly proud of what he’s done since he became a Republican.” At that point, he went through AL’s list.
>> Then again, he’s just married to an African American woman (and had children with her) instead. Which makes the moral high ground kind of hard to find here.
Maybe looking for/occupying “the moral high ground” isn’t actually a good thing.
After all, most people seem to look for it so that they can piss on other people.
There’s a huge difference between trying to do the right thing and trying to beat “the bad guy”.
I object to the improper use of the term “He is a racist’, if someone engages in a program to harm or descriminate against a particular race; as in forbidding jews to own businesses, krystalnacht, rounding them up into camps, and exterminating them. Lotts remarks, indeed, “we wouldn’t have all these problems” is alot of things, but not racism: therefore we are dealing with thought crime here. The racial prejudice (as in to pre-judge someone or people is free speech and should not only be accepted but protected. if Lotts comments are thought crime now, those who are also free to criticize his remarks now are in line to find themselves guilty of thought crime later. there is plenty of racial prejudice from any and all sides, but liberals pursue absolution from only one pat form of PC defined “racism”. There are many others. Duke university has black only dorms, it is not segregation, but black elitism.
The solution to descrimination is to fight doggedly to make things as equal as possible, not to reverse the segregation of the past onto the RACIST institution of AFFIRMATIVE ACTION. that is racism and it follows from unrestricted racial prejudice, where criticism of state sactioned free speech on the issue is forbidden.
>> I don’t know, but I find the requirement for a public ‘mea culpa’ kinda creepy.
It depends on exactly what is required.
I think that it’s fair to assume that someone still holds a position that they took publically until they say otherwise.
Why? Because we can’t know their positions without some sort of notice.
However, I don’t think that there’s an obligation to be contrite or to explain. A simple “this is now my position” will do.
I think that the Bancroft Prize trustees at Columbia did it the right way. Meanwhile, the New York Times and lots of others are still on record as claiming that Bellesiles is peachy keen.
What? We’re talking about Lott?
Why shouldn’t the same rules apply to all?
I think that it’s fair to assume that someone still holds a position that they took publically until they say otherwise.
How about until they do otherwise??
Look, I agree that it would be morally better if Thurmond and their ilk went to the Lorraine Motel and publicly apologized. It would probably go a ways toward healing some of the divisions in this country.
But all of us have things to apolgize for.
So instead of an orgy of apology, how about poeple simply doing the right thing??
A.L.