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A
week before his Klan confessional, 14 Republican Senators
refused to sign a harmless, non-binding Senate resolution
apologizing for lynching. The GOP senators gave no coherent
reason why they refused to sign. The resolution did
not mandate victim restitution, call for tougher hate
crime legislation, or criticize the GOP for its part
in helping to beat back a lynching law. A unanimous
Republican vote on the lynching resolution would have
sent a strong signal that the GOP will do whatever it
takes to wipe the dirty stain of racial violence from
America's past and present, and not just talk about
it. It didn't, and the hit on Byrd makes Republicans
seem disingenuous at best and racial hypocrites at worst.
But there's no real surprise in that. Byrd flirted with
the Klan six decades ago. Republicans flirted with them,
in the past, and still do today.
It's not just small fry Republicans who have shown a
penchant for making foot-in-the mouth racist cracks,
and racially loaded attacks. Prominent Republican Presidents
set the tone with their own verbal race bashing.
President Eisenhower never got out of the Old South
habit of calling blacks "nigras." In an infamous and
well-documented outburst at a White House dinner party
in 1954, Ike winked, nodded, and whispered to Supreme
Court Justice Earl Warren that he understood why white
Southerners wouldn't want to "see their sweet little
girls required to sit in school alongside some big black
buck."
President Nixon routinely peppered his talks with his
confidants with derogatory quips about blacks. He enshrined
in popular language racially-tinged code words such
as, "law and order," permissive society" "welfare cheats,"
"crime in the streets," "subculture of violence," "subculture
of poverty," "culturally deprived" and "lack of family
values." And President Reagan once told a black reporter
how he would treat black leaders said, "I said to hell
with em."
In 1988, President Bush, Sr. made escaped black convict
Willie Horton the poster boy for black crime and violence
and turned the presidential campaign against his Democrat
opponent, Michael Dukakis into a rout. He branded a
bill by Senator Ted Kennedy to make it easier to bring
employment discrimination suits a "quotas bill" and
vetoed it. In his autobiography, My American Journey,
Colin Powell called Reagan "insensitive" on racial issues,
and tagged Bush's Horton stunt, "a cheap shot."
In 1998, the Republicans had a golden opportunity to
loudly denounce race baiting, and racist extremist groups
when it was revealed that then Senate Majority leader
Trent Lott, and Georgia representative Robert Barr had
snuggled up to the pro-segregation, states rights, Council
for Conservative Citizens. Not one top Republican publicly
denounced Barr or Lott, or demanded that they get out
of the Council. In 2001, Senate Majority leader designate
Trent Lott dredged up and praised the pro segregation
rants of South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, it ignited
a firestorm of rage. It took nearly a week for Bush
to make a stumbling, kind-of, sort of disavowal of Lott.
The Democrats need do no such thing with Byrd. Whatever
fumbles and missteps they've made on race in recent
years have paled in comparison to that of the Republicans.
Beating up on Byrd for something he did as a young hungry,
on the make politician decades ago, and for which he
has done his mea culpa for, is the worst kind of partisan
political one-upmanship. If, or maybe when, the next
Republican public official or personality is called
on the carpet for a racist outburst, let's see if Republicans
publicly jump all over them they way they have on Byrd.
Earl
Ofari Hutchinson is a columnist for BlackNews.com,
an author and political analyst.
PRESS
CONTACT: Earl Ofari Hutchinson, 323-296-6331, hutchinsonreport@aol.com
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