Mississippi is in a class all by itself. For a great analysis of the state, google the following song in u-tube, " Here's To The State Of Mississippi" written and sung by Phil Ochs.
One repeating verse, "Here's to the land you've torn out the heart of, Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of".
They have shown that they are still willing to elect a racist, segregationist pig to represent them. Her only "attribute " is that she claims to back the LIAR IN CHIEF 100% of the time.
These voters are just too stupid to once again realize that they have voted into office, a person who will vote against their own self interest.
7
2nd submission
“If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” In a state that led the nation in the practice of lynching black people, often with whites in attendance as cheering spectators, Ms. Hyde-Smith claimed not to understand why so many found a racial meaning in what she claimed to believe was a joke about hanging.
I’m PIMPS (peeing in my pants) laughing. The comment remains despicable even as she claims it not to have racially historic meaning.
Where is the humor in modern day public hangings of Iraqis, Americans (in Iraq), and many other “types” of human beings throughout the world?
I suppose she would want front row seats at these comedic public spectacles:
- Stonings
- Gas chambers
- crucifixions
- mass graves
- decapitations
- witch burnings
- ...
Hyde-Smith, racist or not, is another example of Trump’s best and brightest. Her sense of humor is clearly deplorable.
7
@Wine Country Dude
I recommend you read "Light in August" by William Faulkner and get educated by the most famous Mississippian writer on the subject and redeem your soul. Look at it as insurance to get into heaven.
“Just when do men that have different blood in them stop hating one another?”
― William Faulkner, Light in August
3
Smith did apologize for the public hanging comment. Try to be fair.
2
Charming.
1
She is what one would expect from the state of Mississippi.
6
If Cindy Hyde-Smith is racist, this might have an effect on government policies that negatively impact and victimize society.
With a vile disgusting racist in charge, the government stockpiled and used chemicals banned in war against Hispanic children, instituted a Muslim ban, etc., etc.
If any organization embraces racism, anti-Muslim bigotry, immigrant-phobic policies, etc., an ethical person should accept it as illegitimate and act accordingly.
3
History will always be with us. What this column fails to acknowledge is that we have made great strides. Segregated schools no longer exist, lynchings no longer occur, we had a black president, yet liberals rage on. Noteworthy is how the liberal left ignored Michelle Obama’s “House Built by Slaves” comment or her acknowledging that she had no white friends while attending Princeton. Yet, Hyde-Smith’d attending a whites only school over 50 years ago (probably with daughters of Southern Democrats) is to be viewed with disdain. Why do liberals downplay the fact that Obama’s mother was white and his white maternal grandparents played s key role in his upbringing. The short answer is that it does not play to their narrative. Liberals enjoy playing the race card until it blows up in their faces, then run and hide.
2
Boycott Mississippi products, pretty easy to do, until they change thier behavior.
Mississippi USA = Sun City Africa
3
Hyde-Smith is no steel magnolia belle. Her comments reveal her to be heartless. It is icky that Southerners felt they needed to go for a Trump-backed shellacked fake.
7
This woman is awful. Goes to show you, the more things change, the more they stay the same. If she calls her horrible comments "jokes" she truly needs a new joke writer.
4
"If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row."
Senator Hyde-Smith, 2018
4
Look in the mirror. NY schools are still among the most segregated.
2
Mississippi gets what they vote for.
2
It's absolutely surreal how these throwbacks to the days of the ugly racism that enveloped and forever scared this country can still win elections in the 2000's while advocating 1800's rhetoric.
2
No one should set foot in Mississippi, establish a business or buy any of their products. They should be totally isolated from mainstream society.
A "move us outta here fund"
can be established to help relocate black families who would like to escape to a more enlightened state. We could educate when indicated and provide jobs.
At present they are in a slave like status with respect to freedoms we all take for granted.
3
This election highlights the racism and lack of inclusion in the republican party lead now by someone who thinks white nationalist can be good people.
3
That someone like this gets elected says all you need to know about Mississippi and the people who live there. We have a long way to go in America and it's sad that Mr. Espy lost, as it would have been a real break-through if he won.
If you live in a world where "the blacks" are always seen as the help, then you are insensitive and unconscious, period. Just as DJT thinks all Mexicans are out to kill him, whites who think that anyone who isn't white should be feared truly believe that is true. Ignorance, but commonplace even amongst the educated.
I attended a wedding shower in Texas last April and was seated at a table of 8 other women who were much wealthier than I. They were discussing keeping guns at the ready, "just in case" in their nightstands by the bed. One remarked she wasn't sure she knew how to use it.
I sat silent. I have no gun. I want no guns. I am not so interested in my possessions or even my life that I need a gun. They are brainwashed. Do they think so? Of course not. They could just as well lose everything in a flood or a fire, including their lives, and a gun wouldn't make any difference.
Perhaps after her term is over Ms. Hyde-Smith will have awakened, but I doubt it. Maybe having to contend with "those black people" in congress might irk her "refined southern decorum". I hope.
Thank you for the article even though it was depressing!
6
A public hanging isn't a lynching, it's a legal execution(hasn't anyone seen a western?) and people of all races have been executed like this for millennia.
It was a joke, which required the event to be bad, meaning that the person doing the inviting is so appealing the invitee would even do something they wouldn't normally do(a public hanging) because that person invited them. Does the author and all the commentator really not understand this?
And whole towns were created to avoid integration throughout the north, should people who grew up in those towns be held responsible?
It's all fake outrage...
5
When the racist policy of apartheid was both law and public policy in South Africa, worldwide news media laid bare the moral stench of that policy. Consequently, official and unofficial representatives of the South African government were picketed almost everywhere they traveled. Moreover, products from that country were boycotted and companies doing business in South Africa were pressured to cease and withdraw.
Critics of that pressure advised that it was two-pronged, and it would harm black South Africans first and foremost. Nonetheless, black South African activists like Nelson Mandela, told the world that he and his followers were willing to take the “bitter pill” because it would eventually heal the “body politic” of that country. It did.
Perhaps Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and her state of Mississippi is, in limited measure, the “South Africa of 2018!”
4
I recently visited the Lynching Museum in Montgomery, Alabama and was overwhelmed by the enormity of suffering and violence whites have caused blacks for generations. I am appalled that a white southern bigot would still be elected to serve in our government in 2018. What is the matter with people? This southern woman still carries the unconsciousness and hatred towards people of color. This is not acceptable in a country where diversity is the core of who we are.
8
I also have read that in their zeal to get their white children away from black children, white parents often happily settled for segregation schools that were educationally substandard - noncredited, incompetent teachers and limited curricula that taught little. But, hey, they were white! In Hyde-Smith you can see the results. Not exactly a well-trained mind. This also helps to account for the dismal place of Mississippi at the bottom of the nation's educational attainment.
7
"Here's to the land you tore out the heart of.
Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of!"
- Phil Ochs
Just as relevant today as in 1965.
2
Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith won a hard-fought runoff election over her Democratic opponent, Mike Espy. That Mississippi is sending a Republican back to Washington is hardly a surprise, but Ms. Hyde-Smith gave the opposition hope in the closing weeks of the campaign as she careened from one gaffe to the next — each one emphasizing both that she was tone deaf and that she found humor in her state’s history of racial violence and voter http://www.result.pk/educom/suppression.
Racist terror and racial segregation have a sickening history in all parts of our country, of which this Mississippi story relates a part. Only the methods have been different.
Outside the South, racially restrictive real estate covenants achieved the same ends by forcing homebuyers to agree not to sell to non-whites, thereby establishing defacto all-white school districts.
Wherever they occur, segregated schools always bequeath a dual misery, both upon underfunded public schools— including the poor white students left behind with their fellow students of color— and upon the students in all-white schools who consciously or unconsciously are fed the poison of white supremacy and ignorance.
I feel more pity than animus toward Senator-elect Hyde-Smith.
2
Did anyone who lives there, or has traveled extensively thru the South - not known this? Their past was always there, lurking behind every corner, in the shadows, under the porches.
Lots of good people lve there, but their good has never been enough to eradicate the racism of too many others. Especially those who seek power and deem the Souths, this nation for that matter, horrible historical racist parts as good 'ol Southern traditions...worthy of reviving...
Sad really. So many of us want to move forward, too many want to drag us backwards...and are...with Trump as their spirit animal...
3
To anyone out there considering a vacation to Mississippi in the next year or so, please reconsider. Just like the apartheid boycotts years ago towards South Africa, an economic boycott by liberals and independents against Mississippi might eventually change the residents outlook on racial views. Spend your hard earned cash in a more progressive state.
2
Congrats Mississippi!
Let's see. The state is at or near the bottom of nationwide statistics for the following: healthcare, income, economy, college readiness, education, infant mortality, and employment.
They're at or near the top of the following: obesity, teenage pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, tobacco use.
But the coasts are full of snooty librul elites with their fancy college degrees.
Keep voting for the same politicians, Rebels. You haven't reached rock bottom yet. That will be when your 50th or 1st in all the categories listed above.
5
Most tech companies are staffed by a diverse group of people. In a state that has history of state sponsored segregation how could any CEO contemplate moving there.? I guess no one ever told the voters that when you are in a hole stop digging. Sure you may like waking up in the morning seeing neighbors who look and think like you. BUT! When because of your likes your state is one of the biggest basket cases for federal aid and people avoid your state like the plague it is time to start to use the gray matter. Isn't it time to stop fighting the Civil War?
2
A response to Mark from Iowa: You write: "If there was something I could do as a parent to send my kid to a place where there were no...kids from broken families with no father in the picture, I would do what it takes. I do not want to disenfranchise anyone or segregate anyone..." Can you answer these questions? Do you not see how you just contradicted yourself, here, Mark? Isn't the very nature of separating your children from "those" children the very definition of segregation? Do you know why, historically, so many "broken" families exist? Are you unaware of institutional racism, laws that discriminate against people of color or those who cannot afford lawyers so they must falsely plead guilty in order to return to their minimum wage jobs? Have you not heard of the school-to-prison pipeline? Are children automatically assumed unworthy of being with your children because they are not raised in the home of their fathers?
4
Everyone should listen to Phil Ochs’ song “Here’s to the State of Mississippi.” As true today as when written over 40 years ago.
2
For several decades after Brown v. Board of Ed, Mississippi also eliminated mandatory education. That way white families who couldn't afford tuition at the seggies didn't have to send their kids to schools with black kids. They didn't have to send them to school at all.
2
Out of the mouth the heart speaks.
1
Apparently there is no cure for black-hearted stupidity when it is willed by the resentful. Even “Christianity” cannot save them from the fear and resentment that they call the “Southern culture.” Sad and pathetic, but they seem to love it.
2
Binding up the wounds of our nation after the Civil War was bungled. The South should have rejoined the Union as two or three states total with only 3/5ths of the white population counted toward representation in the House of Representatives. Further, there weren't nearly enough trials and executions for the treason of every single surviving Confederate soldier. The racist herd needed to be culled. Severely. Sherman's march to the sea was merely a good start. Too many survivors and too much tolerance for symbols of the treasonous rebellion. The song Dixie? Treason. Stars and Bars Confederate flag? Treason. Get my drift? Freedom of speech does not include treasonous rhetoric or seditious symbols. The racist traitors have gotten away with far too much for far too long.
3
Plantation Politics has never gone out of style and probably never will. More's the pity. For all of us.
1
Lighten up! If people choose to segregate there is less interracial interaction and therefore less opportunity for hatred.
Besotted with vicious and vacuous " identity politics " the Democratic Party continues to unmask racists and racism under every bed in the manner that old Joe McCarthy unmasked RED communists loyal to Moscow in " The Haunted Fifties " ( a book by I.F. Stone ) .
You would think that the Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King ended as a sad failure.
I don't trust sanctimonious " liberal " zealots who see racism and nothing else . Most poor people are white in capitalist USA. They don't enjoy " white privilege " .Why are poor white kids invisible in the " liberal " news media ?
I voted for SOCIALISTS - not Trump -in 2016.
Could Cindy Hyde-Smith be just a product of an insane racist academy perduring in Mississippi's 'heart'? This is an awful predicament, scary no matter which way you look at it. Are we so credulous, and uneducated, unable to think for ourselves, unable to look into our soul, as to realize the stupidity if not malice, to think we may be superior to others because of the color of our skin (and other ethnic characteristics)? This obtuseness may be 'normal' in a narcissist (excessive love for oneself, removing any chance to feel for others) but I refuse to believe all Mississippians are Narcisus' twins.
Mississippians should be ashamed.
This woman, and Trump, embarrass me and our country. MY country, the one I proudly served as both soldier and civilian. I am deeply ashamed of what this fool and his minions in Washington are doing, and that woman adds much to it.
The worst part of her act is that she's so clueless, or uncaring, or just plain ignorant. Jeff Sessions knows what he's saying, be it outright or his typical dog-whistle statements, but she apparently believes she's witty, humorous, and not a racist. I'm glad to be old now, so I won't live to see what they do to my country, and our shared planet. Good luck, kids!
3
"...Perhaps…for much of her life [Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith] has been hearing only one side of an argument..." [op cit]
--
Yes, I suppose I agree.
But I’m still, “in sympathy.”
Here’s why:
—
Admittedly, the Senator and I are remarkably different. But we do share things in common. Not the least, are the effects of “the growing-up times,” we spent in the South.
--
As a young stranger, I found the South to be full of grace and charm--bursting with brave boys, and many girls who would soon be endowed with the lasting beauty of the Senator herself!
Notwithstanding, there would be no romance for me. For I was fated to be born, “a Yankee,” whose Northern ways were inbred, and were not coming out.
As proof? I can attest that I was routinely surrounded and “soundly beaten,” by lopsided armies of pre-pubescent, “Sons of the South,” who were the children of locals who mistrusted the North, “and its opposing principals.”
—
Now here’s the point:
As a youngster, I learned in my own way [the hard way], to admire and not resent the legacy of the Old South, that lives on today, in the New South.
—
Do I condone all traditions passed down? No!
Is there “a larger conversation,” to be had? Yes, always.
—
But when will come, “that Healing Balm, reaching deep-down to the depths, in every sacred hollow, and hallowed patch of ground, of the Land not Forgotten!?”
[Optional tears of the like-minded are welcomed.]
—
I’m giving you my assessment, as best I can.
Why not share yours?
To those who did not vote for Hyde-Smith, but will nonetheless suffer at the hands of her racist governance, I have sincere concern and empathy for all of you and your families.
To those who did vote for her, however, I have absolutely no concern for you or for anyone in your family. You brought this on yourselves. You elected a "Senator" who will do her utmost to continue to make the United States a laughing stock at best, and a dystopian nightmare at worst.
But understand this, Hyde-Smith voters. You've dragged the rest of us down with you, as your "Senator" will exercise her power affecting millions of us who do not even live in Mississippi.
So enjoy your ignorance. Enjoy your xenophobia. Enjoy your racism. Enjoy your salutes to a "president" who says that the KKK and neo-Nazis are some very fine people. Because that's all you'll get with the likes of Hyde-Smith. You won't get access to affordable health care. You won't get access to affordable higher education. And you won't get job retraining.
Was the racism really worth it? Was the xenophobia really worth it? Do you really feel that much better seeing your "Senator" in a Confederate uniform praising her state's history of slavery, while you stand in the unemployment line? Or when you can't pay those mounting medical bills? Because that's all "leaders" like Hyde-Smith have given you -- a license to hate. Try feeding your families with that.
4
Boycott Mississipi.
3
". . . Ms. Hyde-Smith claimed not to understand why so many found a racial meaning in what she claimed to believe was a joke about hanging."
That's because sober, dispassionate adults understand that a public hanging is the end of a judicial process, and in the 17th through the mid-20th century in America, it was an orderly public spectacle where certain people (crime victim's family, local officials, etc.) would probably be in the front row. A lynching (the hysterical, saucer-eyed misconstruction of Hyde-Smith's words) is just a mob running amok -- but you knew that.
And spare us all the righteous indignation about segregation in the South. Earlier this year we all read:
'NYC Has the Most Segregated Schools in the Country. How Do We Fix That?'
https://observer.com/2018/06/new-york-city-public-school-segregation/
2
The author claims that there are "constituents of hers for whom hanging is not a joke". I feel sorry for them, if there are any. To get so upset over something deep in history is not a sign of mental health.
Is anyone really upset, I doubt it. This was just a convenient stick to use. In today's society, being offended is as natural as eating.
1
I'm a white male, and I grew up in Mississippi and attended a segregation academy, as chosen by my parents. We were not taught about the civil rights movement, lynchings in MS, black history, or even Martin Luther King, Jr. We were taught a lot about the Civil War, but to my recollection hardly anything about slavery.
Once I went to college, left MS., and began to read and study outside of that segregated, small town community, I realized the true history of my home, why things remain the way they do, and how those responsible maintain that perpetual ignorance.
That being said, living in a bubble, or by habit and "because everyone else does" is no excuse. No matter how much they dislike hearing about it, white people must come to terms with the mistakes of history; stereotypes will continue until they are proven different.
As long as the education system continues to be split along class and racial lines, they will continue to grow up ignorant and believe, as we were told, that it was "by choice" that black kids didn't want to go to white schools.
Another thing that I noticed during this election, is that even the left-leaning media came to the sad conclusion that "the only way Mike Espy could win was if black voters turned out overwhelmingly, and white voters stayed at home."
Reach across. Maybe MS will stay the same for a long time, but let's educate future generations. Our children are worth it, at least not to suffer from the same ignorance and stupidity.
5
An outstanding piece, and a sobering reminder that public taxpayer dollars have subsidized White Supremacy and institutional racism for decades. The fact that Mike Espy came within 8 percentage points of winning, in the context of his own background and Mississippi’s, is nothing short of astounding.
3
It's the so-called Great State of Mississippi the land that keeps their womenfolk barefoot, pregnant, ignorant and the other folks as far from a voting booth as they possibly can.
Will it change, who knows. They still fight the years from 1861-1865. They still wave the "stars and bars" every chance they can get. As for their new Senator she mirrors their thoughts. The Grand Old Party? Not so grand anymore.
It's the 21st Century not the 18th or 19th. Get real.
1
Nina Simone did this song about Mississippi around 1964.
1
What she said is a figure of speech. That is why she doesn't understand that those who don't know or use this figure of speech would find it inappropriate. It's like saying "He jewed me out of it!" or using the phrase "indian giver". Both are inappropriate, yet for older people, they learned them in their youth when this phrases were more socially acceptable. I'm not making excuses for Hyde-Smith, only explaining why she is tone deaf.
2
She is teaching us what her parents taught her at the dinner table. At the Academies she met like minded pupils. She in turn sent her daughter to a school like her alma mater. The sad part is that her and her parents choice of schools does not bother the majority of Mississippians. Reading comments defending Mississippi I wonder how can you defend the indefensible? Emmet Till,The Three Civil Rights Workers and etc. is not a figament of our imagination. Hearing white voters say they find her comments disturbing but hey plan to still vote for her is laughable. It is not because they support the former Democrat Hyde-Smith polices.If having a state that a lot of people refuse to get off the interstate to buy gas is acceptable so be it. Having been stationed at Keesler Air Force Base in Bilioxi I can tell you fist hand how beuatiful thE Gulf Coast is. I can also tell that if traveling today I would do everything not to venture anywhere looking for gas. The vote Tuesday just says the stigma the state carries will live on. What big company with a diverse workforce would ever think of locating there? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
6
Ms. Hyde-Smith just makes me feel sick to my stomach. I don’t understand how a human can be this primitive. And yet she was just elected to the senate.
I don’t know a lot about Mr. Espy, but if he has a heart and a heart beat, he was far and away the superior candidate in this race.
It’s a very sad day for America.
3
So; what did the Segregated "academies" teach all the Mississippians who didn't attend- but voted for Hyde-Smith?
Apparently they didn't require Academic lessons in racism to *lessen* their view of the world. Hyde-Smith represents a world view that a majority of Mississippians will go to their confederate graves preferring.
Here's hoping she is a pariah in the Senate.
1
Ths Snopes family all voted for her.
1
From what I've learned by being heavily involved in the Texas school curricula and school books controversy, both curricula and textbooks in so-called Christian academies can be still worse. How many of these are descended from the segregation academies? I vaguely recall a Georgian or South Carolinian describing the Obamas as "uppity" people during the campaign of 1968. The person could not have been ignorant of the word that always has followed "uppity" in Southern white speech. It starts with N.
3
“the Civil War is still going on. It’s still to be fought and regrettably it can still be lost.” Barbara Fields, Ken Burns "The Civil War:
4
This predictable result just reinforces the the common theme, “at least we don’t live in Mississippi “.
3
Some ancient Greeks were caught between Scylla and Charybdis; we, American citizens, are stuck between artificial intelligence and natural stupidity. It seems as if stupidity is winning.
I must give Trump, Hyde-Smith, and their supporters credit for inspiring me to read Eric Foner's books on American history and Kenneth Davis' book "Don't Know Much About American Presidents." If you are familiar with these works, read them again in light of current events.
3
When someone speaks her mind and what she says shows her to be both a bigot and a person eager to deny her fellow citizens the right to vote, that's not just a "gaffe". That shows what sort of person she is.
6
“And yet, for all its size and all its wealth and all the “progress” it babbles of, it is almost as sterile, artistically, intellectually, culturally, as the Sahara Desert. There are single acres in Europe that house more first-rate men than all the states south of the Potomac; there are probably single square miles in America. If the whole of the late Confederacy were to be engulfed by a tidal wave tomorrow, the effect upon the civilized minority of men in the world would be but little greater than that of a flood on the Yang-tse-kiang. It would be impossible in all history to match so complete a drying-up of a civilization.”
H.L. Mencken writing on the American South in “The Sahara of the Bozart” in 1917.
True then, and in much of its politics still overwhelmingly true today.
http://writing2.richmond.edu/jessid/eng423/restricted/mencken.pdf
3
@A. Stanton
I wonder whether H.L.Mencken realized that not everyone who lived in the “late Confederacy” in his time was white and also that not every white person raised there was satisfied to remain ignorant. This is the kind of statement that, while exhibiting a grain of truth, also clearly displays the very limited understanding and scope of its writer.
