West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd on the floor of the Senate comparing the attempts to change Senate rules to end obstructionism in judicial confirmation to the maneuvers of Hitler, March 1, 2005 (five days before my post Robert Byrd, Again). And four years after saying in an interview, "There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time; I'm going to use that word."
Dwight D. Eisenhower's location since dying in 1969. He hasn't been a national political figure, compared his political opponents to Nazis, or made any comments on race since then.
4 comments:
It is difficult to type and laugh at the same time. Just so we are clear about this:
1. Eisenhower is dead
2. Byrd is still in the senate
3. Tom has left the country at least two times (unless Mexico and Candada don't count)
4. Point 3 should have no place in this discussion
5. Derek thinks that Eisenhower's use of the term "big overgrown Negro" is worse than Byrd's statement that he would rather "die a thousand times, and see old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, then to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throw back to the blackest specimen from the wilds."
6. Derek believes this because Eisenhower was President when he made that statement. Derek: " -- in its implications for the US, Eisenhower's quotation is worse. It is worse because what Byrd said in a letter had no impact on public policy. What Eisenhower believed about race did. This is not about race hatred, it is about his inaction."
So the Eisenhower quotation is worse because Eisenhower had a greater influence on public policy in 1954, right? Let's see... Eisenhower was talking to Earl Warren about the upcoming Brown case. What kind of influence did Eisenhower have on the outcome of that case?
Silly me, I though Eisenhower actually appointed Earl Warren (he did), that his justice department (headed by a supporter of civil rights also appointed by Eisenhower) filed a friend of the court brief in favor of desegregation (they did), that Eisenhower approved of it (he did), publicly supported the decision (he did), sent troops to the south to enforce it (he did), then responded with the first civil rights act since reconstruction (he did), and praised the Brown decision in his memoirs (he did).
I wonder if the NAACP supported Byrd in the 1950s? MLK voted for Eisenhower twice.
Forgot to mention that Byrd was in the US House from 1953-59. He was in the WV House of Delegates from 1947-51 and the WV State Senate from 1951-53. He has been in the US Senate since 1958.
Found at www.naacp.org:
"Mfume also repeated his criticism of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd for usage of the "n-word" on a national news program in March 2001. At that time, Mfume told the Associated Press "the fact that Byrd felt free enough to make that kind of statement about any group suggests that any progress he has made on race is relative." Mfume said, "Racism, sexism and anti-Semitism have no place in today's society."
Perhaps the NAACP's feelings on Byrd are a little more mixed than Derek would have us believe.
I was gonna post this to the commentary thread on the original Robert Byrd post, but technical problems (mostly doing with Blogger) delayed me, so it seems like a good idea to post it here.
I agree that there's nothing necessarily wrong with putting up links that are interesting to us, in order to help spread them to a wider group of people. But if our readership is expanding, then many of them won't have the background with the site, and most likely won't have the same level of history that we're accustomed to. So maybe sometimes a little context might help. But in the end, Tom's right. The main reason for doing the blog is to have a little fun. Otherwise, we wouldn't do it, because we have enough to do as it is that isn't always fun. So I'll also keep putting up links, often without much more than a few words of direction (usually, the authors are pretty good at doing context on their own). And I'll also try some other stuff that's a little different, and that I hope will be fun for me and interesting for others. That doesn't mean that we have to change Big Tent into a blog like all the other blogs. But maybe it'll mean that we can adapt ourselves a little to our new situation with readers.
PS: Pictures always make nice context.
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