In the early 2000s, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s praise for a segregationist at his birthday party earned such all-consuming bipartisan condemnation that the Mississippi Republican had to step down from his leadership role.
Those of us who were alive back then know it was not a time of racial tranquility and enlightenment, but in political and professional circumstances, blatant racism still had professional consequences. (It was the squirrely, “I-don’t-know-what-you-mean” kind of racism, wrapped in the thinnest veneer of colorblindness, that you could get away with).
Since the rise of the Trump era, though, flagrant racism is now just as much an expected part of our daily political discourse as is hiding behind the American flag to defend abuses of power.
On July 8, U.S. House Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, tweeted criticisms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has led his country’s assault on Gaza that has killed more than 45,000 civilians since Hamas’ October 2023 terrorist attack against Israel. Omar, a Muslim woman who was born in Somalia, argued that he is a “war criminal” who “should not be welcomed by any president or Congress.”
In reply, Republican U.S. House Rep. Randy Fine of Florida launched an Islamophobic missive at Omar, baselessly implying that she—a woman from a state where another Democratic politician was recently assassinated—is a terrorist.
“I’m sure it is difficult to see us welcome the killer of so many of your fellow Muslim terrorists. The only shame is that you serve in Congress,” he wrote.
Three days later, plenty of Democrats have lambasted Fine, but neither Republican U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (a man who has built his brand on piety and religious freedom) nor any of the other 218 Republicans in the House has offered even a gentle rebuke of his attack on their Minnesota colleague.
Even during Donald Trump’s first term, that would’ve been unthinkable. Surely, no member of Congress could get away with such overt bigotry without earning condemnation from any members of their own party (as former U.S. House Rep. Steve King of Iowa learned).
‘We Wouldn’t Have Had All These Problems’
In 2002, Trent Lott spoke at the 100th birthday party of retiring Republican U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a longtime segregationist. Like most southern politicians, Thurmond had been a Democrat (also known as Dixiecrats) before the Civil Rights era, and had fought to keep his party entrenched in Jim Crow politics even as it embraced integration.
In 1948, Thurmond ran for President on the State’s Rights Democratic Party ticket, advocating to maintain racial segregation.
“I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches,” the South Carolinian told a cheering crowd of Southerners in 1948.
Thurmond, of course, lost that election to the real Democratic Party nominee, Harry Truman, but won four Southern states (where Black residents were barred from voting): Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina. At the senator’s 100th birthday party, Lott reflected fondly on that election.
“When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it,” the white senator from Mississippi said. “And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”
Lott, who himself had been a Dixiecrat before joining others like Thurmond who switched to the Republican Party following the Democratic-led passage of the Civil Rights Act, would soon face the ire of his own party. Some would stand by him, though, such as one future Republican majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
“Recent comments by Senator Lott do not reflect the spirit of our country,” Republican President George W. Bush told a Pennsylvania crowd on Dec. 13, 2002. “He has apologized and rightly so. Every day that our nation was segregated was a day our nation was unfaithful to our founding ideals.”
Bush’s comments, of course, reflected a whitewashed view of U.S. history and of the founders (many of whom owned human beings as slaves). But on Dec. 20, 2002, Lott resigned from his post as Senate leader.
Simply Condemning the Worst Bigotry Isn’t Enough
It’s hard to imagine that happening today, at a time when blatant bigotry has become such a daily part of our political culture, stretching back to when Trump first descended an escalator and called Mexicans “rapists” and “murderers.”
On the other hand, though, party leaders had turned a blind eye to Lott’s actions for years before controversy blew up over his remarks about Thurmond (which echoed comments he’d previously made during a 1980 political rally). Though he condemned the group in 1998, the senator from Mississippi had also long been affiliated with the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, an offshoot of the segregationist Citizens Councils.
The Council of Conservative Citizens would later serve as inspiration for white supremacist Dylann Roof’s massacre of Black worshippers at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
We are where we are today, in part, because of the political leaders of past decades who were willing to condemn blatant racism and bigotry when it was impossible for respectable people to deny, but allowed it to grow and fester when it was quieter and more convenient for them. They even often weaponized it themselves through dogwhistles and nodding winks to further their own careers.
It’s horrific that we are now in a place where members of Congress feel free to unleash flagrant racist vitriol at colleagues. But we’re here because too many of our leaders were willing to play footsy with it, so long as it didn’t leave an immediate stain and they could deny it for what it was.
If we want to be a better country, we can’t wait until white supremacy is odiously riding into the halls of power, casting off its white sheets without fear of consequence. We have to cut it off at the root.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