1
If taxpayer funding, e.g., vouchers, for such schools was found unconstitutional in 1970, how is it that 750,000 white students were enrolled in them by 1974? Any use of public resources including taxpayer dollars for such whites only schools is unconstitutional. Period. Historians tell us that the Segregation Era ended in the 1950s. In Mississippi, however, it is still alive and well. Hyde-Smith and the Mississippi senate election are perfectly exemplary. Only 15% of white voters voted for the eminently qualified Espy. The remaining 85% of white voters voted for Hyde-Smith who is either a hard core racist or altogether ignorant of Mississippi's long and deplorable history of lynching black Americans. Either case tells us she is unfit to hold office.
4
Nina Simone was right.
2
"Sometimes referred to as “freedom of choice schools,” segregation academies were a private school concept adopted in Mississippi and found across the South in the decade following the Brown v. Board of Education decision. They were conceived as a way to permit white parents to avoid sending their children to schools with black students and a legal way to work around the Brown decision, which did not apply to private schools."
Correct.
One wonders if Professor Rooks is aware that Thurgood Marshall, architect of the Brown decision, sent his sons to private school.
Why?
According to Juan Williams,author of THURGOOD MARSHALL: AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY, Marshall wanted his children to get the best education possible.
He wanted better for them than the public schools could provide.
Schools which were established as segregation academies no longer receive public funds; they thrive or perish on their own.
Why fault those parents who want the best for their children and are able to afford it?
Just wondering.
The saying these days is that Republicans used to use the dog whistle on race, now they use a bullhorn.
But Ms. Hyde-Smith's passion for a front row seat at a lynching carries a deeper significance. The Jim Crow system in the deep South was always about more than separating the races.
From the moment the 13th Amendment was passed in 1865 the white South fought to restore its system of racial subordination.
White would rule over black in ever sphere of life. It had to because otherwise black labor couldn't be exploited and the productivity of that labor was the edifice on which South's economy was built.
The only way that a system of such total and domination could survive is through violence. Public violence was administered through local sheriff and contract labor prisons. But every white person had a right to carry out extra-judicial violence in a variety of forms.
The most extreme was the public lynching, a ritual sometimes performed before thousands of on lookers with the purpose to terrorize and intimidate as well as murder.
Any black person could be a victim at any time. The rule of law did not apply and the law often conspired in the lynching along with the mob.
Torture often preceded the lynching with body parts being cut off as souvenirs. The honor of white womanhood and her sexual purity were often raised as the rational.
Ms. Hyde-Smith knows this history about her home state and to this day is happy to have a front row seat.
And she is now a US senator.
3
Ms. Hyde-Smith was born in 1959.
The last hanging as legal execution in the US was in 1936.
The last lynching in the US was 1981.
Which of those events occurred within her lifetime and is more likely to be the allusion?
31
@Capt. Penny
Either way the image of someone hanging from a rope dead is truly appalling. If I believe she was not making a racist comment there is still an awful undertone of tortuous capital punishment. Nothing to joke about in my neck of the woods!
Anyone who condones her comment needs to take a trip to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice aka the National Lynching Memorial in Birmingham, AL. If that doesn’t move them then I doubt anything will.
We were accosted by a campaign commercial by a losing candidate for governor who said something like, this is how we deal with enemies in SC, pan to a rattling rattlesnake, then the candidate whips out a handgun and points and shoots (not sure of the shooting part). I’m sure she was dumbfounded by the uproar. Fortunately she lost not solely due to the commercial but because of her bungling of many serious public health crises during her stint as a director of a state government agency.
I’m going to sign off now to go hike the Appalachian Trail...
9
This story omits a significant detail. Many, perhaps most, of the segregation academies were designated “Christian” schools. Churches with physical classroom facilities for Sunday school could simply open during the week to house such enterprises.
2
Thank you very much for this eye-opening and soberly told history lesson. Will definitely share with my students in my class on "Notions of class--On the intersection of race, class, and gender" here at the Universite Jean Moulin, Lyon 3.
Hopefully Mr. Espy will live to run another time and others like him with their inclusive, egalitarian vision will be more successful in 2020 and beyond.
13
I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. I have a PhD in electrical engineering from Mississippi State University. The overt racism I witnessed in Cleveland when I was young beats any that I saw in Mississippi. Nobody in Mississippi flew Confederate flags, for they were considered impolite (Ole Miss banned them at football games decades ago.)
I would submit that on an every-day basis blacks are treated no better in Ohio or California or New York than they are in Lowndes County, Mississippi. I would further submit that no state is working harder to improve race relations than Mississippi. Ohio surely doesn't, and I've seen little effort in Massachusetts, California, or New York. It's anecdotal, but our modest neighborhood in Starkville had a number of black families who retired there from the north. The lady explained to me that the food was better, living costs were low, and the atmosphere seemed at least as comfortable as it had been in Chicago.
The state is well aware of its history, and yes, the old segregation academies still exist. (When I lived there, these schools were routinely excluded from state and regional sports competitions. When, after bitter complaint, they were allowed to compete with the public schools they met with consistent defeat.)
We'd still be living there, summers included, but we're academics and we had to follow the harvest, so to speak.
4
@Mark Kinsler Surely, you jest! But if not, I would submit that your limitation to give an honest and accurate assessment is exposed in the phrase, "blacks are treated no better in Ohio or California or New York than they are in Lowndes County, Mississippi." In that wording Blacks are the passive, collective subjects of a dominant force, "treated" rather than living, or working or experiencing. Your comment is merely anecdotal, from the very limited perspective of a White man who can "see" how Blacks around him are treated by his fellows.
2
@Mark Kinsler Treated no better than Blacks in Ohio,Mass and New York? Even if that was true it justifies Mississippi in 2018? No Conferate Flags Really when the State Flag has it on there. Also why would you have to follow the harvest if good seeds where planted in Mississippi? You could probably find a few people of color who like Trump also. Would that make his brand of racism OK in your book? If you looked hard enough you could more than likeky find some singing and dancing as they do their daily chores. Really! The election Tuesday is Mississippi trying to change its image?
2
I lived in Mississippi during the 80s, when I worked at the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss. Although I was raised in Nashville, Tn. during the 60s, when sit-ins were at their height, and lived in Richmond, Va., I was stunned at not only the amount of segregation, but its legacy. This was a state where black people were still "boys" and "girls", not "men" and "women." Another point not mentioned: the outgoing legislators changed laws so tax levies had to be approved with a super-majority, thus ensuring that monies would continue to flow to the "Seg Academies." (That's what white Mississippians called the schools, by the way.) So no, Mr. Jabo, this columnist is not "foisting" racist behavior on the South. Everyone in Mississippi knew/knows what was going on. Hyde-Smith included.
20
Cindy Hyde-Smith's comment was appalling, and it's important to note that her words were met with "both laughter and applause" from the audience.
17
@AW Thank you for pointing this out. Exactly the reason that I think Cindy Hyde-Smith not only knew what her"hanging" and "voting" comments implied but intentionally used them to gain support of individuals she knew would agree with such comments. More of a "dog whistle" than a gaffe.
3
Sorry. But if Cindy Hyde-Smith doesn't realize the significance of her comment about being in the front row of a public hanging and it's close reference to lynching, no one does. Especially when you consider that state's history and her own personal background -- like the 2014 photo of herself dressed in a Confederate uniform inside the home of Confederate General Jefferson Davis, or the 2007 legislation she sponsored to honor fallen Confederate soldiers as heroes protecting their "homeland" instead of being cast as traitors to the U.S., or the "segregation academy" she attended while in high school.
The fact that Hyde-Smith later sought to publicly distance herself from her "public hanging" statement proves she indeed knew what she was saying, and it wasn't a joke.
And this is supposed to make America great again?
18
Great job by Mike Espy in this campaign. If he runs again in 2020 Dems might actually have a chance here - Hyde-Smith will now have the microscope on her for the next two years and she appears so incompetent and embarrassing that even Mississippi may eventually want to dump her.
Sadly this episode reminds us that the ugly racial era of Jim Crow advocacy was alive and well and completely out in the open less than 60 years ago. Young people of that era may very well still be alive today. Those who waved Confederate flags for at Wallace for President rallies in their 20s in 1968 could very well be wearing MAGA hats at Trump rallies in 2018. At a minimum, many of today's middle-aged white Mississippians are the children of those who led the resistance to integration in the 50s and 60s. Although many in Mississippi and the Deep South have matured, modernized, learned and broken from their forefathers and this ugly past, the tolerance for Hyde-Smith tells us many others have not.
10
Could there possibly be some correlation between Mississippi ‘s bottom-of-the-barrel education, healthcare, and GDP rankings and the GOP’s white-makes-right stranglehold on the state?
I’d like to see the Democrats put an end to blue state / blue-district subsidization of red state red-district failures. It’s an argument the GOP would respect, if there are any left who aren’t complete hypocrites.
8
Mississippi can have private schools but why are they publicly funded?
We'll see if she is any good at Getting Stuff for Mississippi.
If she's not, she likely won't be popular long with the "get the government out of my Medicare" crowd.
7
@mbh
Segregation academies were established with the support of state governments in the aftermath of the Brown decision.
This support was phased out years ago.
This is what happens when a country's politics exalts the private and downgrades public services.
When inequality has increased and the middle and working class is weakening.
When various groups have to compete for economic crumbs, politicians exploit racism to win votes.
All kinds of critters are swimming up from the swamp depths, feeling emboldened in the Trump era.
Have any studies been done on why some people continue the racism of past generations, while others are able to break free and change their attitudes?
14
The senator brings to mind something Will Rogers said or wrote, that it's hard to explain something to a man whose job depends on his not understanding. Maybe the senator doesn't understand, but it's difficult to believe that she wants to.
13
Corporations, not limited to those who have already requested refunds from the Hyde-Smith campaign, will be re-evaluating MS as a future investment.
There is a reason that MS continues to lead the US in negative social statistics. The antebellum divisions in MS have never healed. Now the candidate most closely aligned with the White Nationalist movement has been barely elected.
Most companies will be reconsidering the optics of the MS flag, dominated by the Confederate battle flag, gracing their MS facilities.
Not a good look...
13
This vivid op ed has plenty of history, facts and data, needed now during the Trump reign.
We have to admit this political trend---that the public good in education and all services is shortchanged and under funded. Often this is deliberate. It's privatization and profits that are funded by our tax payer dollars, in education, health care, etc.
After tax cuts for the rich, the burden falls on average earners. Local schools are funded by a small pool of local property taxes--- worsening class/racial/economic division--- instead of by a larger pool of state or federal funding that could lead to better equality. Then the GOP enflames resentments between groups---racial, ethnic and economic.
Who pays for elections in America is the key. We can't fund public services that should be well supported in any modern democracy, until we first remove the campaign financing barrier to any reforms.
Meanwhile the GOP simply utilizes racism from generations past to send messages and win votes. Then they claim it's their critics who are 'politicizing' things. What else would they say?
But, in this recent election, let's remember those racial minority candidates who did get a lot of votes, from all races, and if they lost, it wasn't by much, so they really challenged their opponents.
8
@Meredith A few facts from the article. The schools where the candidate and her daughter attended were founded in 1970, which happened to be the year that using tax funds for segregated private schools was declared unconstitutional. So the whole issue of public funding is mute.
1
@wnhoke, I think the comment's well-taken point is that segregation academies were funded with taxpayer dollars for 16 years.
2
@SandraH. Yes, that may be true, but how does that relate to Cindy Hyde-Smith?
Or to the schools she or her daughter attended?
The south remains different. Mississippi remains profoundly different. Ms. Hyde-Smith will sit in the Senate at full parity with the Senators from California and New York.
We have put two very limited men in the Whitehouse with minorities of the popular vote within a sixteen year period. Only one party with outdated values and attitudes appears to be benefitting from this circumstance. There is nothing forcing us to wait for a major crisis. We can demand change now.
19
@Warren Shingle: I also condemn Ms. Hyde-Smith and the choices of Mississippi voters. But why compare to senators from California and New York? Why is the default comparison ALWAYS those two coastal states? Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota also have two Democrats each in the senate.
4
This one is a tough call for me. Remember that about half of the residents of southern states are victims of these oppressive ideologies. If you help the states, you will help the oppressors. If you hurt the states with boycotts, the oppressed will suffer far more than the oppressors. I believe that the solution lies elsewhere.
On the one hand, the 49% of us who voted Democrat in GA this year know that education, economic vitality, and diversity are the best ways to turn the south "blue" sooner rather than later. On the other hand, the Republicans who control the region from Texas to Florida and beyond will make sure that the economic advantages go to the Republicans and their cronies first.
Any boycotts and sanctions will really hurt the poor and won't change the minds of Republicans. Boycotts would ultimately turn the rest of the south into Mississippi-like Republican fiefdoms.
Across the country, we need clean water, clean air, healthcare, public education, and basic civil rights. We need your help, Blue States.
We lack basic healthcare, schools, and civil rights. If you want to help us change the south, ask your legislators to pass federal laws regarding public education funding and basic civil rights. Help your congressional representative push laws regarding voting rights and funding of voting infrastructure. Finally, help your legislators pass federal laws regarding healthcare for rural areas.
27
If anyone in Mississippi is wondering the reason why they weren't on the list for Amazon HQ2 (or any meaningful investment at all) they need only look in a mirror. No one of any real value wants to be part of a backward, bigoted society. The future will not invest in the past.
90
@Cassandra No one wonders why Amazon didn't go to Mississippi. In GA, we had many Republican legislators calling for Amazon to stay away. The Republicans want to keep the poor impoverished and uneducated. Southern Republicans want their RFRA. Southern Republicans want companies who don't care about pollution or poverty. Southern Republicans want companies that look the other way as unapologetic White Christian Nationalist politicians rule the states.
id we make a big mistake in fighting the Civil War? Had we let the South go its own way, it would have been a slave state that might have atrophied because of its own internal economic and social weakness. (This doesn't answer the painful question of the resulting fate and suffering of the trapped slaves.) I ask this question only because of my belief that the South, with its backward, cruel beliefs and values has been damaging the country for decades and is now on the brink of ruining it. Trump is the South's choice. When foreign friends ask me, how I explain our sick politics, I reply, "We haven't finished with the Civil War."
41
@Ron
As anyone such as myself who worked down South and a native New Yorker at that in the 1960's it is never called by white people the "Civil War"but "The War Between the States". I have a feeling this new Senator says this herself.
1
I am so sad to see this outcome - a setback for decency in Mississippi.
30
I believe Massachusetts set up similar schools and academies at the time of the 1970s busing crisis. This is a liberal, blue state issue too. MA had one of the most sordid histories of racial injustice and violence of any state.
16
@John Ramey - True - I'd seen a very interesting article about that, which I can't find right now, by a native Southie who documented that the violence in Boston during integration was based in part by the fact that the poor kids of both races were being forced to travel to equally poor schools, outside of their neighborhoods, while the wealthier white communities didn't participate in integrating. And the kids in the buses knew what was going on.
9
@John Ramey
There were also Boston suburbs that participated in a voluntary busing program (METCO) to promote desegregation. I grew up in Concord and as a student I wasn't aware of the administrative details but was impressed by the busload of kids who willingly got up around 5 am to make the 45+ minute trip and arrive in time for the morning bell while I just had a 10 minute walk.
4
This is a point conservatives often make; liberals want fully integrated schools as long as their children don't have to participate @John Ramey
Thanks.
I'd always wondered why vouchers were so controversial, but I didn't realize that there was an ugly history of backdoor racism that it allowed.
23
@John As well as subsidizing religious proselytizing and indoctrination with public funds.
I don't want to take on the role of defender of Sen. Hyde-Smith or to take a position on whether she makes racist comments. That would require me to put in far more effort than I wish to expend. But it is important for the sake of public discourse to put to rest the rapidly spreading meme about the "support" for public hanging allegedly embodied in her remark.
Rather than explain it myself, let me quote an authority on sociolinguistics (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/us/politics/public-hanging-cindy-hyde-smith.html):
"The phrase had indeed once been used as an expression of regard. People would use the idiom to convey that they thought so highly of someone they would attend something as distasteful as a public hanging with him."
So it need not actually be about the topic of "public hangings" at all. It should also be pointed out that public hangings have been popular in both Europe and the US for centuries, usually officially sanctioned. But it was unwise for Sen. Hyde-Smith to attempt such a witticism in times when sinister interpretations, often willful, are to be expected.
The present era of social justice, when literalism is the sole mode of understanding, is no time for the use of irony.
13
@ERP Words and phrases have long histories, but they are used in the present, and in modern Mississippi, the phrase can't help but summon up an image of lynching. She might well have used it carelessly, but a thoughtful apology, something to show that she understands the last century of history from as non-Whites experienced it, would have been appropriate.
The appearance is that she calculated that she wasn't going to win any Black votes anyway, and an apology would have been decent, but would have offended the unreformed White Supremacists among her base -- so she chose to stick with them. That's how politics works, it's not about the hypothetical historical/linguistic source of a phrase...
5
But among whom was the phrase used? I'll bet it was used only among those holding the systemic reins of power, which we cannot overlook was based entirely on race. So simply to assert that the phrase was used does not make it less racist.
1
@ERP, Paul Reed, the authority you reference, also says that the phrase about attending a public hanging peaked in popularity during the Civil Rights era in the 1960s. I think Hyde-Smith's comment must be understood in the context of over 600 lynchings in Mississippi following Reconstruction.
A recent Secretary of Education was a Republican because he grew up in "Democratic" Mississippi. Actually, he grew up in Dixiecrat Mississippi.
10
How do those multinational companies with a presence in Mississippi explain Hyde-Smith to their customers?
11
@Veteran
How do multiinational companies with a presence in Utah explain Oren Hatch to their customers?
4
Germans after World War II, at least in the west, had to undergo or do something called Vergangenhietsbewaeltigung. Senator Hyde-Smith, like many Southerners, has not gone through this painful and traumatic experience and grown in spiritual wisdom from it. She has both been sheltered from it and been trained to spot it coming and actively avoid it. Her cowardice and terror at running from reporters reveals much about who she is and about the people that voted for her.
43
@sdavidc9 We still need some sort of South Africa-style "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" here. It might be helpful. The truth should be told.
@sdavidc9......Ok, David, I went to google and looked up Vergangenhietsbewaeltigung. One of those nice extra long german words. It means overcoming the past.
The Germans have plenty of past to overcome. But so does America. Imagine having to even make this comparison. Those fighting WW2 would never have imagined it. But would they ever imagine a President Trump?
The US soldiers fighting to save the world from Nazi 'master race' tyranny, which would have subjugated the world, were themselves segregated by race. Whites were deemed so superior to blacks, they had to be separate-- or the whites would be 'insulted'. Then Truman oulawed that in '48. And Ike put it into practice.
Wasn't that long ago.
For the record, Cindy Hyde-Smith has in fact apologized for the bad remark, at her debate, so it is not true that 'she has steadfastly refused to apologize'.
Mike Espy also was an imperfect candidate and was accused of financial and ethical impropriety. This is not good either.
The voters chose one flawed candidate over the other in a free and fair election. Sound familiar? If the Democrats do not like the result of the election, they stop at nothing to undermine the winner - Trump is pillared by the MSM, and now so is Senator Hyde-Smith, and the governor-elects of GA and FL, and the newly elected Senator of FL.
3
@Philly
Mr. Espy was acquitted. Please do not leave out that important fact.
False equivalences are not helpful.
And examples of massive voter suppression such as that in Georgia hardly makes the case of fair elections. In Georgia, on a single day in 2017 summer, 500,000 voters were purged from the lists, and 1.5 million in total among many other tactics to limit the voting especially of minorities.
45
@Philly, Okay she apologized, fair enough. What about her visit to the Confederate home of Jeff Davis in which she was photographed wearing Confederate garb and commenting on Mississippi's "finest history". An elected representative should represent ALL their constituents not just the "history not hate" crowd.
3
@Philly That is just not true. Hyde-Smith did not apologize for her remarks.
The vote was split by race. If the vote was about policy, it wouldn't split by race year after year.
Finally, it seems that Republicans are the ones who scream about election fraud that doesn't exist. Democrats are just not very hateful and spiteful. Southern Republicans spew lies (e.g. Kemp, Scott) about elections for no good reason. Southern Republicans just love their little fiefdoms and will stop at nothing to stay in power. It would be sad if it wasn't so horribly anti-democratic and un-American.
6
"The campaign gaffes of Mississippi’s newly elected senator reveal the way that the past is always present."
This sounds like a paraphrase from an earlier generation Mississippian: " The past is never dead. It's not even past." (cf "Requiem for a Nun," by William Faulkner, 1951). Faulkner had once, while allegedly drunk, said he would take up arms against the federal government should they forcibly attempt to integrate Mississippi.
7
I now understand why “school choice vouchers” are anathema to some. I always had some sympathy for the idea that tax paying parents who preferred a private education for their children deserved a break, rather than paying double. I was unaware that these segregated schools received public funding.
I will never understand those who think their children are better off being ignorant of others.
28
@Lawyermom, there are also private religious schools, which indoctrinate their students in other ways. I have no sympathy for those parents and am adamant that they don't deserve the tax dollars of the rest of us.
20
@Seabiscute Every single one of the segregation academies claimed to be a private religious school. While such a school might actually exist in the south, a quick look at the dearth of colored faces in the yearbook usually proves that it is an outright lie.
For all those people saying that segregation academies reflect Mississippi's racist culture - the same types of private schools were set up in Pasadena, CA as soon as it was forced to integrate by court order in 1970. Several cities that were part of the Pasadena Unified School District broke off and created their own school districts so that they could avoid having to integrate their schools. And the situation persists to this day, in a very liberal state and a very liberal city - most middle-class parents send their kids to private schools in Pasadena.
12
@Anna You are right, racism turns out not to be confined to the South. Martin Luther King was attacked viciously in Chicago, and we had anti-busing violence here in Boston -- and we still have massive racial segregation. Although it was never a complete equivalency: Black people moved North for good reasons.
