Racism in Republican Mississippi

By Michael J.W. Stickings

What, goes the old joke, has for 'i's and can't see? Mississippi.

It's not exactly the most progressive place:

Americans nationwide are evenly divided over the issue of same sex marriage. But Republicans in Mississippi are divided over a wholly different wedlock issue: interracial marriage.

In a PPP poll released Thursday, a 46% plurality of registered Republican voters said they thought interracial marriage was not just wrong, but that it should be illegal. 40% said interracial marriage should be legal.

It's easy to forget, given how far America has come, that such racism thrives all over the place, and not just in the overtly racist/Republican bastions of the Confederate Deep South.

But obviously it's pretty bad in Mississippi, or more specifically among Republicans in Mississippi (I shouldn't impugn the entire state, I suppose), and it hardly comes as a surprise that the leading Republican in that state is Haley Barbour, whose views on race are a tad, well, old-fashioned.

For more, see:

-- Haley Barbour, Jim Crow Republican; and

-- Haley Barbour and the KKK: A perfect Republican match?

Haley Barbour and the KKK: A perfect Republican match?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The other day, I withdrew my support for Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

It was a difficult and sad thing to do, and it's not a decision I made lightly. I came to it only after serious reflection and delirious soul-searching. I want what's best for the Republican Party, after all, and I really thought that Barbour, the seemingly perfect Republican, was the best.

But, you know, if you support and lobby for amnesty for illegal immigrants, if you show even the tiniest speck of humanity towards the many hard-working people who just want to make a better life for themselves in America, as well as for their children, you're just not a good enough Republican, and you certainly don't deserve the lofty, Reaganesque honor of being your party's nominee for the highest office in the land.

But maybe I was too impulsive. Maybe I didn't think the thing through. Maybe I didn't give Boss Barbour enough credit.

Maybe -- yes, maybe -- I was wrong. And maybe I need to send him a big fat apology.

Because he really is a great Republican, and it took something he said just this week to remind me of that:

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday he won't denounce a Southern heritage group's proposal for a state-issued license plate that would honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Barbour is a potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate.

Questioned by reporters Tuesday after an energy speech in Jackson, Barbour said he doesn't think Mississippi legislators will approve the Forrest license plate proposed by the Mississippi Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The group wants to sponsor a series of state-issued license plates over the next few years to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War - or in its words, the "War Between the States." The Forrest license plate would be slated for 2014.

Mississippi NAACP president Derrick Johnson said it's "absurd" to honor a "racially divisive figure" such as Forrest. Johnson has also called on Barbour to denounce the license plate idea.

Asked about the NAACP's stance Tuesday, Barbour replied: "I don't go around denouncing people. That's not going to happen. I don't even denounce the news media."

As Jonathan Chait notes, it would appear that, for Barbour the news media are even worse than the KKK. Such crazy anti-media sentiment certainly reinforces his Republican cred.

But it's also his refusal to denounce the effort to honor not just a major Confederate figure but a leader of the KKK that really sends his star back into orbit. While he said that "there's not a chance it'll become law," and hence that there won't be a state-issued licence plate (though it's not clear if he himself supports the idea or if he just thinks the Mississippi legislature won't approve it), it's that refusal that supersizes his Republican cred.

No, he's not perfect. Alas. There's still that "amnesty" blip, and he won't be able to run away from that, just as Romney won't be able to run away from health-care reform in Massachusetts.

But he's a good Republican, a very good Republican, and very much a model for how Republicans should conduct themselves. I doubt he'll run, and maybe he's not Teabagger enough for the far right, but the party could do a lot worse, and I really hope all Americans, especially independents who may need some help deciding between the two parties, come to identify him with the Republican Party.

He deserves no less. And neither does the GOP.

(photo)

Haley Barbour, Jim Crow Republican

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've described Mississippi Gov. Haley "Boss Hogg" Barbour as "a crazy blowhard" but "pretty much your perfect Republican."

And his history of racism (and cozying up to racism) has been well-documented -- for example, the fact that he has a Confederate flag signed by Jefferson Davis in his office, not to mention the fact that he has been involved with the Council of Conservative Citizens, a segregationist group.

In many ways, Barbour is a throwback to the Jim Crow Deep South, and so it hardly comes a surprise that he thought the Old South of racism and segregation wasn't so bad:

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour says he doesn't remember the Civil Rights era being "that bad," citing his attendance at a Martin Luther King Jr. rally nearly 50 years ago.

"I just don't remember it as being that bad," Barbour (R), 63, told the conservative Weekly Standard, which did a lengthy profile on the governor. "I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in '62. He spoke out at the old fairground and it was full of people, black and white."

Yes, I'm sure Barbour just loved MLK. TPM's Eric Kleefeld has more:

As Barbour recalls it in a new profile in The Weekly Standard, things weren't so bad in his hometown of Yazoo City, which took until 1970 to integrate its schools (though the final event itself is said to have gone on peacefully). For example, Barbour says that there was no problem of Ku Klux Klan activity in the town -- thanks to the Citizens Council movement, an organization that was founded on the basis of resistance to integration and the promotion of white supremacy.

"You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK," said Barbour. "Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you'd lose it. If you had a store, they'd see nobody shopped there. We didn't have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City."

So there wasn't the Klan, but that's only because there was the Klan-lite, Citizens Councils that fought for the same things:

The White Citizens Council movement was founded in Mississippi in 1954, shortly after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregated public schools, and was dedicated to political activities opposing civil rights -- notably boycotts of pro-civil rights individuals in Barbour's hometown, as opposed to Barbour's recollection of actions against the Klan. It was distinguished from the Klan by the public self-identification of its members, and its image of suits and ties as opposed to white robes and nooses.

A Barbour spokesman claims that the governor isn't a racist, but the evidence keeps piling up. At the very least, he seems to have, and to have had, no problem with racism, including the organized racism of these councils.

As Matthew Yglesias points out, after all, the council in Yazoo City was actually a white supremacist group, not some benign anti-KKK group. Are we to believe that Barbour doesn't know this? Please.

Haley Barbour is just your basic Jim Crow Republican.

**********

Earlier this year, I happily endorsed Barbour for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. I stand by that in light of these new revelations.

He's pretty much the perfect Republican nominee, more perfect than Palin, more perfect than Huckabee. He's pretty much the incarnation of what it means to be a Republican. And so the Republicans would be stupid not to hand him the nomination should he decide to run.

As Jonathan Chait has written, "There are people who think that the solution to the GOP's image problem is to nominate a sleazy, corpulent, cigar-chomping lobbyist from the Deep South? Is Boss Hogg unavailable?"

You certainly don't need Boss Hogg when you've got the real thing.

Haley Barbour '12!
Because you can't be too Republican.