Revisionism

Our old friend, faux good ole boy Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is at it again:

"The people who led the change of parties in the South ... was my generation. My generation who went to integrated schools. I went to integrated college -- never thought twice about it." Segregationists in the South, in his telling, were "old Democrats," but "by my time, people realized that was the past, it was indefensible, it wasn't gonna be that way anymore. So the people who really changed the South from Democrat to Republican was a different generation from those who fought integration."

Damn, I did not know how noble the Barbour-Lott generation of Southern pols were. According to Barbour, white flight had nothing to do with the changed, uh, complexion of the GOP in Thurmond/Wallace country. I guess it was all about "conservative principles" not about code words and nostalgia for the "lost cause."

LBJ was right when he said that his advocacy of civil rights would damage the Democratic party in the South for generations. Purt near everything in Southern politics is about race, identity or class; sometimes in disguise but it's always there. 

Haley's despicable attempt to rewrite history is all about a possible run against the first African-American President. In short, he's racing to bury the race card at the bottom of the deck and knows full well that Obama is leery of raising the subject. It's past time for the White House to stop pretending that we're in a post-racial era. It's one reason why the President is being "othered" to death. It's hard to fight back when you've got one hand tied behind your back.

Fuck you sideways, Haley. 

Comments

[pansypoo]

obviously they did 'enough' down south. it's a paradise. right? RIGHT?!?

[MichaelF]

Barbour's just speaking code, his otherwise piss ignorant base just bright enough to know/understand how one is supposed to respond to questions about race.

A few years ago my mom revealed that when we moved from Norfolk, Virginia, in 1976, the next door neighbor, a Baptist minister, took her aside and said in so many words that she and my dad were NOT to sell the house to blacks or jews.

But according to Haley, we'd already moved beyond race by then...why stir up unpleasantness?

[Silver Owl]

*snort* Seems in all that integration in Mississippi Haley must have missed some shit in his own state.

http://theloop21.com/politics/segregated-school-divided-by-race-Mississippi-sound-familiar

[Archy]

OK. Because the Democratic Party (nationally) was tied to the move by LBJ on civil rights, and the good ol' boy gov was happy to go to integrated schools -- then what? He realized he was now free of the chains tying him to the Democratic Party so he could go to the Republicans???

I'm well aware of many people trying to rewrite history, but when then do, at least they try to have some sort of believable explanation of the events.

Maybe it's me, but this makes no sense at all. So, either
1) I'm thick
2) He's lazy and doesn't want to waste time trying to really explain it, or
3) He's a lying, stinking sack of crap.

[Adrastos]

Archy: Open door 3. It's a winnah.

[hoppy]

I'm sitting here in shock, afraid to re-read your post. I think you intimated that Barbour is planning to run for President. Now, I'll have nightmares all night.

[Adrastos]

Yeah, boy, he's at least dipping a pudgy toe in the water. Sorry Hoppy.

[Jack K., the Grumpy Forester]

...Rachel Maddow had a marvelous deconstruction of Haley's "recovered" memories which essentially suggested that the only way he could have attended integrated primary and secondary schools in Mississippi would have been as a result of being held back for many, many years and being perhaps the first 26-year-old to receive a high school diploma...

This is not the sort of strange mewling representing of biography that suggests a very happy experience in the raw, brutal world of presidential primary politics. I can only wish Haley good luck on his supposedly unstated quest. I won't bother to mention Phil Gramm, even in passing...

[Nora]

And you know, even if it was his "generation" that integrated schools in the South, you know damn well that it wasn't Barbour himself or anyone like him who was involved. You don't get to take credit for what brave and principled people your age did if you were standing in the way, mocking them, or doing everything in your power to stop them. You don't even get to take credit for what they did if you just sat on your ass and did nothing.

[Lex]

When Judge James B. McMillan ordered the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools desegregated via busing in the fall of 1970, my mother and some other parents formed a group called the Quality Education Committee, dedicated to the proposition that 1) desegregation was the right thing to do and 2) it would work if enough people of good will tried to MAKE it work.

She and her group did not change the world, and she would never claim otherwise. And no matter what they did, these were still white folks -- they were never going to be taking as much of a risk as African Americans were.

But they were out there doing the right thing at a time when doing the right thing was highly unpopular (some elders from our church even came to our house to try to talk her out of doing what she was doing), and Haley Barbour and his ilk were nowhere to be seen. Why? Oh, that's right, he was TOO BUSY WORKING FOR NIXON'S '68 CAMPAIGN (remember "the Southern strategy"?) and carrying other Republicans' water in the years thereafter.

And now this fat bitch wants to come along and take credit for my mother's work? I think not.