2
@Anna You make it sound as if it is purely racism in Pasadena today. Given some parents' desire for better teacher/student ratios, well founded curricula, and simply excess politicization of so many things that go on in heavily liberal communities and school systems, I can't see how such a narrow lens is justified.
1
Interesting. I was raised in Redlands, CA, went to the public schools, and remember only a handful of black students.@Anna
There were plenty of folks from Mississippi who fought for the Union in the Civil War. Most of them were black, but some werent. Not all white Southerners drink or drank the Confederate Kool-aid; some white Mississippians realized that if they did not own slaves they would be competing with slave labor and would have trouble getting or holding the best, most productive land.
These Union soldiers should have statues in town squares that tell and honor their stories. When such statues exist and are honored, the claim of the South to honor its history and tradition will be true rather than hypocritical self-deception.
15
@sdavidc9
STOP right there. Time for a reality-check.
Black men were not allowed to fight as soldiers in the Confederate Army for much the same reason why they weren't at first allowed to fight for the Union -- neither side wanted to trust them with a gun in their hands.
Blacks were however allowed to be cooks and manual laborers, a practice that went on for decades.
No offense, but FACTS HELP.
1
I can't see any company or business wanting to relocate to Mississippi. Not if they want to hire the best and brightest. The state is dead last when it comes to median income, education quality and infrastructure.
28
I'm appalled, but not surprised in the least that Hyde-Smith was elected. She perfectly represents Mississippi, its long history of racism, segregation, Jim Crow, etc. She will work for Trump to make and keep America white.
I've been rethinking the whole Civil War thing. The next any Southern state wants to secede, I think we let them. Move our military bases to the states that want progress, that want to live in the 21st not the antebellum South. Stop giving those states subsidies in the form of taxes (my state pays more in taxes to the federal government than we get in return, while Mississippi gets more in federal aid than they pay in taxes). The Civil War ended in 1865--153 years ago, and yet looking at the outcome of this election and the attitude of Hyde-Smith, it is as if the Civil War was never fought, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments never passed, that battles fought during the 1950s and 1960s for civil rights never happened.
And I'm tired of the excuses made for this woman. How can she NOT know that the black experience in Mississippi is not the same as her experience in Mississippi. As a US Senator, she is supposed to represent ALL of the citizens of Mississippi, not just the white, wealthy, Christian ones.
76
@marybeth
I have no problem keeping them but I do have a problem with excessive federal financing. Welfare state.
Why do we all believe that an election victory on a Tuesday, yes, a work day for most, translates to how "majority" of a State or country feels? Our election system is so very flawed and undemocratic, why don't we fix it? Why do elrctions need to be on a Tuesday? Why do we allow gerrymandering? Why not have a national holiday so people can vote? Why do some precincts have proportionately far fewer voting booths than others? Why does our system not allow one person one vote? Why does an electoral college system determine the outcome of Presidential elections? Why do small states have two senators? So many questions, so few answers. All that said MS clearly needs attitude adjustmrnt under a moral leader, clearly missing in the State and Federal levels.
23
@Election farce .....well put and you cover all bases. The NYT has to do a series of op eds addressing all these questions you put. There is mass confusion about voting, the electoral college, what's legal vs illegal, etc.
The closing of voting stations, making people travel and stand in long lines, should be a crime, not left up to the whim of local lords.
I just read recent letters to editor, some defending the electoral college, and some saying it has to end.
The Times, if it's all the news fit to print as it's historical slogan goes, should compare our voting mess to other democracies. Nothing like contrast.
In many nations, they vote on holidays, or make voting day a holiday.
Everyone is registered to vote.
They have independent commissions, not political parties, draw their voting districts when needed.
Their campaigns are shorter and they don't turn their elections over to rich donors for financing.
Many countries-- says Wikipedia---actually ban the huge, costly campaign advertising that flood our media and need billionaire financing. This helps 'prevent special interests from dominating political messaging'.
Just imagine.
They seem to exist in a different century--- a modern one.
4
@Election farce
Excellent questions which also apply to the less than great red state of Idaho.
@Election farce
Because our country was founded by well-meaning white supremacists.
Important to note that Falwell rebuffed the urging of GOP strategists to oppose abortion as a rallying cause for conservative Christians but when Carter moved against Bob Jones "University" for its race-based rules, threatening to deny federal loan funds to its students, Falwell was spiritually moved to launch the Moral Majority. These academies were ALWAYS what was at the heart of Southern "conservative Christianity." Always.
24
A few days ago Trump compared himself to King of Rock 'n' Roll while campaigning in his hometown for Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith when he digressed from his speech to compare himself to Elvis Presley: "They said I look like Elvis"...Well despite the rude triviality and shallowness of his speech, like it or not, the expected outcome occurred in Mississippi, giving the GOP a valuable increased margin needed to put further pressure on Democrats strengthening the GOP majority in the Senate to 53-47.
In a classy concession speech, Democrat Mike Espy extended his prayers to Hyde-Smith "as she goes to Washington to unite a fully divided Mississippi."
Questions:
Is it legal that a sitting president goes to political rallies - to meet HIS base - on federal government Air Force One - all expenses charge to American taxpayers? Is it normal?
Shouldn't he be using his own Trump aircraft and pay for the costs and expenditures? It seems to be a direct abuse of power from president Trump and the GOP.
43
The costs associated with sitting president’s campaign activities is apportioned to the appropriate group based on the portion of the trip’s time and cost associated with the trip. i.e. the RNC or a local campaign committee is required to reimbursed the federal government for travel expenses when the president comes to an event to support a local or state-wide candidate. The exception is the cost of the secret service; that cost is always born by the taxpayer....same as it would be if the president were on vacation.
4
@Lisa
“They said I look like Elvis...”
Dead for 41 years?
2
@Lisa
Your sainted Obama did the same thing on the tax payer dime, and although it is an atrocious waste of our tax dollars it is currently legal, so long as the President does some other ‘official’ business it is kosher
Re Mr, Espy and others: It must have taken some real courage to be the teenager who is the first to enroll in a previously segregated high school in MS and elsewhere. I think back to my teenage self and I don't think I could have done it had I been in his shoes.
46
I would guess that Ms. Hyde-Smith believes that "right to work" means what it sounds like instead of what it really is: a way for employers to fire employees for no reason at all and to deny them the protections they'd get if they could join a union.
This is the 21st century, not the mid-nineteenth century or the age of lynching and the Ku Klux Klan. Even though she grew up in the Deep South and went to one of these segregation academies Ms. Hyde-Smith cannot be unaware of the impact her words have on African Americans who remember lynching, those who have heard about it, or any Americans who understand the legacy of slavery in the United States.
It's a shameful thing to elect someone who is willing to openly state that she'd attend a hanging with someone and sit in the front row. It's inhumane and disgusting. I'm ashamed that this woman is sitting in any legislative body let alone our Senate.
41
@hen3ry: With all due respect, "right to work" is not the same as at-will employment, which you've described in your comment. At-will employment, which exists in all 50 states, means an employer can fire an employee for any reason or for no reason so long as the reason isn't because of race, ethnicity, religion, etc. (e.g., the stated reason cannot be that the employee is a member of a protected class).
Right to work means that if there is a union at an employer, the employees are not required to join, but the union must represent and fight for the employees who are not members and don't pay union dues.
Right to work often means employees have the right to work for less money and no benefits because the whole point of right to work laws is first to weaken, then kill, unions.
20
@marybeth thank you. I truly wasn't aware of that.
1
@marybeth
"right to work" is the reason that textile mills left the New England States in the '70's and moved south to NC, SC, Georgia, Va, etc! The factories segregated the workers, ie Whites entered factory thru the 'white gate'; Blacks 'the black gate'. Office jobs were white only!!! production crews were segregated. Blacks worked on forklifts & shipping. I can testify to this as I was an eye witness for weeks/months on end!
I've lived in Hattiesburg for 6 years, only moving from Dallas to be close to my 2 grandsons. I live in Lamar County, named for the only man to serve as a justice on the US Supreme Court from the state of Mississippi, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar. Lamar County is the most conservative county in the most conservative state in the Nation. Rather than being receptive and embrace the slow march of racial equality in America; Mississippi has fought against that progress every step of the way. It's hard to explain, but basically, Mississippians simply don't care one iota what the rest of America thinks about the Magnolia state. I believe this attitude stems from the position of extreme poverty from which this state has emerged and which necessitated a sense of total self reliance. This same self reliance and poverty seems to have minimized the need for education in Mississippi society. The "powers that be" in Mississippi like things just the way they are and that sentiment is not likely to change. Progress is regarded as a mixed bag. I note that many comments have been made professing never set foot in the state. As an outsider (God forbid you're a Yankee) you won't be missed. However, you might find it interesting that one of the largest problems the state is experiencing is the number of college graduates who refuse to stay. Mississippi has a HUGE brain drain every year. Gee, who would have thunk' it?
75
@Dennis Baum wrote: " The "powers that be" in Mississippi like things just the way they are and that sentiment is not likely to change. Progress is regarded as a mixed bag."
Sounds like Staten Island.
2
@Dennis Baum
Taking three federal dollars for every dollar paid in taxes is NOT self-reliance.
6
@Dennis Baum
stop sending them all our hard earned federal tax $
they've been living off the largesse of hard working americans long enough
2
It’s going to get a lot more expensive for the Mississippi tourism industry to attract visitors. I hope they plan on increasing their promotion budget.
13
The fundamental problem is that Hyde-Smith is not at all an embarrassment to her home state of Mississippi. On the contrary, it would seem that she reflects exactly what a majority of the voters in Mississippi believe.
86
@Don - I hope she doesn't apologize, because she wouldn't mean it. It is better to let her go on being the face of Mississippi, like Lindsay Graham is the face of South Carolina and Chuck Grassley the face of Iowa.
1
Many Mississippians are wonderful people. Many of them are Black. Some, like author Willie Morris, whose best-selling book I loved, are White. Trump's female thug Cyndy Hyde-Smith recalls a more vicious time.
36
@Jim Steinberg
Many - just not enough
There are a lot of fine people living in the South. However, the power of the southern states along with some of those in other parts probably not be diminished by voting. What to do? It would be neat if by virtue of enough progressive thinking people in the House the share of federal funding for all things would be allocated by population. NY, CA, and the like would not end up paying as much for various programs in the states that get more than they contribute.
25
ah yes, a lot of fine people
While I abhor her comments, I am unhappy with the criticism of her schooling choice for her children. I wonder how many sitting Democratic Senators have sent their children to private school with similar demographics.
25
@Bill Stewart
Please READ the article. Yes, many people attend private schools.... but taxpayers do not pay for them to avoid Federal Equal Rights laws
15
@Peter
Segregation academies were established with the support of state governments throughout the South in the aftermath of the Brown decision in 1954.
That support was ruled unconstitutional more than four decades ago.
See Runyon v. McCrary: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1975/75-62
Demographics, or racial segregation as a legacy?
Sad to see I will never see Natchez again, which I like, or an other part of that dreadful State again. My own personal boycott.
59
@Norman Katz
How about making the trip back but only frequenting black owned businesses?
Their experiences growing up couldn’t be more disparate...
9
Hyde-Smith made some idiotic comments and should apologize for it. But let me ask you this - at the end of the day, how do those comments matter? Are they going to impact your everyday life? Is she going to support legislation to legalize lynchings? As a U.S. Senator, she has no control over state voting laws, so her comment about student not voting is pointless. Even if she were to support a state voter suppression law, it would quickly be challenged in court.
The reason Espy didn't win is because Democrats don't have a coherent message that can win over rural white voters. Until this happens, Democrats are going to continue losing elections. Instead of focusing on what the other candidate said during the campaign, come up with a reason as to why I should vote Democrat vs. Republican.
For example, even though the 2017 tax bill was derided for cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations, I wholeheartedly support it. Why? Because someone finally was looking out for the upper middle class. The tax bill finally lowered the burden on the group of people who earn $200k as a family but could never any of the deductions that phased out once family income hit $150k or $175k. So for this reason I support the Republicans. What have the Democrats done for me?
20
@PK I’m in the same income bracket and don’t support the tax bill or the republican platform because it’s the wrong path for the country. Students with high debt can’t afford to buy houses are cars. Watch what’s happening around us. Republicans give us bigger debt and seem determined to line their own pockets.
101
@PK. The great rabbinic sage, Hillel, said it best:
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
But if I am for myself alone, what am I?
And if not now, when?
JFK offered a similar sentiment:
Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
102
@PK The narrative is: Democrats don't have a message. Apparently, health care, affordable college, public education, addressing climate change, taxation equity, pay equity, reproductive rights, voting rights, etc. etc., is not a "message." Then what are they? Pipe dreams?
It's a false narrative. It's like Hillary's focus on "gender neutral bathrooms." It's a lie. She spent 90% of her message on the above, as well as on vital national security issues, but the "liberal" press too often merely echoes the conservative machine.
Tax reform for the 1%, dismissal of the majority of the country because we're "liberal" or people of color, is, yes, an agenda, but it's the wrong agenda; morally, financially, patriotically wrong.
109
The people of Mississippi have had their say at the ballot box. I don't live there, but I will speak too...by never setting foot in that state for any reason. My choice has nothing to do with Democrat versus Republican; it has only to do with not choosing to mingle among folks who didn't hesitate to elect a bigot to the Senate. I hope that many others will join me in not going to Mississippi for any reason.
274
@Steve I would visit Mississippi but only for one reason.....to register minority voters. I'm reading John Lewis' memoir Walking With The Wind and even then Mississippi was considered the most dangerous area of the South for any changes. If someone organizes a bus tour of the South to register voters (like they did in the 1960s), I'd sign up for it and support it financially.
53
@Steve I am with you. I and an African American boyfriend almost were in immediate danger when we got out to use the bathroom at a Greyhound station in Biloxi. He knew that he could not use any white bathrooms without harassment in 1975. We parked on the street and started to walk towards the Greyhound station. Within one minute, a local police car started to drive at the speed we were walking on the street. The officer in the car asked us what we were doing and we answered that we were headed for the Greyhound station. Another police car arrived in the opposite direction. John, my boyfriend, looked at me and said that we better leave now. We turned around, walked in the opposite direction, started the car, and left. A police car followed us out of town. John and I are convinced that if we had been arrested that probably we would be in shallow graves. I never went back.
59
@Steve Yes. I agree with you 100%
14
Voters in Mississippi made the calculation that Hyde-Smith can do her job even if she has a lot of racial baggage. Well at least they own their racial bigotry in the South.
14
@Oliver Our race relations in Mississippi smashes any other in any state! Especially in the midwest and north. I've been to those regions and it's crazy to me to see how blacks are treated and discouraged. It's called ambivalence! Look it up!
Hyde-Smith is a racist representing a racist state. She reminds me of the white racist characters in the movie Dejango. Hopelessly racist and enjoying their racism, embracing it. It is so ingrained that it is in their DNA, they still believe in the plantation days of the Antebellum south. She has no problem ensuring that everyone of every color has the chance to vote. Republicans know their only strategy has to be voter suppression. But that was the goal of the Founding Fathers. We haven’t progressed much since 1776!
34
Itsn't it GREAT to know that the antebellum South is still with us and we can visit Gone with the Wind at any time and get the REAL thing right there in our own state of Mississippi.
"tote that barge, lift that bail. get a little drunk and you land in jail" (with credit to Oscar Hammerstein II)
(With respect to the word "drunk:" my own feelings are: do you expect us to work in this country as second class citizens and remain sober at the same time? (with credit to Lloyd Whittington)).
23
@Avalanche Sorry, but the region around "Ol'Man River" is solidly Democrat. The state is split between the Delta and the piney woods.....Astounded and gratified that the Columbus area went for Espy. I would have never pegged Biloxi-Gulfport as leaning Repugnant-cant.
The Delta, from Memphis, TN to Macomb, MS will always be solid blue..........
1
I was born and raised in one of the blackest counties in Georgia. Our public schools partially integrated in 1967 and fully integrated in 1971. I had my first African-American teacher in 1967 and from the ninth grade attended a school with a student body at least 40% African American. Segregation academies were as much a part of this cultural landscape as Baptist churches.
I write here to discuss the author's premise that white people sometimes don't know any better. White people sometimes don't know any better, but that includes white people who attended predominately white schools all across America. I am continually astounded at the lack of cultural awareness by my fellow white people, especially those outside the South. I grew up knowing that using a certain "n" word could get a white person in trouble. That word is "nappy." When a national radio broadcaster referred to a women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos" I was shocked. He woulda gotton whomped upside the head where I grew up.
24
Another low IQ-er elected to run the country.
67
@Obren Bokich
Thank you for sharing this! 'Billy' insisted on singing this in a Greenwich Village Club back in the early '50's. Lyrics were written by an UWS Jewish school teacher!
Public schools in predominantly poor areas are tough places. I would not want to attend a public school on the south side of Chicago for example. I would not want my kids there either. If there was something I could do as a parent to send my kid to a place where there were no gangs and violence and kids from broken families with no father in the picture, I would do what it takes. I do not want to disenfranchise anyone or segregate anyone, but when it comes down to choices we make for our kids its not a philosophical idea any more its the real world and I would do what it takes to keep my kids safe and away from gangs and drugs and violence. If that means doing what the parents did in the south, I am not going to blame them for sending their kids to a place where they can succeed. This is about real life and our children's very lives, not a philosophical debate about right and wrong.
23
@Mark
I did some research on the local public HS, and its test score are below the state average, which is not that good to begin with. AP participation is a measly 5%, with STEM at 2%. Given that the private school annual tuition is a modest $4K, I can't imagine not choosing that option if at all possible.
5
@Mark
It's because how we fund education. Which means poor areas can't afford to have good schools, hire good teachers when they can go to the suburbs for much higher pay.
18
@Skip Moreland
I should add that there are good teachers in poor school districts. They care about education more than money.
But the disparity across the states is that suburban schools pay 3 times what they pay in urban and rural areas. And they get the same amount of state and federal aid.
5
Mississippi quit using hanging for executions in 1940. She was born in 1959. If she's ever been to a hanging, it was a lynching.
62
@jim Whites and Blacks were lynched just fyi and it was democratic governors that were in control during the "hangings" all public records.
@jim Have you ever used the phrase to buy a "pig in a poke," or "let the cat out of the bag?" This goes back to the days when people would buy baby pigs in poke sacks and an unscrupulous merchants were put a cat in the bag instead of a pig.
Have you used either of these phrases without actually buying a pig in a poke? Oh, I see, it's possible for a phrase to stick around for dozens or hundreds of years after the original usage has faded. You just didn't realize that.
I think the last recorded lynching in Mississippi was in 1960, so she's never been to one, and a public hanging is by definition not a lynching. Your statement is just hate-mongering.
Racial implications or not, why on earth would you make a joke about hanging?
422
@PM
If it were one of these school shooters I'll take a front row seat too. Not joking either.
7
Senator Cindy tried to brush away her hateful remark as some sort of Southern commonality that might offend only some. I guess she meant those not part of her racist heritage. Cindy, for the record, i understand exactly what you meant and I am offended.
The Senate should immediately open an Ethis review and consider whether she should even be seated.
86
@SLeslie lol, the people have spoken and there is absolutely no way an ethics committee would find any wrong doing. Her comments to most were distasteful and shouldn't have been said especially from a politician but it was taken out of context and that's what US Mississippians know and that why we still voted for her. But the main reason we voted for her is because she will push Trump's agenda and that's in our best interest!
2
Thanks for this history. In the Bay Area, the parochial schools once served this purpose, as only a few minorities could afford high tuitions. While the public was not subsidizing the education, the public encouraged the system through real estates redlining and segregation in the economy. Republicans put up with this behavior in order to get cushy political appointments and future lobbying positions. It is corrupt.
13
The way one deals with this southern belle in the Senate
is attack attack attack her very core being sans merci
but with the facts. Put her permanently
on the defensive and let's see her squirm and be forced to apologize post one idiotic gaffe after the next, unlike her mentor.
Make her photo in confederate dress a viral iconic totem
for everything vile and ugly that she proudly, and probably
not innocently, embodies.
This requires both wit and cleverness not brute force obviousness.
18
Not that many years ago hangings in the public square were quite common throughout this country, beginning, it seems, in 1623, so why the need for her to “publicly engage in conversation with constituents of hers for whom hanging is not a joke”? What the Editorial Board is really referring to is “lynching” -- an oblique smear by NYT.
But to the greater point: Indeed, controlling unacceptable speech and by extension unacceptable thought is quite the obsession of our Sovietized mass-media since Trump moved into the White House. Not sure why since anything offensive he might say contrary to perceived “acceptable speech” is forever savagely pilloried by New York City’s mass-media central -- a kind of irrational mob lynching, so it seems.
3
@Alice's Restaurant You want to stifle free speech if it criticizes the president or others in government? I don't know what that is, but I am sure it is not democracy or anything respectful of the Constitution.
16
@Alice's Restaurant
There is a difference between private speech and that from a person running for or occupying elective office.
As a U.S. Senator, Ms. Hyde-Smith will participate in the making of legislation that affects all of us. We have a right to voice our opinion as to the acceptability of anything she or anyone else in elective office says in the public sphere.
22
I’m sorry but it seems you equate “not that long ago” with “1623”! As this is date hangings in the public square began- when do you think those ended?)
And indeed, historically, the most recent “public hangings” in the south were lynchings.
Please cite for me the historical record that proves the overlap of “public square hangings” a la 1623 with lynchings- as perhaps this will give credence to your claim of “not that long ago”
Because there are people alive today In Mississippi who remember the lynchings well. That seems a perfectly good reason to expect a candidate for public office to talk about that memory with those she will represent.
Her hangings comment calls up lynchings for them- undeniably part of recent history.
9
Apparently her comments are being excused because hanging and lynching are not the same thing at all.
Wow.
20
The next time the south wants to leave the union I would suggest we hand them their hats and make sure the screen door doesn't hit them on the way out.
