Byrd’s by far less than my favorite Senator. He’s a gasbag and he has a horrible record on the environment and acted as a chief impediment to the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. His record on gay rights is bad to say the least. That he is now a liberal hero cracks me up since it was exactly because he wasn’t liberal that George Mitchell challenged him and beat him.
But let’s be clear, he has a past in the KKK that he has long ago renounced, unlike Strom Thurmond who never renounced his racist positions. Or unlike the current jackass who is the Governor of Mississippi, Robert Byrd isn’t raising funds for segregationist academies. Instead, he got a 100 % rating from the NAACP in 2003-4.
Part of the civil rights story is that we all needed to change and everyone should be given that chance. Overall, Byrd, besides the white n***** episode, has a strong record on civil rights issues and at least understands how wrong he was.
Suggesting that Barack Obama misstepped in this case shows a significant ignorance of the tradition of forgiveness in the black community and how those left of center in the Democratic Party have dealt with racism since the 1960s. The black community has forgiven many segregationists, and much of the reason for this is faith on which the civil rights movement was based. Deep within African-American faith is an understanding of forgiveness and reconciliation–something many white churches could use.
But beyond that the Democratic Party has largely accepted those who changed their views. Fritz Hollings ran as a segregationist in one race and changed. Those who didn’t change their views….left.
When he utters something studid, it’s fine to attack Byrd, but those who think that Barack is hurting himself by helping out Byrd demonstrate how clueless they are about African-American voters. But in many such cases, we already knew that from the Alan Keyes debacle didn’t we?
Remember when Illinois Republicans got a reasonable share of the Republican vote? Edgar had an outreach to the African-American community that did a reasonably good job. Here’s a hint, instead of ranting about 50 years ago, try going into African-American communities and talk about their concerns today.
It was a shame to have him lead the charge against Rice. That was a shame. Sure we should forgive and welcome renewel and conversion but the stain is still there.
I’d agree there. More than anything, I’d like him to just stuff a sock in it most days.
While Strom Thurmond didn’t renounce every segregationist thing he did, he did make an effort to reach out to Blacks by hiring Blacks and providing top notch constituent service. He also moved away from segregationist rhetoric.
OTOH, Jesse Helms never seemed to break with his segregationist past as much as Thurmond. And Lott, Ashcroft and others clearly still play footsie with Southern segregationists.
Am I being too kind to Strom?
“Deep within African-American faith is an understanding of forgiveness and reconciliation” and I might add also the community has a knowledge that former antagonists can be effective future advocates if given the chance to change.
I grew up in Alabama. In his post-Presidential life, Wallace was elected Governor of Alabama twice due to the African-American vote. In those two terms, he did more to promote African-Americans to positions of leadership in the state than anyone else would have been “allowed” to do. It was like Nixon and China.