Asian Week
Lott, Landrieu, and the
Politics of Race By Phil Nash
December 9, 2002 Last week, at a
100th birthday party for Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) that was
broadcast nationally on C-SPAN, Senator Trent Lott (R-Mississippi),
the next Senate Majority Leader, said, "I want to say this about my
state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president [in 1948], we voted for
him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed
our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these
years, either." Thurmond, who at the time was a Democrat and the
governor of South Carolina, was running for president on the
breakaway Dixiecrat Party line. While Democrat Harry Truman
ultimately beat Republican Thomas Dewey, Thurmond carried South
Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Thurmond was quoted
as saying during the campaign, "All the laws of Washington and all
the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our
schools, our churches." Attempting to sound neutral, his party's
platform said, "We stand for the segregation of the races and the
racial integrity of each race." "Racial integrity," like "freedom of
association," became code words for keeping the races separate so
that whites could maintain their unfair control of power and
resources. Even today, whenever racial minorities or women try to
remove the lingering unfair privileges of white men, they are
accused of being "politically correct." This term, which I find
repugnant because there is no "correct" way of thinking in a
democracy, is yet another smoke screen for people who prefer to not
address the unfairness and inequalities that have plagued and which
continue to plague our society. To understand the full import of
Sen. Lott's comments, remember that before the Brown versus Board of
Education decision in 1954, whites had all the privileges and
colored people had nothing. Separate and inferior schools, jobs,
housing, restrooms, water fountains, and swimming pools for coloreds
were the norm. White Supremacy was written into our law books, and
interracial marriage was not accepted nationwide until 1967.
Lynching and cross burning were the tools used by the Ku Klux Klan
and other White Supremacist groups to send a message to colored men
who tried to date white women or move into white neighborhoods.
While Senator Lott has since apologized for his remark and Senator
Thurmond himself spent the last few years hiring African American
staff and pushing for some positions supported by his African
American constituents, this episode draws aside the curtain and
exposes the sordid racism that continues to haunt our fragile
democracy. Thomas Kuhn, the author of "The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions," once remarked that discredited old theories don't die
out until their proponents do. Sen. Lott's remark would lead one to
believe that he and Sen. Thurmond still believe, in their heart of
hearts, that whites are a superior group of people. Taking it a step
further, they continue to be openly supportive of the exclusion of
women from membership in enclaves of power such as the Augusta
National Golf Club. This club, like the many other places where men
can make decisions affecting government and industry without women
present, contributes to the unfair exclusion of women from the
decision-making levels of our society. It leads to a "glass ceiling"
through which women cannot go because hiring for the highest level
jobs is a subjective process that goes beyond credentials and work
experience. Everyone should be free to associate with anyone they
want. Senators Lott and Thurmond should be free to think whatever
they want. But when that "freedom of association" is a covert way of
saying, "I want to keep unfair privileges and access to resources
for myself and people who look like me," then this form of
unfairness has to end. Meanwhile, the Democrats fared no better in
discussions of race last week. While they did win an election in
Louisiana, they did it in a way that perpetuates the racial
polarization of our society. Incumbent Democratic Senator Mary
Landrieu was at odds with some of the leaders of the state's African
American community, and is widely viewed as a supporter of
conservative social policies and Bush war policies that
disproportionately hurt minority communities. As a result, political
commentators saw her support within the African American community,
which was vital to her re-election prospects, as lukewarm at best.
Yet, because the present winner-take-all system does not allow for
proportional representation, African Americans had no choice but to
back a candidate whose interests do not coincide with many of their
community's interests. The GOP game plan for November 5th was to
focus on the war on Iraq and cutting taxes. Landrieu was able to get
the focus back on state and local issues by alleging that the Bush
Administration was going to undermine Louisiana's sugar farmers. She
was only able to focus on getting these conservative whites back
into her camp, however, because African Americans in Louisiana, as
in the rest of the country, are presumed to be in the Democratic
column, so their votes are taken for granted. Catering to the
racists in her own party, Sen. Landrieu had members of the
Congressional Black Caucus and prominent African American leaders in
Louisiana campaign for her in the African American community, but,
according to local news reports, she herself stayed away so as not
to be seen as being too supportive of African Americans. This
strategy by the Landrieu camp has an effect that is just as bad as
the remarks of Sen. Lott, and deserve further discussion by
fair-minded-people of all races and political leanings. How can the
racism of the white constituents be addressed if we are going to let
the most racist of us control the debate? Why must African Americans
and other racial minorities in this country continue to have to
choose between the lesser of two evils-- the candidate whose policy
stances hurt them less? According to the Center for
Voting and Democracy (www.fairvote.org
), out of the 41 current well-established
democracies in the world, only two (the United States and Canada) do
not use a form of proportional or semi-proportional voting systems
to elect one of their national legislatures. While we were in the
forefront of democracy 200 years ago, we are behind the curve today.
If we are to have a democracy where both African Americans and those
who fondly recall the days of segregation can each have a fair
chance to vote for their vision of America at the ballot box, it is
imperative that we move away from winner-take-all elections and
toward proportional representation as soon as possible. |