67
Sad to say but you simply cannot gain agreement of any kind from the barrel of a gun or from a court ruling. Acquiescence and compliance quite possibly, but agreement.... never. The sad legacy of the civil war is reflected in the very poor choices of Mississippi voters. The worst part of the entire thing... is that all we gained by the civil war was forced inclusion of these hateful racists bigots into the Congressional halls of our country. That and that alone is why we can’t have any kind of a progressive healthy society. Racism is horrid.
18
@Timothy H. Revive Reconstruction Now! And this time let's do it right!
2
@Timothy H.
If they want to secede again, this time we should let them. Of course, all US citizens would be welcome in any other state. But no foreign aid to a 21st century Confederacy.
Hyde-Smith is an embarrassment to her state.
Mississippi is an embarrassment to our nation.
Our country is fast becoming an embarrassment to our world.
70
I wonder why they allowed 1 black child and 5 Latino's in their school ? Perhaps so the owner's and student parents could be able to say the school is not segregated ? It is acceptable in ol' Miss to be segregationist , and pretend otherwise .
11
I seriously think that we should allow Mississippi to secede from the union. Knowing that a racist bigot like the newly elected senator from that state will be included in policy making that could affect my life, gives me the willies. I can't even look at her photo without wanting to scream.
25
@Nancy, I wouldn't mind letting MS and a whole lot of other states secede. But just think of the masses of refugees who would immediately try to enter the country. by any means possible. We'd have a mass immigration crisis on our hands. In fact, we might have to build a wall along the new southern border.
On the other hand, those refugees might very well be the best educated, most enlightened part of the population, who wouldn't be able to stand living in the new, improved, 21st century Confederacy. So it would be a win-win for us. Lets do it!
@Nancy I seriously think that we should allow Massachusetts to secede from the union. Knowing that a spend-all ultra-liberal senator from that state (Warren) will be included in policy making that could affect my life, gives me the willies. I can't even look at her photo without wanting to scream.
"Gaffes"? Really? Why not call a racist a racist?
29
What's amazing is that in a state with an African American population (37%) that a black candidate can't win.
13
I wonder whether she was ever known as Ms. Jekyll-Smith?
6
Progress and Evolution here are a slow processes and MS is at the tail end.
13
We have plenty of what in essence are "Seg Academies"... so called "Christian" private schools in Colorado, where the non-whites you see are mostly the jocks they poach from the public schools to make sure they win at sports. So it's not just in the South. There are also Catholic schools, some "Jesuit," that also poach athletes and are mostly all white too...I used to have a little more "faith" in them than other Seg Academies until witnessing the palpably anti-Christian behavior of graduates of the Jesuit Georgetown Prep.
113
I grew up in a small town in eastern North Carolina and entered 1st grade in 1970, 1 year after the schools integrated. "Seg academies," as we called them, suddenly sprang up everywhere. Most white people with the tiniest bit of disposable income panicked and fled to those schools. I am white, but my dad was the school board attorney and strongly believed that good public education is the backbone of democracy and should be accessible to all Americans, so despite the loud protests of most of his white friends, he sent 4 small children to the newly integrated elementary school. Though the education we received was barely adequate due to extreme underfunding (my junior high consisted entirely of 17 house trailers and a dilapidated gymnasium because the school building burned down and the seg academy parents blocked any attempt to raise public funds to build a new one), it was far worse at the seg academies. Still, the white parents insisted they were not racist and were only sending their kids to the seg academies for the superior education. They even named many of these schools "so-and-so Christian Academy," apparently failing to see the irony. People all over the South are still proud to have attended these schools, pretending they had nothing to do with racism. Now, when a fellow southerner reveals that he attended an "academy" as a child, I ask what year his school was founded, and when he responds "1970," I do not try to hide my deep disdain.
43
Boston had a few of these "academies" in the immediate wake of court ordered bussing in the 70s.
They all eventually died on the vine.
So did a lot of the systemic racism that defined my city (I know, I know, we still have a lot to do. And we continue the march forward.)
Since that time, Boston has also emerged from the parochial, gritty, backwater of my youth to the gem of a world class city it is today. (come visit!)
The fact that Hyde-Smith alma mater is still alive and well tells you all you need to know about the future of MS.
21
@r mackinnon No, it doesn't. It tells you about the present of Mississippi. Look for the future of Mississippi in how well Espy ran against Hyde-Smith. As he said, this election "is the beginning, not the end."
21
@Susan Crawle
I hope you are right.
“Good moves st a snails pace” (Gandhi)
15
I think that racism can be so deeply ingrained, many people don't recognize it. Along those lines, I wonder if the public hanging "joke" is something Hyde-Smith and her peers had been hearing and saying from their earliest days.
I'm not excusing that vile remark. I'm just trying to explain it: many people don't seem to WANT to dig too deeply into their prejudices. They just carry on, swimming along the surface of their worlds, never looking down to see the wonder of coral reefs below or the sky above.
I toured a plantation house in the deep South a few years ago with my family. The tour guide was very proud of her Confederate heritage, and actually told us that slaves were "treated like members of the family." Even my nine-year-old stared at her, slack jawed, in response. After a moment, she added, "Well, maybe not all of them."
I see this casual racism everywhere I go in the Deep South: a clueless cable car operator lecturing about Stone Mountain to a car of mainly African-Americans, a private club where all the members are white and most of the employees are black, and in the subtly sneering remarks about Obama that were only pretending to be about his policies.
I've heard that criticizing people who have these attitudes doesn't help. I'm not sure I agree: how else can they be made aware of just how contemptible some of their views are?
31
those views are contemptible to YOU; to those who hold them, they are religious absolutes based on the certainty that their holders are better than everyone else.
guess what? they have their own truth. with that as a starting point, you can convince them of literally any absurd proposition. but the history is hundreds of years in the making.
6
Yes, I frequently use the segregation academies in discussions about tax payer funded “school choice”. And the “beauty”
of this system is that since MS takes more
from the federal tax till than it contributes, high tax blue states are likely indirectly subsidizing this travesty.
Access to quality public education is the one of the best equalizers our society has, which precisely why it continues to be eradicated.
17
@diane maxum Although the author managed to bury it, she does say that these private school vouchers were declared unconstitutional and were banned in 1971. You haven't been subsidizing the travesty for decades. On the other hand, the continued existence of such private schools allows richer parents to remove their children from the public school system, which then gives them less incentive to adequately fund it through their taxes.
This is one of the best arguments against school vouchers I've seen in a while.
12
Privately owned and run, but publicly funded, segregation academies exist all over the country today, and are the pride and joy of the current Secretary of Education.
They're called "charter schools".
25
@insight I disapprove of charter schools on principle because I don't believe in for-profit educational institutions, and I believe the tax money that goes to charter schools should stay in the public school system. But you certainly can't call Georgia's charter schools "segregation academies," with black students making up between 32% and 63% of the student population in charter schools (depending on the type of charter).
5
@Susan Crawley
The segregation practiced by charter schools is more subtle than simply race. Their profit model is based on the fact that the state provides the same $/student regardless of the needs of the individual student. The simple reality for any given student population is that a small number of students require significant resources while the large majority require a fraction of the $/student on average.
By segregating or filtering their admissions for only those students that require a much lower $/student, the charter pockets the rest as profit.
5
Many major corporations asked to withdraw their campaign contributions to Hyde-Smith. I hope they will now, together with other public minded modern companies, boycott Mississippi. No conventions, no manufacturing, no jobs, no healthcare, no hospitals. Starve them into understanding just how awful they have been.
15
The United States is a big country. Should we expect people in all parts of our country to have the same opinion on every subject. The culture in Mississippi and other parts of the South is not going to be the same as on the Coasts. Should we denigrate people because their views on social issues or humor are different? If all people think the same, why got combine all 50 states into one?
3
@Aaron Adams
When it applies to racism, yes. People who support racist candidates, humor or social views should be denigrated.
This is what Clinton was referring to when she used the term "deplorable."
30
Racist views, such as the ones displayed by these people, shouldn't be tolerated simply because they're "part of the culture". Racism promotes violence and oppression. We cannot expect a functional democracy to exist if entire segments of the population are actively trying to exclude minorities from participating in public life and receiving equal opportunities.
28
@Aaron Adams - We aren't talking about regular old "people", but rather about elected officials who have the power to introduce and pass laws. Diversity of opinion is fine, but complete ignorance of the historical-geographical implications of a joke about *hanging*--in MS of all places--is something else. Also, if somebody is being "denigrated," and feelings are subsequently hurt, I can live with that, but voter suppression and dog-whistle appeals to racist humor do more than merely offend one's sentiments.
28
I understand that this is not a useful comment, but Hyde-Smith sickens me. I don't think I can finish reading the article, as much as I may have a moral obligation to do so. I am too disgusted by her statements. Ick.
14
Mississippi never changes. The only thing that changed was that all the segregationists left the Democratic Party and became Republicans.
If I were a POC, I'd shake the dust of Mississippi and put down roots elsewhere. But that's me.
9
I sometimes wonder why we fought so hard to keep the South during the Civil War. 150 years later and they are still using public hanging references -- and deeming them a form of respect.
23
@MRose Cindy Hyde-Smith isn't The South. She doesn't even represent The South--just the Republicans in Mississippi.
in retrospect, perhaps preserving the Union was not wise, something like admitting Texas. but yhen again, I'm probsbly just one of deluded coastal elite who would be better off as some real American's lampshade.
I am bitterly disappointed over Ms. Hyde-Smith’s victory and appalled in general by the large pockets of racism that continue to define large pockets of the American South. I totally get, kay o. of New Hampshire, your decision not to support a geographic area at odds with your way of thinking, and, yes, would that more people voted with their wallets. But in tone and attitude, your letter and its indictment of the entire South and all southerners is something that to this southerner reads as a gross generalization, and smacks of its own kind of racism. Bigotry comes in numerous forms and can be directed in myriad directions, but its constant hallmarks (anger, contempt, righteous indignation, inflexibility) fuel your letter in a way that reminds me of the behavior of the very people against which it rails.
5
@Michael McConnell
let us call bigotry, racism, homophobia, antiSemitism xenophobia by its correct name Evil. Evil is hard to fight because it is so banal.
The only real weapon we have is truth and it is so rare and precious that we little people can't be trusted with it.
Mississippi - #1 in in everything bad, including low literacy rates and poor education, poverty, people living in trailers, infant mortality, citizens on the dole, ad infinitum.
Explains everything.
13
@Thomas
A friend of mine once observed that the unofficial motto of West Virginia is "Deo Gratia Mississippi."
"Thank God for Mississippi."
She really does represent the past.
7
The past misappropriation of public funds for segregated white academies was to evade court-ordered public school racial integration. It was a form of theft, white politicians lifting the public education taxes from black to white communities. And with all due respect to the NAACP legal defense team and Thurgood Marshall, the mistake of the black community was not to sue for repayment of white theft of black taxes as the Supreme Court in its 1954 Brown decision warned segregationists could happen if state ordered segregation continued.
It was unjust, however, in the absence of recompensation for the injury to black communities, simply ordering the integration of Mississippi’s public schools and later declaring illegal the racist misappropriation of taxes for private white academies to evade the order. For without stiff penalties and demonstrated losses for racism, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and others like her grew up free of any real consequences for the state’s racist history. And that was the real joke she fails to understand. Sadly, in its own way, neither did Mike Espy understand that the state’s history was a joke, either.
6
Eight million Africans were forced into slave ships and transported to the Americas. Because everyone of the slaves-to-be were "property," careful records were kept of their port of departure departure and port of arrival - one million never made it; died and dumped at sea. Four million U.S. slaves endured hundreds of years of abuse. Then came Reconstruction and Jim Crow. In that period, thousands of African Americans were lynched, many in Mississippi. Scores of African Americans are shot by police every year and millions fight to be able to vote, even today. Ms. Hyde-Smith likely did not learn any of this history in her private White academy, and likely could not care less today. Now Hyde-Smith will have a "front row seat" in the Senate to promote the values of the old south she reminisces for so ardently.
28
Deep history and connections here that, hopefully, will educate some who didn't know how segregation voucher schools worked. What happened then is precisely why religious conservatives and both implicit and overt racists support vouchers today.
17
Sad to see that Hyde-Smith's comments didn't alienate more white voters, but Deep South racism is entrenched in Mississippi, where many still believe the Confederacy won the war.
14
@Panthiest The Confederates lost the war, all right--but then won the peace, with the connivance of Northern industrialists and racists who wanted to let Southern whites keep blacks in serfdom.
Thank you for this important contribution to our ongoing national dialogue on matters of race. As you suggest, we must all be open to such perspectives.
Yet you write of the new Senator that "much of her life she has been hearing only one side of an argument, and doesn't know or care that there is a larger conversation to be had." We must be clear that this statement defines much of the left as well, which in turn undermines the Democrats among swing voters.
I've been in academia for decades, and when it comes to issues like the use of race and gender preferences in college admissions, employment, or contracting, many students, faculty, and administrators have no interest in conversations with those who think that such discrimination is illegal, unethical, and unconstitutional, and that we should faithfully adhere to the civil rights laws' express command on nondiscrimination against "any person." The left's mantra seems to be that "we must simply get away with whatever we can get away with, by any means necessary, for persons born into the races, ethnicities, and gender we favor, and we cannot tolerate a diversity of viewpoints on this issue."
I'm pulling for the Democrats, but going forward, I hope the intolerant, illiberal left stops undermining their prospects.
6
@John
Yours is a false premise.
The issue right now was the race where a MS United States Senator just got elected ,with a history of at best, a tin ear to the concerns a large number of American citizens in her own state.
That is happening whether anyone, anywhere else is doing bad things too.
We have 100 Senators to represent the US, not the Confederacy.
6
@John
Racism and bigotry is not just another viewpoint to be accepted. It is destructive and allows discrimination and hate crimes.
"Gaffes." They're not gaffes. She knew what she was saying and meant it. These statements from such people are always intentional. They know they can backtrack - "I was quoted out of context!" - later even though it's on the record. The question is, what is it about America that these people can achieve high office despite being morally unsuited?
18
@Stevenz: Yes, you're right. These were not gaffes, they were dog whistles, cues to her people that she's one of them, that she'll fight to keep America white.
I don't have an answer to your question other than "its Mississippi, the most racist state in the country".
I find the continuing attempt to foist all racist behavior on Southerners misguided and intellectually lazy, and it is disheartening that a newspaper of this caliber would abet it. I have lived in Georgia, Boston and have spent considerable time in NYC. Believe me you can find plenty of racist behavior and segregated schools in Boston and NYC, though one would never dare call them segregation academies. I believe they refer to them as private schools in that neck of the woods.
55
Touché but very true!
5
As a Yankee who lived in Mississippi, I agree that there is plenty of racism in the Yankee North. But only in Mississippi do you find: Public Statues honoring the military which honor only one war: the Civil War; and the official State Flag being the Confederate flag. Over 10 years ago, I actually had the honor of voting in a state election there with only 1 item on the ballot: to keep or not keep that horrific flag as the State flag. Guess what? The Confederate flag won. The election also cost the poorest state in the Union $4 million. They fail miserably when it comes to economics and priorities. Just show me one other state which STILL has that flag - there isn't one.
32
@John Jabo
Read the column first, then comment.
Were the Northern private schools you refer to " privately owned and run but largely financed by tax dollars, at least initially"? Did they exclude students except for whites?
24
It would be interesting to know how many other members of Congress attended such schools....as well, of course, to trace the connection between the kind of vouchers the article describes and the ones many conservatives call for today, ostensibly on religious grounds...
11
The historical record is clear, ‘solid south’ social conservatives in Congress have controlled the domestic agenda, be they Democrats prior to Reagan, and since a solid Republican faction, who ascended to powerful positions on Capitol Hill thru seniority rules. Benefiting from the longevity conferred by their respective factions, which held a virtual lock on elective office in the South, many southern members served long terms in secure states and districts, earning important committee leadership posts. The one exception was LBJ’s old southern Democratic faction, which uncharacteristically supported his Civil Rights agenda, and then gone by the 80’s. Their conservative agenda has been regressive to progressive social issues important to women, minorities and the disadvantaged.
16
Written in 1965 by the great Phil Ochs, the song Here’s to the State of Mississippi still resonates far too strongly. If you have never heard it, you have a real treat coming.
14
Well, the voters of Mississippi certainly didn't disappoint.
To say it was disappointing you'd have to have had 'expectations,' that reflected progress.
20
@AWENSHOK
The Democratic candidate came far closer to victory than in any previous Senate vote in the state. If we can continue running good candidates and getting more people to the polls, there's hope for Mississippi yet.
9
Excellent writing and cogent thinking. Thanks.
17
The irony is that the education received in what we in Mississippi called “white flight” schools was deplorable. Most paid their teachers next to nothing. So everybody lost. The suddenly mostly-black public schools lost public support and funding, and the white flight students were poorly educated as well. It was lose-lose.
I fear the same phenomenon exists today. Only together can we succeed, but “diversity” is still read as “mixed race” in much of the Deep South, bless their hearts.
That said, the Deep South needs support, not ridicule. As Neil Young wrote of Alabama, "you got the rest of the union to help you along," and "Southern change gonna come at last. Now your crosses are burning fast." Unfortunately, that was 50 years ago.
Mississippi is coming along, but glacially.
27
@Michael
With the current pace of climate change, glaciers are melting faster each day, but Mississippi is still stuck in the mud.
My money is on the South Pole to melt before Mississippi "folk" can accept and embrace diversity as a part of its "culture." The current old, white generation of Baby Boomers will have to die out before real, progressive, meaningful change can occur. Sad!
7
If there is any place that should know the terrible cost of willful ignorance it is Mississippi.
That Hyde-Smith is so comfortable in that ignorance speaks volumes.
50
Can our republic really be called a “representative democracy “ when a person like Hyde-Smith and those that voted for her are in a position to influence policies that will directly impact MY life and the lives of those who repudiate everything those racists stand for? 150 years ago we fought a civil war and the Unionists, supposedly won. So here, now in 2018, we see the fruits of that long-ago hard fought and bloody victory over bigots and racists? WE won?
38
@ManhattanWilliam
I could have said the same thing when New Yorkers elected Hillary Clinton Senator. I'm sure you thought that was a great triumph for our nation and it's representative democracy
1
@ManhattanWilliam The Union did win and their goal was to keep the Union together. Lincoln famously said that if he could save the Union without setting slaves free he would and if he could save the Union and free all the slaves he would and f he could save the Union and set some free and not others he would. The racists weren’t and aren’t just in the south. The north didn’t fail. Their goal was not civil rights at that time.
1
The Union did win, at a tremendous cost in lives and treasure. Cemeteries with Union dead dot the landscape of every town and village that sent its sons to fight the armies raised by the slave-holding South. The issue is that in the intervening years, this nation found it convenient to cede political power back to slave states, and the representatives of the slave states were masters of manipulating the government and the laws of this country to re-enslave the very people that those "honored dead" gave up their lives set free. This manipulation continues to this day, and that is our great shame as a nation. It is up us to continue the work of the fallen by peaceful means, and to root out bigotry, white-surpremacy, and voter disenfranchisement in whatever corner of our society they exist, North of South, East or West.
7
The freedom of choice school derives from these southerners' assertions that God intended the races to be separate. It's similar to the freedom of religion arguments used not to serve gay people. Separate water fountains, both literally and figuratively, are ugly symbols of American history.
16
These are not gaffes. These are things she meant to say. Saying overtly racist things is a good way to get elected in many places. Sometimes it can get you elected President.
101
She didn't learn much of value.
18
I have grown very sick of the media providing polite cover for ugliness, ignorance, and hate. This article is helpful in calling out Hyde-Smith's supposed uses of "humor."
20
Let's assume Cindy Hyde-Smith is not stupid, for the sake of argument.
That being said, I don't care where she went to school, what her daddy taught her, or the racial make up of her town, her class, her church.
If she believes what she says she does, Hyde-Smith says hurtful, bigoted things because she chooses to believe they are either true enough for humor, or that its just fine to speak like that.
She has decided to ignore the world around her. Decided reality is what she wants it to be, and there are no rules that apply to her. Make no mistake, it is a decision and she is aware of every ramification and every impact.
Her history is irrelevant. She knows what she's doing, she knows it helped her election, and she sees nothing wrong with piling on people who are already down.
This is a mean, socially stunted woman, and she likes it that way.
There's no space here for understanding, even less for sympathy.
This Republican senator defends her right to be a pig, and she'll fit right in with Trump's Republicans. I imagine that was her plan.
64
John Oliver said, "the only reason Alabama isn't ranked 50th in everything is because of Mississippi."
43
The real lesson here is that, happy about it or not, Mississippi is as racist as a state can get. Bigotry and hatred of anyone not white, Christian, and equally racist is a requirement in Mississippi.
34
When I travel, I will be sure to by pass Mississippi.
24
Donald Trump's is evidently showing us what The University Of Pennsylvania taught him.
6
There is some very bad history here. It needs to be corrected, and PLEASE do not think I am defending segregation.
It is absolutely true that any school in Mississippi with "academy" in its name was founded to continue racial segregation. Virtually all of these schools, "segregation academies," were founded in January 1970, when the government announced that all public schools would be integrated that semester. Schools were closed for two weeks to allow teaching staffs to be merged, equipment and materials moved, and the separate black and white systems combined. Nearly every town or county had a segregation academy set up, hastily, then. (This was true not only for Mississippi, but for the entire rest of the South, wherever segregation had been established by law.)
It is not true that segregation academies were funded with taxpayer dollars. Look at the dates in Dr. Rooks' essay and you will see that voucher plans were quickly voted in by steeped-in-segregation legislatures (in 1970) and very promptly shot down by the courts, in 1971. She tries to qualify a half-truth by saying that taxpayer dollars funded segregation academies, "at least initially." Those short-lived vouchers were never a substantial financial support, and the segregation academy system was never financially stable. Schools became black because the white kids left, and they became poor because there was never any money in the first place -- Mississippi being the poorest state in the nation.
10
@Video Non Taceo
I caught that too; the author is being conveniently cavalier with her dates. Thank you for bringing it to the fore. I dislike disingenuous writing almost as much as I dislike racism.
