The Ghost of Racism Past

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The Ghost of Racism Past
by James Hall, Senior Associate Editor

December 20, 2002

"Leaning Left"

James Hall We're all familiar with Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", in which the ghosts of the past and future labor to persuade a miserly Scrooge to change his ways. This month, future Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) confronts the ghosts of his past. Will he learn, and like Scrooge become a better person for it? Or does he get buried, unloved and unlamented by those he could have helped? And what of his party?

I, for one, don't believe that most of today's conservatives are segregationist. Most conservatives aren't prejudiced against blacks; they're simply prejudiced against the poor.

That, of course, is a topic for another column. But since a large percentage of blacks just happen to be poor, they correctly perceive that a conservative agenda that includes removal of welfare benefits, the watering-down of public education with vouchers and poor funding, the removal or blocking of minimum wage and living wage laws, the attempted destruction of labor unions and collective bargaining, and the ideological support for sending jobs overseas, etc., is aimed at them. Throw in a few actual segregationists like Lott and their 'paranoia' becomes very real---if today's segregationists can no longer keep blacks separate, they can still keep them poor.

Yes, some conservatives remain segregationist, hiding behind conservative ideology. You can even read some of them here on The American Partisan's pages (see Dave Gibson's "So Utterly Predictable" or SARTRE's Strappado Wrack: "The Many Colors of Ignorance.") These segregationists call themselves conservatives and profess to believe in conservative values like "states' rights," "freedom of association," and "less government."

A whole generation of Southern segregationists used these concepts to fight against civil rights, integration, and the removal of laws discriminating against blacks in the 1960s. 1970s, and 1980s. For these segregationists "state's rights" meant the right of states to pass Jim Crow laws regulating the conduct of the races; "freedom of association" meant separating the races; and "less government" meant less federal interference in integration and court-ordered desegregation plans.

Today's conservatives, for the most part, repudiate these interpretations of conservative doctrine. But even conservatives without a bigoted bone in their body must recognize the Republican Party's recent debt to segregationism. After the Democratic Party's ideological commitment to civil rights in 1964, many Republicans closed their eyes to their ideological differences with segregationists and accepted them into the Republican Party. Ronald Reagan's famous visit to Philadelphia, Mississippi was emblematic of that moral ambiguity. And it paid off --- within a couple of decades Southern white voters, once predominantly conservative Democrats, became conservative Republicans instead.

Some conservatives are now patting themselves on the back for calling out Lott on his segregationist views. But will they also condemn his segregationist brothers when they hear them in private? Will they condemn attempts to use race to rally voters to their party? In Georgia this past election, Republican Sonny Perdue won an upset victory in part by appealing to turn back a change to the Georgia state flag that had removed the Confederate battle flag from a prominent place in the flag's field. That change had been supported in a bipartisan fashion both by the NAACP and by Georgia's business community.

The flag issue, some will argue, is about Southern tradition, not segregation. But that answer ignores the flag's origin in 1956, during the days when segregation was under federal attack, as well as its meaning for blacks and a rallying point for segregationists today. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that the Confederate battle flag is flown by over 500 race hate groups today. If conservative Southern whites want their flag back, they must take it back from hate groups first.

Secretary of State Colin Powell put the issue straight to his Republican colleagues at the 2000 Republican National Convention when he asked why the party fights so hard to deny affirmative action for a few thousand poor black students, but advances affirmative action policies for the treatment of corporations and their CEOs. Why do Republican-controlled state legislatures continue to draw up gerrymandered districts that are completely black or lily white, creating segregated districts to guarantee their election rather than trying to run themselves in mixed --- integrated --- districts?

Conservatives should ask themselves why segregationists are attracted to the Right. They must be careful not to be used by the segregationists who still lurk within their ranks to promote policies that keep black Americans stuck in poverty, deny black Americans chances for a good education and equal protection under the law. They ought to be concerned about political gambits like Perdue's, that pit blacks against whites. The Ghost of Racism Past is in the room; meanwhile, a conservative Ebenezer Scrooge is still making excuses for staying in bed. ***

James Hall
Orlando, Florida, USA

Photo of the author courtesy of staff files