This article is seriously incorrect about the history of segregation academies. The author asserts that the practice of state funding of private school tuition was declared unconstitutional in 1970 and ended in 1971.
I worked in the public schools of my home town at the time when integration avoidance was finally ended. I subsequently became a lawyer and worked on many civil rights cases and civil rights issues. I know what I'm talking about.
Integration was avoided by school districts in Mississippi for many, many years after Brown was decided, thanks to federal judges who resisted quite as much as the white population did. Many different techniques were used by the segregationist forces, and in the main, they were successful in preventing mass integration until the Supreme Court moved from "all deliberate speed" to "NOW" which, as I recall, was in 1971 or 1972--or at the time or after state funding for private school alternatives was declared unconstitutional.
The "segregation academies" sprang up like weeds after the federal court system said "NOW". That was after 1971. None of the segregation academies, most of which were originally limited to junior and senior high school students, that still exist have ever received state vouchers for their students.
The author's whole premise in this article--that the State of Mississippi funded the huge number of segregation academies--is simply wrong.
15
@vineyridge
Did they receive tax $$$ of any kind from the state of Mississippi, and therefore all of the citizens in the state?
Given the racially charged campaign, I am surprised that all we can discuss are some ill chosen remarks and a private/non-integrated high school. According to Wikipedia, she has held public office since 2000 - in the Mississippi State Senate until 2012, then as Commissioner of Agriculture & Commerce (also an elective office) from 2012 until her US Senate appointment earlier this year. She was a registered Democrat until 2010! I don't know anything about her but you'd think a racist that doesn't have an especially good filter would have some sort of public record on race that candidate Espy could have used to his advantage. Just saying we're in an awful hurry to condemn with scant information.
6
@Mister Mxyzptlk If no one had video'd her saying what she said , there would have been a firm, trump like denial, and it never would have made the news .
2
Mississippi is so third world in the first world. They seem to want it that way, so what can anyone do? My only advice to Espy voters is move and prosper.
19
@Andrewjust checked: Not one Fortune 500 company in Mississippi. Sad.
2
Hyde-Smith took home a resounding victory. And the state of Mississippi delivered a clear message to the country that racist traditions still resonate in the Deep South.
23
@Patrick
I'm not sure it was a "resounding" victory. Hyde-Smith won by about 8 points, Trump won by 18 points 2 years ago. That means a lot of white people voted for Espy. While it's sad that so many people were not sufficiently bothered by her sympathy for segregation and the Confederacy, it indicates that Mississippi may not forever live in the past, and that an "R" by one's name may not always automatically guarantee the outcome.
4
In increasing instances, if the African American candidate does not win it does not mean a preponderance of racism among the voters. Then there are the Mississippi's- where the white candidate literally sets their jaw into a steely smile and says "I an NOT a Racist, y'all", I just like making jokes that are about things that threaten the African American Community."
Being 50th out of 50 in educational progress and quality of schools shows....
17
Phil Ochs once wrote, “Here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of/ Mississippi, find yourself another country to be part of.”
The trouble is that now great swaths of the country have decided to remake themselves in Mississippi’s image.
5
She should sue the NYT for mischaracterizing her speech. Those weren't "gaffes." They were clear signals to a segment of Mississippi voters. And hey, presto... it worked.
11
@Incredulosity I agree with you. The "public hanging" remark could have been walked back: "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking of lynchings at all, just of public executions. It's just a saying. I didn't think. I should have been more sensitive, and I'll remove that phrase from my speech--public and private."
But she didn't. She doubled down. I think that tells us who she was talking to and in what language.
7
Think about it folks, 170,000 people elected this goon to the senate. That many people live within a half mile of me in Manhattan. Mississippi does not deserve to have two senators - probably not even one.
30
I’ve always said Trump supporters and the feckless Republicans are driven by ignorance, greed and fear. Add racism to that please.
10
She is the face of Mississippi and lets stop pretending she is not. Worse schools worse health care and proud of it.The state is still fighting the Civil War and would rather but the backwater of America than change. Boycotting the state will just make them dig their heels in. I feel sad for the people in the state who think it is time for a change. It is no accident people are not knocking the doors down to visit. I know people who hate to stop there for gas when traveling.
20
It isn’t just that what’s false has become true, or that lies become truths, but also that what’s downright stupid passes for clever.
6
Ms. Hyde-Smith's position is disgusting. The president has mouthed and modeled racism. It's as though, he has unleashed the pent up hate and ugliness, of this country. Hyde-Smith used his hateful, loud mouth to win her election. Mississippi appears stuck in the era of Jim Crow. On TV interviews, many blue haired, southern ladies talked about their affinity for Trump. Scarlett O'Hara came to mind.
It must be terrible to be black in Mississippi; the danger seems palpable. Whether radical Islam or white supremacy, the hate and divisiveness are equally dangerous, to a peaceful world. When considering "the arc of the moral universe", both Trump and Hyde-Smith are on the wrong side of humanity.
14
And we fought a civil war to bring these people back into the union? Worked like a charm.
6
The problem with confronting racism is that when we do, we give too many people a pass. The ENTIRE republican party is culpable in this.
Not a single one of them came out and said that racism is abhorrent, and not a single one of them came out and denounced their republican candidate in Mississippi. When the Senator elect is back in Washington, she will be received with open arms, and the vicious cycle will continue.
It will be as usual, until they are ALL voted out .
28
Makes me miss John McCain even more. And I didn't even vote for him.
1
@FunkyIrishman
When the senator elect is back in Washington the Deomcrats should denounce her. She can try to go hide with her racist and ignorant GOP friends, but sooner or later she will have to try to work across the aisle. The Dems should freeze her out completely. Don't even shake her hand or say hello.
2
In Mississippi, the public schools are integrated and the private schools are segregated. In the Northeast, the suburban schools are segregated, the urban schools are segregated, and the private schools are politically correct. You tell me whether the North or the South are meaningfully integrated are whether both are racist to the core.
6
@michjas In the Northeast the suburban schools are actually segregated by class, not race. You'll find Asian, African American, Latino, whatever upper middle class kids across the region. Urban schools are segregated, true, as are neighborhoods, again by class, but there's also a consistent effort to rectify that, at least in NYC. And as certain neighborhoods become gentrified, the public schools there are integrated, at least for a while. The South is racially segregated.
3
@michjas True.
The problem with confronting racism is that when we do, we give too many people a pass. The ENTIRE republican party is culpable in this.
Not a single one of them came out and said that racism is abhorrent, and not a single one of them came out and denounced their republican candidate in Mississippi. When the Senator elect is back in Washington, she will be received with open arms, and the vicious cycle will continue.
It will be as usual, until they are ALL voted out.
6
The problem with confronting racism is that when we do, we give too many people a pass. The ENTIRE republican party is culpable in this.
Not a single one of them came out and said that racism is abhorrent, and not a single one of them came out and denounced their republican candidate in Mississippi. When the Senator elect is back in Washington, she will be received with open arms, and the vicious cycle will continue.
It will be as usual, until they are ALL voted out !
6
Isn’t Mississippi near the bottom in educational attainment and quality of life? In that context, the election of Hyde-Smith isn’t surprising.
13
Nothing will change until actions are not accepted any longer if sexual harassment is not covered by the first amendment why are racist comments or jokes a senator lost his seat on accusations solely but here we have proof of a Senator who thinks hangings should still happen and would attend them, now how does that make any sense in any place in the universe
4
Thank you, Dr. Rooks, for speaking truth to power. This is another glaring example of how "white fears" turn into institutionalized fleecing of public funds. The irony is that one prominent white fear is that black and brown people will undeservedly get money from the hardworking white taxpayer, when really, all along it's just the opposite.
7
@JessieCat
"Speaking truth to power" is an arrogant, presumptuous phrase that should be banned from the lexicon. The notion that one side exclusively embodies truth and the other merely naked power is smug beyond belief.
4
From one coastal elite to another, there is no side. There are scholars whose mandate is to do rigorous, peer-reviewed research and to then inform those in power on their findings. It's not arrogant. What is arrogant is to presume that because a blowhard, unqualified leader says something, that it's true. Like climate change is hoax created by the Chinese, for example.
@Wine Country Dude
Not only that, it isn't even truth. The argument is based on distorted facts. (See comments by "Video Non Taceo" and "Vineyridge" above.)
What many miss these days is that “segregation” today is socio economic class based more than race based. People are looking to get into the most expensive neighborhood and their kids into the best school district that they can afford. We are seeing a trend now where more African Americans are moving into the suburbs, especially in the south. In fact, recent studies have shown that minorities are increasingly moving to the south where they have better economic prospects than in the north or west. Forbes, Fast Company, The New York Times and others have had articles on this subject in recent years.
4
Remarkable that Mr. Espy got as many votes as he did, considering the terrain. Another clone for the Senate.
2
How bad is Mississippi?
Mississippi makes Alabama look like New York City.
The election of Hyde-Smith reminds the rest of the country and educates our young ones into what kind of folk actually live in Mississippi.
They live it, they breathe it, they bleed it, they smell it every day. That's the way it was, that's the way it is, and that's the way it will always be.
The people that voted this woman into the U.S. Senate are more stubborn than a Mississippi Mule.
The Civil War was won by the right side. The modern day version of the Civil War will also be won by the right side.
8
Funny, some of the most segregated neighborhoods in the USA today are the ultra wealthy and very liberal neighborhoods of Manhattan. Cities such as Raleigh, Atlanta and Charlotte have made far more progress at reducing segregation than their northern counterparts.
5
@Eddie
Manhattan's segregation is socio-economic, not racial. I can't live there either, buy it's not because people on East 63rd Street are prejudiced against Irishmen.
3
@Eddie Charlotte was fine until White Northerners moved there and decided that their children must attend the schools closest to their homes - like in the Northeast.
1
@Mrs. H
What?
Where would you suggest they go to school? In the next town, the next county, out of state?
1
My father was raised in Kemper County Mississippi. He come north to work in an automobile plant in the early twenties. He retired to Mississippi in the early 60's. He could not stay more than a year because of the racial unrest. He moved to Kentucky where his next door neighbor was a Black man. My dad was unionized in Michigan. He lived peacefully until his death there in the mid-1970's.
I swear Mississippi has not made any social improvements since that time. There are some good people there but it is as if someone knew how they voted so they continue to vote Republican and never for a Black person. I have not been back there since I visited there last in 1962.
7
@Donald Luke
Donald, it hasn't changed a bit since '62 (both 1862 and 1962).
5
So easy to smugly point the finger at intolerance and racism. Wouldn’t it be interesting to take a survey of US Senators and Congressmen/women and determine how many went to private schools, what the racial mix was when they attended and how many send their children to private, as opposed to public, schools....and then what colleges they attended.....just curious...and what about the country clubs they are members of-wonder how inclusive these clubs are.....just curious about those that make our laws....
8
@TB Almost. But the Senator went to a segregated academy - a school founded to extend and reinforce the "values" of segregation. Now some might question the timeline, but in Isle of Wight County Virginia, the rise of Isle of Wight County "Academy" coincided with final closing of the "colored" schools and the integration of the county school system. Done "with all deliberate speed" that happened in the early 70's.
1
Understand that Atlanta, where you live, is NOT Mississippi. I used to live in Mississippi. You think this article condemns the entire South. It does not.
2
@resharpen
The article doesn't, but the commenters sure do.
Now we understand conservatives' (including the likes of Betsy DeVos) support for the charter school movement.
13
Years ago I lived in Jackson, Missippi while working on construction of the Grand Gulf nuclear plant. It was my first exposure to the culture of racism there, even for engineering and construction professionals that were not white. I also experienced similar issues while working at the Hatch nuclear plant near Vidalia, Georgia, where my black (Nigerian) engineering colleague was told no hotel rooms were available for him, even though he had a reservation.
Although residents of these two states would like everyone to believe that the bad old days of racism are behind them, this year’s election campaigns and results indicate otherwise.
26
So many people commenting here say that they will never visit the state because of the comments of one person. That is disturbing in itself. I think she meant that a hanging is not a place anyone would want to go to, but she liked the man so much that if he invited her she would be in the front row. Does not make sense to every one.
3
@Mark and I think the point is that in a state like Mississippi with a history of hanging/lynching African Americans and all of the racial overtones that come with that history, no person is so likable that she should be willing to be in the front row of such an event. There is a certain level of tone deafness that comes with volunteering a statement like that to describe how much you like someone. Sit through a terrible movie, meal, lecture, all make the point, but a hanging?
11
@Mark, are you sure you want to spend your time defending a joke about lynching, defending a person who jokes about lynching? And don't try to act as if "public hanging" doesn't mean lynching. In Mississippi, for goodness sakes. I'm southern, I know the code.
10
@Mark
It's not just the comments of one person, it is the fact that so many from Mississippi would vote for her. Does that not make sense to you?
3
“Perhaps this is because for much of her life she has been hearing only one side of an argument … If this is the case, it may have something to do with where Ms. Hyde-Smith went to school…”
It certainly does. The “Freedom of Choice” doctrine was also a way to delay busing that would have integrated all-white public schools. Parents could choose any school if they provided transportation and their child’s race was in the minority. In my home town, this spurred black activists’ parents such as mine to choose to send their children to formerly all-white schools with the purpose of defying this effort to sustain segregation. Consequently, my parents drove me to from the west to the east side of town to integrate the city’s largest all-white junior high school. And yes, we did have to physically fight our way through as we were spat on and called the N-word!
I and one other African American student sat through a year of 8th grade Alabama History in 1969—70 rolling our eyes as we listened to our white teacher euphemize every Confederate Civil War defeat and lionize every Confederate general in victory as she gave that most decadent era of the South the aura of a Gone with the Wind romance.
Could you imagine that it never occurred to her that the two African American students in her room did not see that era of the South through her lens of deep respect tinged with awe and veneration? Did she not care? Or was her goal to produce students like Ms. Hyde-Smith?
146
@MW Thank you for your and your families strength and determination, and bravery.
16
The only way my husband and I have found to fight this kind of southern in-bred, deeply embedded racism is to stay out of the south. It would be great to get out of the New Hampshire cold and fly off to one of those warm southern states, but we won't do it. We won't contribute to their rotten economy, not one nickel, ever. Small gesture unless many decided to follow it.
Southern folk wouldn't want white trash like us down there anyway. Not people who hate racism and believe in total equality for all. No, they prefer their own kind, the folks who love the image of a public hanging and African Americans "in their place," as the insipid Hyde-Smith has re-proven yet AGAIN.
What's always so astonishing to me about this terminally ugly bigotry is that the people of color who are hated in the south were forced to go there in the first place.
The sense of self-entitlement is absolutely unbelievably and horrifically as ugly as anything that ever infested this country.
Beware, all you southern Bible lovers, of that Bible verse: "And the last shall be first."
23
@kay o.
I am bitterly disappointed over Ms. Hyde-Smith’s victory and appalled in general by the large pockets of racism that continue to define large pockets of the American South. I totally get, kay o. of New Hampshire, your decision not to support a geographic area at odds with your way of thinking, and, yes, would that more people voted with their wallets. But in tone and attitude your letter and its indictment of the entire South and all southerners is something that to this southerner reads as a gross generalization, and smacks of its own kind of racism. Bigotry comes in numerous forms and can be directed in myriad directions, but its constant hallmarks (anger, contempt, righteous indignation, inflexibility) fuel your letter in a way that reminds me of the very people against which it rails.
3
@Michael McConnell
As a point of fact, I have lived in the southern state of Tennessee. Prior to living there, I was convinced racism in the north was just as bad as it is in the south. Then I learned.
I was in Nashville when Martin Luther King was shot. The national guard was called out and it was like a European occupation during World War II. I was told repeatedly by journalists interviewing that the word had gone out that "radical blacks are coming to invade the south." There was a curfew after 7 PM. No black terrorists came.
This and other worse incidents made me realize that while there is racism everywhere, it is an open book in the southern states. It is assumed you agree that whites are superior to black people. There are still today numerous attempts to suppress the black vote.
I got out of there after a year, no longer piping my naive theories about the equality of racism. There was no fear in the north after King was murdered that black people would invade. Guilty people felt this kind of fear. Clearly for southerners once again to vote in a racist, little has changed in the south.
It is not wrong to be angry about racism in the south or anywhere else, and not wrong to call out the worst purveyors of it. It is wrong to remain silent. And it is certainly wrong not to recognize it and take what action one can against it.
Check out statistics on lynching. You will see immediately where it was endemic, and where it was comparatively rare.
if Mississipians need to learn how to segregate schools or how to poison and freeze minorities they need only come to NYC. it is somewhat amusing for New Yorkers to look down their noses at Mississippi when we have the countries most segregated public schools, abysmal public housing and disinfranchise more people then Mississipians could dream of. All this is happening right now in 2018.
17
“If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” “they remind me that there’s a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who maybe we don’t want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. And I think that’s a great idea.”
Wow! Until the Trump 'selection' by the Electoral College (whos' entire existence was to prevent the unqualified to ever hold the office, and failed their mandate miserably) in 2016, I erroneously thought racism was essentially a thing of the past. It apparently just went underground. Apparently Hyde-Smith posed in a confederate cap holding a rifle, posted it on her facebook page with the caption "Mississippi history at it's best". Earth to Hyde-Smith: you and your Mississippians LOST the Civil War. 650,000 men lost their lives, half of them southerners. That history ought to be an embarrassment us all.
It is no wonder Mississippi ranks next to last in education, last in healthcare, and continues to be a backwater. "Stupid is as stupid does". This article begs the question why thee is ANY taxpayer subsidy of these segregation academies. That white Mississippians were more willing to elect an apparently ignorant racist white woman with bad fitting dentures, over an intelligent African American man with credentials (having represented Mississippi in the House and previously been the Secretary of Agriculture in the Obama administration) speaks volumes. Sad.
13
@LaPine I agreed with you until you mentioned "bad fitting dentures." What's that got to do with anything?
Hannah Arendt told us all we need know about Ms Hyde Smith and the conservatism of Mississippi. She called it the banality of evil !!!
10
Dr. Rooks:
It's ironic that the liberals didn't have a problem with Hyde-Smith when she was a Democrat. I guess she became a racist the moment she switched parties.
3
@James - Either that, or she just didn't attract much national attention until she ran for national office.
3
@Renee
Surely it wasn't a secret amongst local Dems and yet they did nothing when she was one of them
Hyde-Smith was elected because of her racist discourse, not in spite of it.
16
@Zelmira
Absolutely! And I believe this about Trump.
4
Racist to the core just like her benefactor Trump.
7
I would love to be a fly on the wall if her and Marsha Blackburn ever had a conversation.. Think those two Dixies would use the term, "African-American" ??? Something tells me no - but I could be wrong. Cue Paula Dean for the catering..
10
The last public hangings in Mississippi were lynchings. Crucifiction? She's in. Zyklon B showers, Ms. Hyde-Smyth wouldn't turn down that invite either.
This is a simple case of what MLK called, "sincere ignorance or conscientious stupidity," either case being totally disqualifying for a public official, but not so in Mississippi and the sad thing is that this woman's ignorance and lack of sympathy would surely have been tempered by her furthering associations with people of color rather than isolating herself.
These segregation schools should be paying a premium to segregate not receiving incentives.
Segregation in this country has always been some form of Apartheid farce to help to maintain a status quo. So far, it has been working to that end wonderfully.
7
Thank God I do not live in Mississippi
9
The New York Times is apparently defending mass public education. Excuse me while I laugh. See how many parents on this board would send their kid to a rural Mississippi public mega-school. What hypocrites.
3
@david
David, perhaps you might actually do the work to find out where their children did go to school. I know it might take a bit of effort but you would then be able to offer us more than a cynical laugh.
Another southern voice here: Attended Catholic schools k-12 in Charlotte, NC in the 60's and 70's.
Mr. Espy:
"attended a parochial school through his first two years of high school, then it closed and he enrolled at Yazoo City High School....Reflecting on the difference between his experience integrating a public school and that of Ms. Hyde-Smith, he said, “If the story is correct, she consciously made a decision to separate, and my parents consciously made a decision to be inclusive."
I am sorry, Mr. Espy - your are wrong. You were sent to school to learn about Jesus and God and whatever your school deemed important. What about Jews, non-believers and those who could not afford the tuition or get transportation to school? Your parents made a conscious decision to separate.
Folks my age who attended public schools here in NC while I was safely being schooled by the nuns, were beat up and/or sent home early due to bomb threats and riots in middle and high school. One woman had her long blond hair cut off by a black girl in the bathroom.
Let's not re-write history, NYT's. It is far more complicated than race. Whites and black children were physically attacked. White and black parents wanted to protect their children. White and black parents will do everything they can to give their children an education. Even Mr. Espy's.
4
@C Thanks for posting from the real world, C. One of the few to do so...
2
Words fail me. No so much about Ms. Hyde-Smith herself, but about how the values of enough whites in the old confederacy can still be so twisted that a candidate like Hyde-Smith can ride them to victory. The segregation academies have done the job they were meant to do on the white population.
498
@mancuroc
Parents had and have more power than any schools.
11
@mancuroc: I grew up in suburban Detroit. While we didn't have "segregation academies," my (and other) intentionally white suburban enclave did everything it could to keep schools segregated by other means, including housing discrimination, job discrimination, threats, aggressive/racist policing, and more. My high school was only one mile from Detroit, and by 1990 there were only three black students out of a class of 300.
This is not a southern thing; it's a white thing.
55
As the unwitting product of a Virginia segregation academy, I'd say don't be distracted by the school. In all likelihood, Cindy Hyde learned her racism at home.
197
@papka
Amen. And in her church.
7
Avoid Mississippi. As my hero Phil Ooch one said to that State: Find yourself another country to be part of!
8
How would you like to be treated when you are part of the minority? Because that day is coming. A very wise man is reported to have said “do unto others as you would have done to you.”
9
If you're proud to be an American, how does this make you feel?
2
“Cindy reflects my values” says the little elderly white lady during an interview. Trump used those “values” to drag Cindy over the election finish line. I will never step foot in those southern states. Their “Christian” attitudes are an anathema to the rights of all humans.
18
Thanks for this excellent piece...which is fact rather than opinion. See also: charter schools, another way of segregating public schools and draining their funding.
4
Cindy and many others like her saw nothing wrong with using the N word, literacy tests or Jim Crow. Her "jokes" tell me that she still falls far short of being qualified to serve in the U.S. Senate. We can only hope she still holds the ability to learn better.
77
Cindy Hyde-Smith is pretty much what I would have expected to come out of MS. Republicans have worked hard for years to get MS where it is today. Let's face it, if you want progress, a good education, a chance to be connected to the world and a dynamic economy, the only way is to move to a liberal city in preferably a liberal state. MS is not exactly a hotbed of promise.
15
It's as if there's no bottom.
25
"History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do." -----James Baldwin
As Baldwin most painfully understood, change can only be accomplished by those who are aware of the history they carry within themselves, become conscious of the "many ways" in which they are controlled by it and undertake the excruciating---and, perhaps even life-long---task of transcending it.
20
@Rusty Inman spot on and that explains the barrier to white and black, a barrier that may never be erased.
2
One has to wonder what our country would have been like had we pursued the same course of action that Germany did after World War II. What would have happened if we had vigorously prosecuted those individuals who took up arms against the United States? What would have happened if we had banned the symbols of the Confederacy, the stars and bars an other symbols pertaining to slavery? What would have happened if we had enforced reconstruction to the bitter end, fighting tooth-and-nail for equal rights for former slaves. One would hope that we would have a country now that would not look back on fondness for those who claimed that it was the right of the southern states to keep and own slaves. Yet, we allowed the South to revise its history and become the aggrieved victim of Northern aggression, rather than the evil perpetrators of crimes against humanity. We are paying for this inaction now, and we may continue to pay for it far into our future.
95
@Kjensen In addition to the South trying to rewrite its history, the north has as well. The north didn’t fight the civil war to free slaves. That only became a goal later as a war strategy. The war was fought to keep the union together. Northerners were racist as well. Lincoln was quoted during the war: In August 1862, he famously wrote to the New York Tribune: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”
Northern cities became known as sundown towns for their attempts to keep African Americans out. This was the segregation of the north. It’s a great myth that the north was virtuous and intended to use reconstruction to improve the lives of African Americans. Both the north and south have shameful histories when it comes to race.
15
@Kjensen What would happen if we fought tooth and nail for equal rights for the descendants of former slaves now, instead of accepting gradualism, permitting foot dragging, denial and even reversal of direction.
8
@Kjensen Germany didn't vigorously prosecute the Nazis. The Allies did. And the prosecution was less vigorous than you might think; see Tony Judt's "Postwar" to see just how many Nazis and collaborators suffered not one bit.
What Germany did differently from us is to take responsibility in other ways, with reparations and with a real sense of national guilt and determination to keep the Nazis from happening again. In the US, the South will never apologize for slavery and the country will never pay reparations for the tremendous harm and violence done to Black and Native people.
21
When the 'private academy' opened in my mother's home county in eastern Virginia, overnight the formerly 100% white public schools became 100% African American. Not only did all the white students and teachers go to the new 'private academies,' the pubic schools were looted by these state-funded 'private academies' of everything that wasn't nailed down: books, desks, chairs, pencils, rulers, file cabinets, teaching supplies - everything. The kids who then had to attend the public schools were left with only the buildings and virtually no money to repurchase what was legally stolen from them. I'm a proud Virginian at heart, but I'm ashamed that my home state was the intellectual leader of 'massive resistance' the 1960s.
49
The election of this tragic person reflects the deeply entrenched tragedy of racism in the American south. This backwards state of Mississippi could not muster sufficient voter turnout (or turnout was suppressed) that would enable the electorate of the state to claim their voice. Trumps ceaseless campaigning is unmatched by any democratic effort.
12
@Solar Farmer
Dems havent fought for anything since 1980 - not even their own hides
2
Kellyanne Conway's sister?
Jokes apart, it appears that Mississippians wanted Cindy Hyde-Smith as their Senator and succeeded in their wishes.
Gerrymandering or electoral college counts play no part in a Senate race. All one can infer then is this is what the residents of that state wanted.
One cannot conveniently blame voter suppression or other factors for the result. If one really wanted to vote and was eligible to do so, they would have done so.
1
@Jeremy Ander, one can easily infer that you don't get it. Nearly half the voters made it clear they did not want Hyde-Smith. Voting for poor people, just as across the U.S. but more so, can be very difficult or impossible. For Mississippi, the actual vote is a remarkable approach to repudiating racism and its deliberate continuation in the school systems. Read some of the comments here about that.
10
@Thomas Zaslavsky
It is not impossible or very difficult for most Americans to vote. That is a convenient fallacy. Disinterest or apathy is more likely the cause. One cannot blame poverty or voter intimidation when these do not seem to have an effect on voter turnout in other countries.
The US even makes it easy with so many early voting days prior to the actual election day,
It's not enough to say awesome! we almost won in Mississippi and Texas and Florida!
1
Mississippi's newly-elected Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith is another example of the Republican Party swamping the drain.
49
Mississippi has proven it deserves the negative reputation it has. I will be volunteering to to let everyone in the state that deserves the right to vote get it. Trump backing Hyde-Smith makes this a national embarrassment.
17
Mean people often pretend they were "joking" when their misanthropy is noticed. It's textbook deflection. This woman's character is plain to see. Every person who voted for her wants a mean racist who applauds voter suppression to represent them.
42
“And So It Goes”. Kurt Vonnegut
7
Hopelessly over her head. Emblematic of our darkest past. After all, it's MS.
7
What has 40 years of GOP government doe for Mississippi. Still the but of the nations jokes. the other 49 states always things could have bee worse look at Mississippi. Racism and hate have produce one thing the state at the bottom of the list in every metric of social well being. Mississippi the Poster State for GOP administration.
16
Southern whites might have been more blatant in their founding of "segregation academies" but northern whites did something very similar. We called them, "suburbs."
162
I think we have a lot of segregated academies in New York, New Jersey, Low Angeles, Chicago
4
@M Meyer suburbs that were created using public policy as the backbone
5
@M Meyer
And let's not forget red-lining.
Also, our current president's first mention in these very pages - he and his father being prosecuted by the Justice dept. for housing discrimination against black people.
Trump and Hyde-Smith: two racist peas in a pod.
22
Campaign gaffes or a calculated attempt to garner the votes won by the far right candidate during the first election? Regardless. She’s reprehensible and should be censured.
16
@Jennifer Schultz
She will be adored by Mitch and Lindsey and the other good old boys in the Senate.
2
Thinking about a verse from a song Billie Holliday and Nina Simone sang:
“Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees”
Pretty funny, huh, Senator Hyde-Smith?
41
@Elliot Silberberg
She has claimed her front row seat.
1
That this committed racist should be a United States Senator - from the State of Mississippi with its long (continuing) history of crimes against black Americans - is an atrocity that should shame us all, even in the age of Trump.
45
Fantastic article.
7
We seem to have a liberal mindset that as long as no one uses the N word or the schools are open to everyone , or if we police the grammar of everyone then it does not matter that we imprison 8 times as many people as we did in 1970, or that one out of three black males winds up in prison.
Racism is a far more complicated than the simplistic author of this article believes and to waste time and column space on the choice of words while ignoring the very real suffering of an entire race is disingenuous.
6
@Allan Please do not join the US President in demeaning Strong Black Women by calling Noliwe Rooks, director of American Studies at Cornell University "the simplistic author" of this response to the election to Cindy Hyde-Smith. Professor Rooks' article addresses how the school choices, FB posts and statements during the campaign of the new Senator from MS demonstrates the overt and ongoing racism in our United States of America that many choose not to see.
I agree with you that racism is far more complicated that this short opinion piece in the NYT can cover. Dr. Rooks' most recent work, "Cutting School: Privitization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education", directly addresses rasist base of "school choice" and voucher programs.
2
You do realize, I hope, that the educational and economic model for schools set out in Mississippi is the model Betsy DeVos has for the entire nation. What a vile place this will be in 35 years.
55
This person is just plain creepy all the way around, but the press has to take some of the rap for this happening.
This woman wasn't running for dog catcher.
She was running for "Senator of the United States of America".
When she had her "debate" last week, she demanded that there be "No press" and "No audience".
Now, you think on that.
No press allowed.
No members of the general public allowed.
Not allowed.... to a public debate on who should hold the Senate seat of the State of Mississippi.
This woman is vile as a citizen of this country.
She has been all of her life.
Yes, her entire life history has been racist, but when she demanded NO public presence for that debate.... it was only last week. And the press barely peeped at what should have been illegal.
This is why the South is a creepy joke to those not raised there: Racism. Sexism. Ignorance. Klan-loving. Sneering. Pretending to be "Christians".
And, once again, one of them is in the Senate.
SOUTH: We will NEVER take you seriously as long as this is what you send.
Shame.
44
@rosa
You seem like a progressive person, Rosa, so I'm sure you see the fallacy of tarring an entire region for the behaviour of a single individual. That's something that Trump does.
ROSA: no one will take you seriously as long as you post like this.
2
@Jonas, here's another fallacy: If this was a single, isolated instance, how did she gain a majority of votes? More than half of voters in her state apparently find nothing objectionable in her behavior.
That's what we find deplorable. And I'm using the word advisedly.
1
Has anyone written about the fact that she identified as a Democrat until 2010??
8
She could be an opportunist or just a late adapter. Southern whites were
democrats and southern blacks were republicans (because Lincoln freed the slaves) until Republicans embarked on their southern strategy in the 60s.
3
@atb
No, liberals ignore that fact b/c it's an inconvenient truth. Either that or she wasn't a racist until she switched parties.
2
@James
This is absurd. You CAN and should be accountable for your beliefs if you drag them into the public arena. It is not an either/or. We get to question these people.
It is what is disqualifying as a public servant in 2018 and forward.
1
This nation is officially heading for a new Civil War
2
How can it be that, with all the attention given to this campaign, "it was only a few days ago" that we learned a material fact about Cindy Hyde-Smith's education? Perhaps if journalists stopped focusing on the low hanging fruit of "gotcha" news (such as repeating candidates' gaffes) and did some investigative reporting, voters might learn more about candidates and policy and be better informed on election days.
13
@LD That would require significant investment by news orgs. (something that isn't going to happen anytime soon). See Sisyphus.
A further comment that might be enjoyable for the reader. The developer of the idea that public school were monopolies and that (white) students should have a choice of schools, a choice in the form of a voucher was economist James Buchanan, an intimate of the Koch brothers until his death. Alabama did not have vouchers until 5-10 years ago. Let me hasten to state that vouchers are available to any student in Alabama that attends a "failing school." The idea was they could transfer to private schools to give public schools some competition. Frankly, it was part of the Republican efforts in Alabama to destroy the public school systems as well as the Alabama Education Association which represented public school teachers. We don't have collective bargaining in schools in Alabama so AEA was not and is not a union albeit that is what Republicans called it. Here is an article about James Buchanan that will explain the origin of Republican anti-government actions. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/the-architect-of-the-radical-right/528672/
13
Cindy Hyde-Smith is only the latest example of a twisted, retrograde mindset that looks back upon the antebellum south with a wistful kind of nostalgia. Something that is not only radically at odds with the actual history of that time and place, but also thoroughly revolting.
America's slavery of Africans and African Americans, Jim Crow laws and segregation, as well as the uncountable incidents of violence, discrimination, and structural inequality both then and since, are one of history's greatest atrocities. That there are people in this country who not only gloss over that, but seek to celebrate it in some disgusting, gauzy fantasy, and perpetuate it in both subtle and overt ways is beyond appalling.
Racism is not something to laugh about, nor perpetuate, nor ignore. There have been too many innocent lives disrupted or destroyed by that worthless mentality. I do not wish to live in an America where wink and nod discrimination allows someone to ascend to the Senate. I demand to live in a country that upholds true equality for all, and allows full and unrestricted access to the ballot box, to healthcare, to economic opportunity, and quality education.
14
The Republican base is stirred up by the Trumpian method of saying something outrageously provocative and then refusing to apologize for it.
7
So incredibly disheartening. So difficult for people who believe in diversity and inclusion to imagine a world like this woman wants to live create.
3
This paper reported a little over a year ago a survey that suggested that 80% of white Americans report having no friends who were persons of color. I think a lot of people are still self-segregating without overtly projecting a racist personality or espousing racist ideology publicly.
2
It seems that no one is mentioning how the hastily established segregation academies were able to staff themselves. Either they were staffed with unlicensed and unqualified faculty or the qualified teachers abandoned the public schools en masse. If the latter is the case, it doesn't say much for the teaching profession in the Confederate states. This chapter of America's Jim Crow history is as sad as the other chapters. And it gives us insight into what we are learning about our country these past two years.
5
A comment of an apolitical reader: Ms. Hyde-Smith represents the traditional way of thinking of Mississippi and other States south of the Dixon-Mason Line. This is the essence of political diversity and equitable representation in Congress.
5
Can't Mississippi do better than this mediocrity? No, I suppose not. Not with a school system like the one they have. This is all they can produce. Who in their right mind would want to raise their children there? Even Alabama looks better than Mississippi. As Phil Ochs said fifty years ago, "Mississippi, find ourself another country to be part of."
2
@aphroditebloise
You actually may have something with the mediocrity comment.
Mediocre politicians who otherwise do not have a chance beyond local politics are bankrolled and elevated to national politics with the tacit understanding that they support their backers without question when voting on legislation.
It is a win-win for the backer and the politician. Of course everyone else loses.
I cannot imagine another reason for instance for how many such politicians vote against the ACA for instance.
Funny thing is that Hyde-Smith's ancestors would never vote for a Republican, as they were the party of Lincoln and the Radical Republicans who attempted, for a time, to reconstruct the south along the lines of racial equality (not all, and unevenly, but hey, Fred Douglass was a Republican). That GOP began its slow death in 1877, and finally passed completely in the 1960s. The Democratic party left the south behind during that same time, and embraced racial equality and equal rights. And, of course, the Klan openly backed the GOP presidential candidate last time around. History is funny that way.
1
She is definitely a product of her racist upbringing and her close- minded education. You need only to look at the cynical, condescending, pinched, mirthlessly smiling face to know exactly who she is.
Deplorable.
33
Mississippi skipped the whole 20th Century, and is now proud to refuse to catch up in the 21st. The state is on the bottom of almost every ranking. Yet they laugh and rejoice at the kind of racist garbage that most decent people put behind them a century ago. And then they call themselves Christians. What a joke.
24
Upon integrating schools in the south indeed many private schools sprang up as was those parents prerogatives. Most parents that sent their kids to the schools had nothing to do with how poor the schools were in Mississippi. They did the right thing for their children. Vouchers should not have been allowed.
Today Washington, DC has segregated schools while politicians send their children to Sidwel Friends. The hypocrisy is amazing. In fact President Obama ended vouchers for high achieving kids in poverty in DC as a pay off to the teacher’s unions even as his daughters went to S Friends. Hypocritical.
9
@FDB
Amy’s Carter was the last White House child to attend DC public school.
Sidwell has been the school of choice since Chelsea Clinton. It should be noted that Sidwell is Quaker-founded and thus has a history of opposition to Slavery and racial discrimination.
Not incidentally, Secret Service finds it easier to protect children in private schools that have more flexibility than public schools
Chris McDaniel drew 154,000 votes on November 6. Hyde-Smith’s margin of victory was just under half that. Painful inch by inch progress is being made.
8
Was just passing thru Keep Running, Mississippi. When you find yourself in the Deep Delta late at night, you best Keep Running.
12
@Michael W. Espy...A black friend of mine told me many years ago that she was from ‘GETOUTOFTHERE’ MS.
2
@Michael W. Espy
This is true. There were things called "sundown laws", as in, don't be here after nightfall; and also "beats", where groups of people would form patrols to make sure this rule was not broken. No pun intended.
1
There does not seem to be much hope for Mississippi. Not unlike the very existence of the Mississippi state flag, the election of Ms. Hyde-Smith sanctions a continuation of policies of bias and bigotry. Her statement about public hangings is either outright racist or demonstrates a colossal ignorance as to why that statement is offensive to a majority of Americans. Next month Mississippi will reach 201 years as a state, yet in all those years, and with its terrible history of racist violence and voter suppression to learn from, it still rejects basic principles of tolerance and open-mindedness. As a Senator, Ms. Hyde-Smith will be nothing more than another Donald Trump sycophant and, when Trump is gone, she will offer even less to her state and country.
17
So this would be why Mississippi is ranked #49 out of 50 in terms of education, and #50 in healthcare. No, separate is not equal: separate is holding pain at bay, keeping in place the deep wounds of slavery, forever festering, unconfronted...
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/mississippi
Fathoming the depths and breadth of the racism held in the hearts of our ancestors that perpetrated a foundation of slavery to mar the hope of a fledgling democracy is not something that can be understood in even a few short years in a classroom. It takes a lifetime-- decades--of reading, traveling, interacting with, and listening to the stories that trot in a path right from slavery to today's school segregation, voter suppression, and police brutality.
But that foundation for the beginnings of a road to comprehenion is best found in an integrated school. I went to fully integrated public schools in Alexandria, VA in the 1970s and 80s---and while there was much still to criticize about the curriculum (including a history teacher who shrieked from her lecturn, "The Civil War was NOT about slavery! I repeat, the Civil War was NOT about slavery"), it seems that even sheer proximity of having a wide diversity of students from so many cultures to debate with; compete with in sports; partner with in chemistry lab, theater, art, and music; eat with in the cafeteria, and navigate adolescence with, inherently expressed the humanity in us, and taught us a tolerance that I hope abides.
11
I knew I liked this woman when she sat behind Senator Collins when she gave her speech justifying why she would vote for Kavanaugh. Her quiet support of a fellow female Republican standing up to the hordes demanding Kavanaugh's hide by just sitting behind her was my introduction to her. Nothing that has been reported since has changed my opinion of her. She is certainly not a racist if that is the implication of this article.
6
@GregP.....Define racist.
2
Why don’t you think she is racist? This is a legitimate question; I truly want to understand.
2
@GregP: And did you read the article? It's much more nuanced than whether or not she is a racist. (And if you read it, why do you need to speculate on what it implies?)
1
People condemn Senator Hyde-Smith for attending a high school that her parents were responsible for sending her to. This is ridiculous as she had no real choice in the matter. If people are going to criticize her for something at least make it something she actually did.
7
@James: OK. "What she did" was to send her own daughter to a very similar segregated school, which siphoned public dollars out of public (black) schools into private (white) ones. Just like her own school did.
21
@James Like sending her daughter to a similar kind of school?
"she had chosen to send her daughter to Brookhaven Academy, which shared the same founding history."
4
@James She sent her daughter to a segregated academy, also!
2
While I find this topic very interesting, this article is a mess. It claims that Ms. Hyde-Smith and her daughter attended segregation academies funded by tax payer dollars--but also says that the schools were founded in 1970 and that in that same year the use of tax payer funds was found unconstitutional.
5
@Sarah: Perhaps you did not read it to the end? Here's what happened: Vouchers.
"By 1969, of the 49 schools receiving state-provided tuition vouchers in Mississippi, 48 were white-only segregation academies... Black parents fought back using the legal system to file hundreds of lawsuits arguing for educational access and equal funding, but many also acquiesced. Terror campaigns, both economic and physical, convinced them it was in their best interest to “choose” to stay in underfunded, segregated schools. Those who attempted to enroll in all-white public schools were subjected to numerous forms of both physical and economic intimidation — job loss, eviction, threatening phone calls and physical attacks."
4
@Sarah, the article says they were banned in 1971.
2
In addition to her comments, Hyde-Smith posed for a photo in 2014 while wearing a Confederate cap and holding a rifle, and then put the image on her Facebook page with the words "Mississippi history at its best!" Ultimately, none of this matters anymore... she is a voting member of Congress beholden to Trump. We are stuck with her.
29
@Tom: and, as an incumbent is statistically likely to be re-elected time and again.
If someone starts a foundation to assist black Mississippians who want to relocate to a more "user-friendly" state, I'd be happy to make a monetary contribution. Life is difficult enough without having to cope with a society that's still stuck in 1960.
12
And now we'll have this product of segregation schools in the Senate for years to come. Same as it ever was.
We can't do anything about the Mississippi electorate, but we can express our views to any large company thinking of locating in that state. Say, if a German carmaker is thinking of opening a factory there, just send a picture of Cindy in her Confederate hat, right alongside a picture of an SS stormtrooper, with the caption "Nein Mississippi!".
17
@Duncan. As much as I like the idea of economic resistance ( or retaliation ) this will only continue the #49 status of MS. Oh wait, that’s the idea ? CapeCodGirl
@CapeCodGirl
You make a good point about the potential practical outcome of economic boycott: it keeps people poor and hardens them in their views. But then I think about the practical outcome of not speaking up.
Take that Volkswagen plant in Tennessee, and its recent vote on the UAW. There you had conservative activists both inside and outside of the factory doing their darndest to push a "no" vote on the union -- and it worked. It really put a bad taste in my mouth about ever buying another Volkswagen. I wished then I had been more strident in practicing "political economics" in the past.
Now comes the news that GM is shuttering plants -- exclusively union plants. I believe that the ease with which auto companies have been able to move South, to those anti-union enclaves, emboldens them to make these moves. Imagine if more people backed their pro-union values and said, "do that and you've lost a customer".
Well, anti-union is one value I'll protest but racism is a whole other level of bad.
1
I recall the busing riots in my own Boston in the mid- seventies and earlier. They were all dangerous, frightfully ugly and violent. That Cindy Hyde-Smith found it easy to channel her state’s history to force it upon the very present and the foreseeable future—and that she rode that old, broken-down, tired nag to victory is not in the least surprising.
When Brown vs. Topeka came down from the Supreme Court in 1954, the decision shook America to its core. The reverberations may be seen everywhere in America today. One needn’t be fooled by the slick veneer of tolerance that falsely covers the American experience—simply take in the intolerance that is a staple of this particular presidency and the Supreme Court and the Congress, a hornets nest of pro-segregationists from both North (Steven King, Iowa; Devin Nunes, California; Chris Collins, N.Y.) and South (Mitch McConnell, Alabama-Kentucky; Steven Scalise, Louisiana; Marco Rubio, Florida)—admittedly a very short list—all of whom have angrily espoused Donald Trump’s racism and meanness.
Ms. Hyde-Smith is carrying on in a time-honored tradition in which white privilege is to be defended and advanced as a stabilizing force in which Christian domination, divinely-inspired, has informed the white supremacy movement in our latest iteration of Jim Crow; for, make no mistake about it, this America of ours (theirs?) remains a “separate but unequal” dynamic and there is no difference, as Malcolm X observed, between North and South.
16
The Republican Party and 45, through Hyde-Smith, channel their patterned campaign of racism through inexplicably and indefensibly starkly presented innocuous expressions ranging from “I didn’t know” to “I don’t see anything wrong with that.” This incredible incredulity is in fact a straight face, and the Republicans and 45 know this though they persist with their ostrich head in the sand position. And, this intense persistence begins at home. Hyde-Smith is a product of that experience. No question her parents were intent of sheltering their daughter from associating, much less, befriending, persons of colour who were relegated to separate but equal, deficient, schools. And, God forbid their daughter ever coming into contact with Black American males, definitely verboten and socially condemned. Hyde-Smith assured the strength of this institutional racism by introducing her children to the same vile intemperate environment of exclusion. The history repeats itself. White Mississippians expressed their preference at the polls, reinforcing the racial superiority position maintained for over a century and a half. Senators James Eastland and John Stennis championed racial supremacy notwithstanding representing the poorest state in the Union. Though their constituents lacked greater education, their white skin privilege was all that mattered, and they vote. Blacks who dared were lynched.History is present. Hyde-Smith's nonchalant position speaks volumes. No mistake.Race matters.
2
Talking about segregation from a city (NYC) with the most classist and segregated public education in the country.
Go on, NYT. Lets hear more. From 1876 to 1960, except once in 1948, Mississippi voted D straight down for president, along with mostly D/Jacksonian till 1861 when the senate seats were vacated due to the Civil War.
The most opprobrious moments in Mississippi' s history were under Democratic rule. Ironic.
5
@Scott You have conveniently left out the fact that the Dixiecrats abandoned the Democratic Party when it changed fundamentally by starting to support Civil Rights. The Dixiecrats then joined up with the Republican Pary. So the Democrats of old and the Democrats of today are very, very different. And Lincoln would not at all recognize the Republicans of today as his party.
3
@Scott You do realize that all of these people left the Democratic party after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, right? Reading your comment, I'm guessing you don't. Political parties are human institutions that change over time. As your post so crudely illustrates, the human condition, not so much.
3
@Scott
Yes, the Democratic party was the party of Southern racists, the Solid South -- united in their hatred of Abe Lincoln and his Radical Republican party of abolitionists.
That was true until 1968, when Southern racists began moving en masse to the once-hated Republican party. Seems they were betrayed by a Southern Democrat, LBJ, who had the audacity to pass major civil rights legislation.
So, now the Party of Lincoln is populated with politicians that Old Abe would be embarrassed to be associated with. The Democrats are now the party of civil rights. It is indeed ironic.
1
The one thing that gives me hope is that this upcoming generation is far more open, loving, and willing to fight for what is right than previous generations. I used to think that my generation (the Millenials) would lead the way in fighting for racial justice through voting patterns, but this hasn't yet been the case. Instead, I've watched my Gen Z college students be the fight and lead the struggle. Their energy, unification, and education gives me hope that voting patterns that put someone like Cindy Hyde-Smith in office will soon be a thing of the past reserved for the darker parts of history books.
I'm still standing in the darkness of 4am, feet cold and hands trembling, but I can feel the dawn coming, and it will be a brilliant thing.
5
In today's day and age, it's just sad that these schools still exist, and moreover, that people support and even attend them. What was painted as progress in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board decision we now find was not, and today we must deal with an issue that we thought was long past. Before moving on to the future, we must deal with this disease at the root of our country. My one hope is that we will be able to admit the severity of the problem and eventually fix it.
I'm just reading Tena Clark's memoir on growing up in MS during segregation. Her father tries to force her to attend such a school her senior year, and she refused. But during that year she reported that the black students also resented being forced to attend the integrated school.
Whether the Senator-elect had any choice in the matter of which school she attended is a pertinent question. Few girls in those days had the ability to stand up to their parents. I attended a segregated private all boys HS as a poor scholarship student. As it happens, that school integrated both racially and gender-wise the year after I graduated in 1966.
Espy makes it sound as if he voluntarily integrated Yazoo City HS. But personally I doubt either one of them made a conscious choice aside from their parents' wishes.
4
@kwb Many high school students choose what school to attend. Mr. Espy was probably very aware of what he was doing.
@kwb The issue is not their choice -- it is the effect those experiences had on them, and the pernicious racism that affected their outlooks -- the new Senator from MS obviously was taught racism, and how to 'joke' about it, but she is not fooling anyone, most of all those who voted for her.
1
@kwb Hyde-Smith made a conscious choice to send her daughter to a segregated school.
1
As long as southern whites continue to consider African-Americans and Latinos as sub-humans, nothing will change.
You couldn’t rip children away from their families or send blacks to languish in terrible educational environments if you really believed they were just as human as you. The founding fathers’ 3/5 rule set the tone.
This white privilege scourge has trickled up to elected officials and the courts who confirm racists’ beliefs with laws and rulings that keep minorities oppressed. Heroic attempts to effect change have largely been reversed since that “black man” was elected president , and loud public bigotry is now politically correct since Trump emerged from his penthouse of hate.
It’s going to take a dedicated effort to undo all this damage.
28
I am sure that Mississippi has its share of intelligent people but Hyde-Smith and her supporters don't appear to be members of that group. Her election does nothing more than enhance that state's reputation as something of an intellectual and social backwater.
61
The politically correct mass media again painted the fine lady as a racists because what she meant was a joke. It's a shame 1 statement out of a long history of helping people can be grabbed by some to smear another person. She had a perfect right to attend any school she wanted and she turned out alright it seems.
8
@Larry...I have no doubt that Hyde-Smith did not believe there was anything wrong in what she said. I do not think you believe there was anything wrong with what she said. There are many people who wave the Confederate battle flag who think they are just honoring their ancestors and their heritage. And therein lies the problem. Would that people would occasionally reflect more deeply on what they say and do.
28
@Larry Didn't realize public hangings were a joke. Silly me.
11
Wanting a front seat at a lynching is just not funny.
18
I always remember that photo of LBJ & pals holding the "missing ballot box" from a contested election. No one wanted him as Kennedy's running mate because they saw him as the most vile racist who aided and abetted Civil War think in the Senate. Ironically, as President, he out legislated JFK who was often criticised by Northerners for being late to the party when issues of equality and voter rights were being discussed. Changes in the laws were not effected until Johnson was President. JFK kept up the "just wait.-You black folks have to be patient, one day you'll get your turn." Both RF and JFK were known to be furious with M.L. King Jr. and other blacks for pushing the voting rights agenda during the early 60's. It was LBJ who did something about it and, as time passes, I realize that LBJ was in most ways a far better President than Kennedy ever tried to be. Always-Democrats make the mistake of demanding the everything, immediately when a just division of everyone's desires is more "politic" and would help elect them and not cause so much anger and resentment in broad swathes of an electorate some of which still believes it's 1820-like Ms Hyde Smith. Johnson was the last great "real" old time Democrat & good President, whatever he once was he achieved great things in spite of his previous personal actions. The hanging joke might be funny in room full of Southerners-white and black-and I have heard worse from black folk.
3
@meloop - Hangings are not funny. I’m from the south, I’m black. Never heard a joke about hanging. The humour is lost on me, however, you think it “might” be funny. Interesting.
3
Just another in a long line of grotesque characters the Republican party has to put forward. Even if she had not meant the public hanging comment in a racial way, it stinks to high heaven either way. When will these people ever go away forever?
47
With this victory, Mississippi shows racism is alive and well there.
19
Mississippi has has now solidified its position as the bastion of ignorance in the United States (slightly behind the WH).
35
My grandmother always emphasized to me that "pretty is as pretty does." I see here that the reverse is also true. She is a disgusting excuse for a human being. I am really disappointed in my fellow Americans.
11
Those were not "gaffes".
Miss Cindy Hyde Smith was whistling Dixie while waving the Stars and Bars trying to signal her desire to reverse the outcomes of the Civil War and Civil Rights eras. And she even used a New York Yankee who inherited his wealth and white supremacist bigotry to assist in her quest.
All that is left is will Miss Cindy wear Confederate gray, Ku Klux Klan white or White Citizens Council yellow to her swearing in ceremony.
See "Dog-Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class" Ian Haney Lopez
16
I live in the South and the FIRST THINGS transplants to my area do is seek out a good private school for their kids. it's pretty funny that the mega-expensive ones that most people can't afford seem liberal, and the ones that are actually affordable are called racist. Just sayin'. You should NEVER expect others to place their kids in a school you wouldn't want for your own kids.
7
Welcome to the New and Improved Confederacy, circa 2018.
America's rotten Republican underbelly of unrepentant, racism shines brightly and proudly in Cindy Hyde-Smith's Mississippi, Brian Kemp's Georgia and all across 2018's neo-Confederate Republistan and fake Bible Belt.
Eventually, the bottom of America's political barrel will wither and die.
But we should always remember to register and vote and audit the votes in record numbers from now until eternity.
If there's one thing Republican Confederates can't stand, it's democracy and the one-person-one-vote principle.
"Only the worst people": GOP 2018
275
@Socrates
Meanwhile, in 2018, Massachusetts just now elected its first black to Congress, and just a few blue states over, the first black state lawmaker felt compelled to resign over racial threats. Housing in NY remains segregated not just by price, but by laws based by Dem politicians. But the blue state hypocrites keep launching stones form their glass houses.
5
@TD
At least we let non-white citizens register and vote and don't purge their names from the voter files....unlike the new and improved Jim Crow Confederacy.
33
@Socrates
Evidence?
5
The past is never dead. It is not even past.
146
“To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.”
- William Faulkner
141
@Sean Cunningham
" Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightening of his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on. Glory glory hallelujah"
2
She represents Mississippi now, even though she won by only by a small margin, winner take all.
It should give anyone and everyone a good reason not to move to Mississippi, build a factory or warehouse there or even vacation there.
67
@jalexander I can't imagine Mississippi had much tourism industry to begin with but she just tanked it and I'd guess other potential future, economic gains.
6
The election of Hyde-Smith epitomizes the mindset of the Republican Party that will hurt themselves in the long term for the short term goal to exclude the "other."
13
I also grew up in Mississippi during the 1970’s. I have multiple university diplomas but my proudest one will always be from West Point High School. Thankful to my parents for not sending me to the white-flight academy. To this day I am a fervent supporter of public schools and continue to be disappointed in my Seattle neighbors who choose private schools. Public education might be less pretty but the grit and determination born there is priceless.
195
@emfair we are from the state of Washington and raised our 2 sons in Florida. We sent them to public schools while many of our neighbors sent their children to private “white” catholic or baptist schools. They have advanced degrees and successful professional careers. We have returned to Washington state and live in Seattle. It’s disappointing to see a generation of Seattleites spouting progressive slogans and placing Black Lives Matters signs in their windows all the while sending their children to private schools so they can mix with their own kind. I am an old fashioned liberal to the core. Seattle progressive liberalism is only skin deep. They just talk. They don’t walk the walk.
26
@emfair - Oh please stop. I send my kids to top-end private schools. They switched from the local highly rated public schools. Why? Because the resources and education is far, far superior. I see dramatic differences every day, and this is compared to a top public school not a mediocre one.
And you know what? It's my job as a parent to do what is in my own kids best interests, not sacrifice them for some bleeding heart agenda. Oh, and their current private school is more diverse than the public one too.
11
@DRS...."education is far, far superior."...But what kind of education? There is a great deal more to education than what is learned from books. And if your child will leave one day and go out into the real world, what will they know of what the real world is like?
17
I am a graduate of a segregation academy, the now dufunct Dixie Academy located in Louisville, Alabama. It was 1970. I am an extremely liberal Democrat in a state that has more stray yellow dogs than liberal Democrats. To the best of my knowledge segregation academies were not funded with public money in Alabama. I remember discussions among adults so inclined when I was in high school. The prudent opinion was that by accepting public funds from the State of Alabama the schools would be public schools and that would result in the federal courts integrating the segregation academies. I can only speak for Alabama, not the other states. If I am wrong about Alabama please set forth verifiable facts. One should not reach universal conclusions about graduates of segregation academies. Several of my school mates join me today as liberal Democrats. That was then, this is now. People change over time and often for the better. I like to think that I did. I am pointedly not defending the new Mississippi senator. She is a Trump Republican and to me, that is all one needs to say about her.
97
@Jack Wallace, Jr.
Meanwhile, some of my friends who were forced to remain in violence plagued public schools undergoing forced integration came away with physical and emotional scars leaving them with a virulent racial hatred that makes their parents blush.
2
Just a question about the apparent contradiction re funding: first Rooks says segregation academies got public money throughout the '60s and '70s - then says that was banned in 1971 - then again says public money helped fund them to the point where by 1974 3,500 academies enrolled 750,000 white children, and white children made up only 1/3 of public school students by 1976, draining public schools of money to teach black students.
So did public funding stop in 1971 or not? Regardless, it seems to me that the only fair thing would have been to force the legislature to refund all that money to public schools. I wish a court case had been brought to accomplish that.
12
@William LeGro
Agreed. I also found this part of the article very confusing and wondered if it was incorrect.
4
This column is absolutely spot-on. I'm a white male, about the same age as Sen. Hyde-Smith, and attended public school in the deep south, elementary through college. My parents believed in integration, and I remember how almost overnight circa 1969-70 "seg academies" formed all over the place. Just listening to Hyde-Smith over the past couple of weeks brought to mind two thoughts: "She's not ready for prime time" and, "I knew people like her growing up." But, of course, it looks like Hyde-Smith never really grew up.
122
Some dots were left unconnected. What was per pupil spending in the public schools before and after the segregation academies were set up? How does it compare to the $240 per pupil given to the segregation academies, and how does it compare to the spending per pupil (including the spending beyond the tax subsidy) at the segregation academies?
Is there also a critical mass issue? If money and students both leave the public school system, one would expect that there might still be the same amount per pupil left in the public school system. But maybe there are fixed costs or lost economies of scale that a now-smaller public school faces after some students flee, so even if the per-pupil spending remains the same, the school is worse off.
Leaving out even a nod to these kinds of facts weakens Rooks’ points.
3
@aragon9 it only weakens her case if you ignore the words that mention the physical and mental intimidation and violence faced by families of color. or the well documented history of Mississippi disenfranchisement of its Black citizens leading up to modern times. I wonder what possess you to try to make this a mathematical equation while ignoring the human element? is it that you are horrified by the reality? or bigoted enough yourself to ignore the reality?
Yes, but... The real story of the mid-term elections isn't being reported or discussed. The nation is highly polarized and virtually split evenly between the two major parties.
That would make one think that the elected officials who are charged to represent the will of all the people in their state/district would seek the middle ground and compromise. That is not happening! Even though the elections are decided by razor thin margins, the elected officials are tending to go to the absolutist extremes of their parties, totally ignoring those who voted against them and ignoring the will of the centrists.
Little wonder that Americans are disgusted with their elected governments at all levels. The vast majority of Americans want compromise while only the wealthiest donors demand adherence to the absolutist agenda.
It is time for compromise and legislation that we can all live with. I don't agree with the extremist wings of either party as none of their agenda will actually work or accomplish the stated goal. I fear we are setting the stage for another civil war and somebody actually wants that to happen.
7
@George N. Wells
I dispute your claim that the nation is split evenly between the two parties. Remove gerrymandering and voter suppression and the dems would win outright for the foreseeable future. The antiquated electoral college keeps republicans in office, yet the republicans are beginning to get swept away even with the unequal weight of votes in small, red states. The unintended battle cry for the republicans now is "remember the whigs!"
42
@Armo
And which party is it that has Super Delegates that can sway the nomination in spite of the voter's will? Which party has closed primaries that do not allow unaffiliated voters to weigh in?
Which party held their thumb on the scale in 2016 to give the insider the edge? Democrats perfected the art of gerrymandering in North Carolina before they were finally tossed from power. Republicans are equally guilty but certainly not more so than the Democrats who they replaced. It is well documented in this State so should be true in others as well.
5
@GregP
Southern Republicans were Democrats until passage of the Civil Rights Act under Lyndon Johnson. As to the Democrats system in 2016, Bernie is not a Democrat. He's Independent. If he truly wanted to represent the Democratic party as it candidate, he could have actually joined the Party. Something he still has not done. And for voting in Primaries, many states have closed primaries for both parties.
1
one person's campaign gaffes may be another person's campaign signals. If people don't heed to that, they may have to face the consequences
6
I know Cindy Hyde-Smith...no, not that exact one but many of her clones who live here in the deep South, daughters of relative privilege whose parents sent them to 'Seg' academies, often in rural areas and smaller towns. Most of them went willingly, wanting to embrace the fraudulent heritage they had learned by rote and when they came out and went to southern universities and pledged their sororities, they melded largely with those of like minds, grew up, married Todd or Beau and joined the Junior League, and the shame is they continue to perpetuate the same beliefs as their parents and pass those beliefs onto their own children. It is no surprise, though it is a shame, that Mike Espy lost his election, no surprise because the deck of History is still loaded against the future here, so long as there are lies tell about 'heritage' and so many angry and unhappy people willing to believe them.
303
@Lew it blows my mind that people, in this country, are not taught that the entire confederacy is a an example of treason/ traitors and dishonor. it's like two parallel worlds side by side but one is really in love with 1850
68
@Lew thank you for that Lew, I'm a New Yorker and the rest of America look scarier to me by the day, I don't plan to visit anytime soon.
26
@Cameron I have relatives in the South with whom I have disconnected and this is EXACTLY how they feel and behave. Backstabbing manipulators. I wish the USA would evict the south.
37
This part of the American experience was not part of the history taught to my kids over the last 15 years in a good school system in VA. None of them were aware of the segregation academies. So we made part of our family discussions about racism.
17
Republicans traded Mia Love for Cindy Hyde-Smith. Because Cindy Hyde-Smith *is* today's Republican party. The Senate would do well to shun her, but she will be warmly welcomed by the likes of Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Kevin Cramer, much less the current president and his underling Mike Pence. Lee Atwater would be so proud...................
140
Yes. Now please do an op-ed entitled "Rep. Ilhan Omar is Teaching Us What Her Strict Muslim Upbringing Taught Her."
Need evidence? https://www.city-journal.org/html/ilhan-omar-16063.html. Plus, her about-face on BDS the day after she won the election. In the campaign, against. The day after, for.
6
@Observer of the Zeitgeist You don't need to be a strict Muslim to support BDS. I am not a Muslim and I support BDS. And Jewish Voice for Peace as well. There are plenty of Jews and non Jews as well who support both movements.
2
@Observer of the Zeitgeist... the Ilhan Omar comparison with Cindy Hyde-Smith is inapposite. I read the article, and the "facts" on which your indictment of Omar is based are actually an opinion piece. Using a third source opinion to bolster your own opinion still equals an opinion. (0 x 0 is 0.)
3
@Observer of the Zeitgeist: You disagree with Ilhan Omar's stance on the Israel vs Palestinians question; you are annoyed that, after immigrating to the US, Omar has dared to mention that Muslims are discriminated against here; and you assert that at one point she married her own brother. (Omar has unequivocally stated that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is not her brother, calling the allegation “absurd and ridiculous." You offer no proof to contradict this.)
None of your points has anything to do with Cindy Hyde-Smith's racism. They appear to be an attempt to hijack the discussion away from Hyde-Smith's racism.
1
Who has the first thought of a hanging in their mind? Obviously a generational racial attitude for Hyde-Smith.
41
It sure looks like the new south in Mississippi is just the old south in Mississippi.
55
@Mike...the new South is the same as the old South. (Hat tip to Pete Townsend.)
2
@Mike HA! a good one, yet so sad at the same time.
No doubt if you suggested to the typical Hyde-Smith voter that racism had anything to do with her win, they would be shocked. Shocked!
52
So all that nonsense about the "New South" was just another big lie. Who knew?
16
In 1964 Nina Simone, the black singer and activist recorded a song called "Mississippi God Damn" in which she decried the ever increasing, never decreasing racism in that southern state. It is notable for it's ferocity and it's, now timeless, frustration with voters who are so immune to their own racism that they will vote for people like Cindy Hyde and still come out of the voting booth swearing they don't have a prejudiced bone in their body. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and chalk this up to an old ladies thoughtless upbringing and sense of humor but the history of these schools makes one wonder if the long ago time and place Trump supporters might be looking at when they attempt to make America great again can be found in Mississippi circa 1964.
19
Sadly racism is what fuels and divides Americans, and 45th does an excellent job at it. Not surprised this racist woman won a senate seat. What’s surprising is that inbreeding is still a thing - the just elected senator is a clear example of it!
20
@Eduardo Right? It looks like she's in her 80s with false teeth...Isn't she supposed to be only in her 50s? Hatred eventually comes to the surface.
3
The education that those white southern segregationists received in their elitist and unconstitutional private schools served only to reinforce their cruel, outdated prejudices rather than teach them anything about the ideals of American democracy. They stuck with their own clan (klan?), missing the opportunity to broaden their horizons and their humanity, which ultimately produced people like the miserable, smugly ignorant Hyde-Smith.
47
Racists are part of the GOP base. Without them, the GOP would never win a single election.
37
Why can't I find the "Mississippi Elects First Female Senator" articles in the NYT? It seems that 'firsts' are only praised when they come from the Democratic Party.
7
@Jeff Because Mississippi can't escape its history. Electing a white female segregationist Republican in Mississippi isn't about the state's liberalizing gender politics. In another state, it might be. But Mississippi isn't famous for how it treats women. It's famous for how it has always treated people who aren't white. I'm not sure people without ties to Mississippi understand how true this is. The violence and virulence of segregation there was (and is?) special. And, at least as the article puts it, Ms. Hyde-Smith is more classic Mississippi than new Mississippi.
14
@Jeff perhaps when Mississippi sheds it confederate symbolism from its flag we can move beyond talking about race. until the...let the NYT call it as it is.
3
@Jeff This isn't anything to brag about or be proud of. As a woman and a human being, I am disgusted by Hyde-Smith.
10
Today I keep reading that MS is frustrated over perceptions of the state as ignorant and racist. (A friend of mine suggested several years ago that an appropriate state quarter coin for MS would have a pic of a student in a dunce hat to celebrate the state's "last in everything" status!)
Out of curiosity as to how formidable the state's efforts to shed this "bad rap" have been, I looked up a pic of the MS state flag. It is clear that the state embraces all of the hatred and oppression associated with the rebel flag, and proudly.
Ronald Reagan knew exactly what message--and to whom-- he was sending when he announced his bid for president from Philadelphia, MS. The "southern strategy" is alive and well.
85
Never forget: for tens of millions of Roypublican* voters, PWB was Obama's original sin.
Presidenting While Black. Fact.
* not a typo.
14
The election of Hyde-Smith, in spite of her lynching declarations, echoes the horror of the election of white supremacist Senator King in Iowa a few weeks ago. Would it feel as bad if Hyde-Smith's election took place on the same day as King? Like ripping off the Band-Aid in one swoop? I don't know. It's just rotten. Rotten to the core.
33
@common sense advocate
Sadly you're right, except that King is a congressman, not a senator.
@Evan - I know absolutely nothing about Iowa but your correction is good news- Democrats control the House, which means will have our thumb right on Mr King.
2
Her new cookbook, timed for post-election revelry: "Front Row Recipes Perfect For Lynching Picnics," by Cindy Hyde Smith, out now from Dog Whistle Publishing.
Those with a sweet tooth will love the "Picnic Pickaninnys"... molasses and cornpone dollops fried in hog lard and dusted with confectioners sugar.
"These bring back wonderful childhood memories," Hyde-Smith declared.
19
This horrible woman and many just like her perpetuate the racism in this country by raising children to hate.
32
I am a born and bred white southerner and attending a 49/51 white/black high school has made all the difference. Until we realize that understanding and APPRECIATING diversity is crucial to the mission of education and our country, we will continue to struggle.
But I fear to tell you that it is far a southern problem. Look no further than Boston or New York and the experiences those kids are having. As I hear so often my friends in those locals......he/she "goes there for( x) reason. It's unrelated to race." I have a simple question: where do your kids go and what are you doing to change that?
18
@BUBBA Great point and I'm sure most parents would tell you that they send their kids to the very best places that they can afford to. At the same time, while that is not equality, at a bare minimum, people can teach their children at home to be decent, moral and fair. They can teach their kids that prejudice and bigotry is wrong and they can do things as a family to underscore that. School is not the only place to learn.
8
She does sound like a typical, tone-deaf closet bigot, and not closet at that, but NYT editorials have got to stop always sounding like hand-wringing, self-righteous scolds.
There are a lot of mean-spirited, bigoted people in the US. Mr. Espy is a better person than Ms. Hyde-Smith. We get it. Now how do we help the country to rise to its better self and not just forever stoke the fires of partisanship?
22
@S Fenton
Also, we need to get all of the elephant poop out of this room without mentioning the you-know-what in the room that's making all of the elephant poop. We don't want to risk offending anyone.
2
@S Fenton It's reporting the news. It's not a newspaper's job to to tell people how to be better. It's to provide information so that people can make educated choices.
5
@S Fenton
The truth is sometime hard to swallow, but not speaking out about people like HydeSmith won’t fix the problem. And trying to just make nice with folks who have deep-seated racist convictions won’t work. One has to reach those reachable with facts, stories of real people suffering, and solutions.
6
Gee, and I thought that the North won the Civil War... I'm sure many Yankees now wish the Deep South would secede again--and take their reactionary politics and economic squalor with them.
28
@Lewis Ford Have you been to Detroit lately? That was the worst economic squalor in the late 1990's that I had ever seen. Funny thing, my speculation is that Alabama residents build more cars now than Detroit.
3
@Jack Wallace, Jr.
At the end of the day, we ended up with this list of the 10 Poorest States for 2018:
Mississippi
New Mexico
Alabama
Louisiana
South Carolina
Kentucky
Georgia
North Carolina
West Virginia
Arkansas
See a pattern here?
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2017/09/14/americas-richest-and-poorest-states-5/2/
Cindy Hyde-Smith, Betsy Devos, Sarah Palin, etc. The problem is not only with old white men.
398
@David . . . and not just Southerners!
23
@David You forgot Jan Brewer.
21
@David
1st daughter Trump of 1st Trump spouse, Sarah Sanders, Hope Hlcks, J. Ernst, Laura, Alnsley Earhardt, N. Halley, L. Murkowskl, Susan Colll., Deb Fsche., Shelley Moore-Capto...
22
I cannot wait until we outnumber these white, racist bigot carryovers from the 19th and 20th centuries. Cannot. Wait.
6
Be careful that you don’t become what you claim to deplore. You sound pretty hate filled and bigoted yourself.
14
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck. Calling it a duck is in no way pejorative, right? So if someone walks like a racist bigot and talks like a racist bigot, they're a racist bigot. And calling them isn't hate filled and bigoted, it's speaking truth.
3
Another racist senator from Mississippi goes to Washington. It continues to be one of the most backward states in the US. She is a real embarrassment for our nation around the world.
62
As Mississippi's greatest writer, William Faulkner, once said: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
229
This is the problem of people like Hyde-Smith. They apparently don't know history. The South lost get used to it. Segregation is wrong; voter suppression is wrong; making jokes about public hangings are wrong. When will southerners learn? By voting people like her in they have a long way to go.
25
@Margo Channing
She got elected Senator so at least a portion of her state admires her, a bit. The point and often an unpleasant one, is that in a democracy we are forced to sometimes live side by side with people who we dislike.
But we'll help them put out the fire in their house, though, without question. Not because we like or respect them, but because otherwise, democracy, couldn't work.
I have thought the comments to these articles-along with many of the articles-ought not to be published if all they do is cause dissention.
Ms. Hyde-Smith is an absolute disgrace to public office.
214
@Pat
Trump the lesser...
4
If there was every a doubt about Ms. Hyde-Smith character “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row” should have extinguished those doubts. She was not tone deaf to her states racial violence but winked at it. Openly racist people of Mississippi are convinced that she is a racist and that should be good enough for the rest of us. As a fine Confederate woman we can be assured of more voter suppression unless the federal government and the courts eventually step in. These are the values of Trump's GOP.
195
When I saw the headline, I also expected some discussion of the poor quality of teachers and limited transfer of knowledge these academies offered! In other words these academies did not offer a well rounded education, which Hyde Smith proves every time she opens her mouth! The writer missed that! Well, I guess at least now Marsha Blackburn has an equal and someone to talk to!
17
So long as white Mississippians and other southerners refuse to face up to their past, they will continue to act shamefully and will be seen for the hypocrites they are when they claim to be inspired by Christian beliefs. The so-called New South continues to place a value on white supremacy.
81
@arp, it's the shared past of this nation.
So long as sanctimonious northerners continue to point the finger at the south, they will also "continue to act shamefully and will be seen for the hypocrites they are when they claim to be inspired by Christian beliefs."
The South isn't along in racial discrimination, or in white supremacy. Look at yourself first before condemning everyone else.
3
Nice Church Lady. The new face of the Confederacy.
I won’t be coming thru your State, and I have plenty of Money to spend. NOT bragging, just a fact.
Seriously.
169
@Phyliss Dalmatian
I second that. I will never set foot in a state that supports people like her. She sounds so ignorant I wonder how on earth she advanced to this position. Trump must be thrilled that one of his disciples of hate won.
15
Thank you for writing this, Dr. Brooks. Worth noting that before the Civil War, the South barely had public education. That is, the rich, slave-owning whites educated their own children at home, forcibly stopped enslaved black people from learning, and kept poor whites uneducated by not funding schools -- a legacy that has continued with the low levels of funding for public schools in the South, even without segregation academies skimming from the pot. That legacy, too, may explain why nonwealthy whites continue to vote for racist candidates even when it's against their own interests.
49
A subject I knew nothing about. Thank you.
Just another proof that the North lost the Civil War. Sorry Mr. Lincoln, but we should have let them go. We would have a country south of us that would still look like the 19th century, and we would look more like Canada, or the Scandinavian countries. Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Kennedy would not have been assassinated. Sigh!
45
@Hddvt
Not the war-the North lost the peace. Anyone who knows American history is aware that the Northerners were often railing against the mad, bad and sad South and wanted to leave the USA themselves-seeing Canada as a far better government partner. The War of 1812 almost precipitated such a break-this is one of our infamous wars we claim to have won but, in reality lost pretty badly-our only success was a month after the peace at New Orleans.
I think the whole Revolution was oversold.
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@Hddvt In case you didn't know, JFK's assassin was a leftist, and RFK's killer was an Arab American. Also, have you been to Canada and/or any of the Scandinavian countries? The populations are pretty much middle class to upper middle class and mostly "white", not ethnically mixed, at least not until very recently.
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@Hddvt
Vermont looks like Vermont because of a long ago systematic plan to now encourage blacks from the south to migrate North to plant roots in the state. Vermont went out of its way to disuade blacks from moving to its state and instead encouraged white Europeans. I hope you understand the North (and New England) has still be an inhospitable place for blacks to live. Albeit, with laws that have grown to be the most progressive in the land.
Wow, probably about 35k a year for the luxury of being able to randomly use the N-word and not have to study evolution!
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It is a terrible shame that Espy was not elected yesterday. What is revealing, though, is the percentage of voters who actually took the time to vote. I haven't seen the stats, but to me, as I followed the results last night, the turnout must have been less than 20%. One county had only 500 voters........sure, a rural county, but the population must be at least 3000, don't you think?
Being that for most of my life I had strong ties to the Gulf Coast region, I am disgusted by how strong the Repugnant-cant element dominates the region. What's wrong with them?
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"Ms. Hyde-Smith claims not to have realized there was anything wrong with what she said." If this is what she sees as a joking matter then I'd hate to hear her real views. In any event if this is indeed what she believes, then she is too stupid to be in the United States senate; in addition, she'll unfortunately find someone in the Oval Office who apparently shares much of her views. Let's hope the good people of Mississippi will shun this pariah.
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@Horseshoe Crab; It doesn't matter what the "good people" do. They are a powerless minorithy.
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Most public hangings were not lynchings. Most lynchings weren't hangings. Most public hangings were legal executions. Saying you would attend a public hanging isn't the same thing as saying you would tend a lynching. To attend a lynching would bee to take pat in a crime. Hyde-Smith's comment should offend only those who oppose the death sentence.
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@William Case So, let me get this right. If only we understood the meaning of lynching and public hangings we would all feel better? Oh, and by the way the death penalty in Mississippi is for blacks only, don't you know.
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@William Case Riiiiiiight. Now it's all clear.
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@Lillies
Glad you understand.
And meanwhile, all the Blue state folks will get to send their tax dollars to pay for Mississippi's roads, schools, hospitals and food.
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@Sparky
Red State folks are sending money too.
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@Nat
Look it up-Blue states give A LOT more in tax dollars.
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@Nat
Not so much.
Once you offset costs of all the "liberal" social welfare programs that poor southern whites disproportionally use (while ranting about their taxes), it turns out that Blue is, in fact, subsidizing Red.
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This only reinforces what anyone paying attention already new. The old Confederacy never got over the Civil War. I wish Lincoln had let them separate. They could have had their own white supremacist society, and blacks could have flocked to the North where they would have bolstered the economy of the real UNITED States. With their work force depleted, the Confederacy would have become a third world country. As if Trump's election wasn't already proof that white supremacy is alive and well in the good old USA.
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All Ms. Hyde-Smith is to do what Trump has been and IS doing: Letting White/Caucasians know, she's with them and them alone - and she has no intention of allowing any move forward into the future. The ways of old will remain, setting and ease concerns that Alabama will move into a more diverse column of what America is evolving into - a multi-cultural, multi-color Nation. There is one caveat, the margin of win was much, much smaller than I expected and I dare say - many also expected. 47.1% of the opposition vote is no laughing matter and come the next election, there is a greater chance to equalize all of Alabama's citizens. Change is a long, long, long road - especially in America.
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I was a white 7th grade student in McComb MS when we integrated in Jan 1970. Took some time, but by the next school year all was going smoothly and students were adjusted. About half the students went to the local Parklane Christian Academy, and it was basically their parents decision. I still received a good education, and graduated with an engineering degree from an instate university.
Both black and white alike, there were some great students who went on to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, school administrators - you name it.
I also gained a greater appreciation of blacks by playing on sports teams and participating in school activities. We knew each other on a personal basis, something I will forever cherish.
When the white parents pulled their kids from the public schools and eventually moved to preferred school districts, it started a downward cycle in the public school system that created even more segregation among blacks and whites.
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Indeed, where you send your kids to school says a lot about your values. Not just what you say, but what you do.
Even in New England, left unsaid by the private school parents I know is that they do not want their kids go to school with kids of color and low income kids. These parents talk about wanting diversity, but their choices say something else.
And I reminded of this when applicants consider their college choices. I'm having to stifle shock as families I know look at colleges like Colby, Colgate or Wash U, which are widely known for having stunningly few kids of color and/or of modest financial means. (A recent Raj Chetty report put the Pell-eligible population of Wash U at 6%. A recent document put the number of kids at Colby who attended private school at 52%). These families dodge the topic by fooling themselves into thinking that all top colleges are like that. Its not true.
This article is about the horrible history of segregation in Mississippi and the disturbing fallout in this election. But northerners shouldn't feel absolved - we do it too, just without official government policy.
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@Cousy But let's be fair. Colby's history does not include being established to avoid blacks who remain a tiny population in Maine. I attended Catholic schools in my boyhood, established not to avoid blacks but to allow us to be treated fairly. By the way, the Ivies did not even recruit at Catholic schools until 1969 or so. So yes, the north had its failings, but after the Civil War is was mostly new englanders who went south to try to set up schools for the freed slaves. Colby is expensive. What can you expect?
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@Cousy
At least here on Long Island, it is open government policy, because we have 133 public school districts, many of which are very carefully drawn to exclude black children. Long Island housing remains very segregated (it's changing, but slowly), so drawing school district boundaries to include only majority white neighborhoods and relegate majority black neighborhoods to small, poorly funded school districts is possible. Then they can claim the schools are not segregated -- if a white family moves into the black neighborhood, their kids would go to the black school, if a black family manages to buy a house in a white neighborhood, their kids would attend the white school. But historic housing patterns, and exorbitant home pricing in the best school districts, create de facto segregation, all on the public's dime.
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@Terry McKenna
Colby is the same price as all other top liberal arts colleges. Bowdoin, another top college in Maine that is similarly expensive though harder to get into, have three times the number of Black students as Colby. Bates, another Maine college, has double the number. There's no excuse.
Nothing short of tragic that in 2018 this is who Mississippi deems a qualified or appropriate representative but then again, Chris Christie was the governor of my state so there's little I can say except how sad I am to see a horribly regressive politician like Ms. Hyde-Smith succeed.
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It's so sad that it takes so long to change peoples opinions of each other. This same thing happened in California just after WWII: people of color were only allowed to integrate after a late 1940's California Supreme Court ruling written by Earl Warren. Even so, it was decades before any movement at all occurred.
Today, we are better off as a society when inclusivity is maximized, despite what trump thinks. And it may be that change will only come after the old white people die off.
Leopards like Hyde-Smith don't change their spots.
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Why don't we also state in many people's minds, Espy = Clinton. That distinction also affected the election. (His past association with the Clinton administration)
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So much for the fallacies of a 'representative' democracy. It's not a democracy at all... nowhere, in this country.
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Aren't both sides reliving the past here?
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@Mike Livingston yes but one side is being forced to do so most unwillingly, do you get that?
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Mike Espy got 46% of the vote in this election for what will be a two-year term. Let's help the Democratic candidate in 2020 get at least 47% of the vote for a six-year term.
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@David in Toledo
Better than that, 51% of the vote in 2020.
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I believe it is hypocritical to criticize her (Hyde-Smith) parents choice of schools she attended. My wife attended public school in Mississippi and it was terrible. Who can blame a parent for sending their kids to a private school if they can afford it. Further, all parents regardless of race, want their kids in Charter Schools, which are tax payer funded. Has the NYT tried raising taxes for schools, probably not. All public schools today are being neglected and all kids, especially the poor and minority are paying the price. However, you should not condemn someone for getting the best educations they could get from a flawed system.
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As Mississippi remains at the bottom of the rankings in education, healthcare and other social and economic markers, its citizens chose to send a woman to the Senate who believes in the values that have sunk their state for so long. Those who voted for Hyde-Smith will dismiss any thoughtful analysis presented in a piece like this as being part of the elitist, coastal way of thinking---and they will mean elitist in a derisive way. Being willfully ignorant of history and its consequences is the only way to justify electing a woman like this and a man like Trump to the White House. There have to be decent Republicans somewhere, but the elections of Hyde-Smith and Trump make it difficult to believe that the Republican party is anything but a party that appeals to the basest of human nature, but rewarding racism and exclusion.
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@SNA-I do not believe that any decent person can be a republican today and remain decent. That party is too much the voice of every evil "ism" people to which people can subscribe. Better, people with conservative economic but socially liberal (or at least, middle-of-the road) values would do well to join the Democrats in creating a fairer country with open debate on what that means. Not a single republican position supports anything other than cynical and heartless discrimination.
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@SNA
They take comfort from the need to seek the Sun to be colored Obama brown. Decency faded when John Brown and Abraham L. were replaced by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms. Decency passed from the end of Emmett Tlll, M. Parker, M. Evers, A.Goodman, J. Cheney and M. Schwerner.
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@SNA Thank you for the precise and succinct comment.
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My my. A true, prototypical woman from the Bible Belt. I know well, as I grew up in Shreveport, LA. I left home at 18, and moved to Denver, CO when I was 19 in 1973; a very tumultuous year. A dozen years or so later, after moving around decided to to move to New York City, and di so in 1988. I remained for 30 years. I will always love the city, even though I had to move back to Louisiana due to financial reasons beyond my control. My point is, things are much worse here. It is stunning (for me). There are so many closed minded people, and Ms. Hyde-Smith reminds me of them. One of the most important things I learned in New York (lower Manhattan, the first dozen years), is tolerance.
Don't get me wrong; racism is still alive and well, no matter where you go. I always wanted to meet and get to know people of other cultures. New Orleans is my 2nd favorite city in the USA. It is a national treasure for this country.
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I grew up in Mississippi in the late '70s - early '90s. Fortunately, my hometown was one of the few in the state with decent, integrated public schools. The rich white kids went to the segregation academy in town, but the rest of us got a good education in a relatively diverse setting. I consider my attendance in public schools as one of the great benefits of my upbringing.
From my interactions with people from back home, you can tell who went to a public school and who attended a segregation academy. Those that attended a segregation academy seem more entitled.
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It would be so easy to be really angry about Hyde-Smith's election because it proves that Reconstruction remains an elusive goal in Mississippi. However, after the anger fades, as it must, the prevailing feeling is deep, deep sadness. I had allowed myself to hope that Mississippi had changed far more than it clearly has. Hyde-Smith's election is heartbreaking.
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Saying it’s “sad” or “heartbreaking” presents a different puzzle, maybe one anger can help address.
When people call something “sad,” they often mean “pathetic.” But, as you suggest, this may not be a new low for Mississippi; it’s more like a tradition, a drug relapse, if you will.
If it’s like that, “heartbreaking,” sadness can help us recognize how harmful that tradition is. It’s harmful to the state and our union. Its education system lags behind every other state’s. Hard to imagine her being part of a solution there. Maybe she’ll help confirm judges to help them further backslide.
It’s harmful to our union since we lack a partner in Mississippi and its Senator that could contribute to the public good with character and personal leadership.
Instead we get a caricature, a human embodying a state’s cry for help. At least she’s not Roy Moore, but I hope that’s not Mississippi offering its best.
This sadness might be paralyzing, but maybe anger can contribute. Who wants to be looked down upon? Who wants to be represented in Congress or anywhere by these people? Espy seemed like a solid candidate, but there have to be other gems in that state. Maybe he can help others and prove it.
Maybe this election can be a seed of change in that state. Maybe they need sadness, and anger, to see their plight clearly and work to better their lot.
Was this Senator inspiring? I didn’t see it. Mississippi deserves better, and so do we. I hope we get to see them shine, and lead someday.
Thank you, Dr. Rooks. Readers of the Times and everyone else cannot be "over-reminded" about the legacies of hate. In so many respects, there has not been progress since Reconstruction.
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@Chris
Well the fact that Massachusetts (the great state of) has only just now elected a black Congresswoman speaks volumes too. At least Mississippi actually had one.
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I knew of these academies, being that I'm an educator. I didn't know, however, that they received tax payer funding. But the story is pretty much the same with all of the voucher movements, to rob public education of the money they need to educate the public that cannot afford to cover even a bit of the tuition at a private school. The rich keep getting richer at the expense of those with less economic and political clout. Sad to say, this is America.
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@Bradley Bleck
Not for anything but private Yeshiva's in NY State get public funding and apparently that's OK with our elected oafs in Albany.
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@Margo Channing, they get publicly funded busing- but nothing beyond that. In many cases they do not provide an education that meet's minimal State educational requirements and that will never change due to the "bloc vote".
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@steve, in some places they've diverted public funds to their own benefit, illegally. But nothing happens because their rabbi controls thousands of votes.
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