"SAME OLD SONG"

Washington, DC (PoliticalJones.com) -  The recent announcement of Republican Senator Trent Lott's retirement from the U.S. Senate at the end of this year.  has given me a moment to reflect on the controversy that for many will define his time in the U.S. Senate.
 
The entire controversy stems over the remarks by Senator Lott, who at the time was the U.S. Senate Majority Leader. His praise for Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) during his 100th birthday party in December of 2002 has caused me to again reflect a bit on our past, present, and future.  For those of you who don’t know, Senator Lott stated that, “our country would have been better off” if Senator Thurmond had been elected President of the United States in 1948.
 
In that election Sen. Thurman ran as a renegade Democrat.  They even came up with a new name for him, and for those who supported his efforts to break away from the party, the Dixiecrats.  His platform consisted of one key element, no "race mixing" in America.
 
I find delicious irony in the fact that Sen. Lott had to go to a black man for help in salvaging his job.  He did not seek the help of just any Brother.  He turned to Robert “Bob” Johnson, the Black man who created and later sold Black Entertainment Television (BET) for 3 billion dollars.  Mr. Johnson is the first certified Black American Billionaire, and he had just been awarded the new NBA franchise in Charlotte, North Carolina.  More ironically, Mr. Johnson was born in Mississippi, although his family moved to Illinois when he was a boy.  I wonder if the aspirations and dreams of Mr. Johnson would have flourished in the society envisioned by Sen. Lott and Sen. Thurman.  Fortunately, we have seen that in spite of the presence of such racism and discrimination, some people have refused to allow those barriers stand in their way.

Also, it is important to point that the major television and print media outlets were upset by Sen. Lott’s comments.  But this does not mean everyone else in the country is upset or even cares.  To be honest, Sen. Lott’s statements certainly did not surprise me.  He is certainly not alone in his feeling that our country would have been better off had we not desegregated.  Since we are a country of polls, I would be willing to bet that in a truly honest poll, 75% or more of the white citizens in Mississippi and across the South would probably agree with Sen. Lott.  In some Northern cities with large Black and minority populations, the numbers in support of Trent might be even higher.
 
To me, that was the true issue of the whole controversy.  You can legislate all you want, but racism cannot be legislated away.  It is taught and sown like seeds in a field.  Racism is like a plant.  If it is watered and nurtured, it will grow to full bloom.  In fact, racism molded Senator Thurman, who we subsequently found out fathered a daughter out of wedlock with a young Black woman. For Senator Lott, expressing his true feelings to the nation during a period when racism is now met with nationwide scorn was a grave mistake. He forgot that he was being taped by C-SPAN, and we are a nation that now scorns such overt expressions.
 
Much of America, including Sen. Lott, has been to some extent shaped by the acts of politicians who ran as Dixiecrats, and by those folks who supported the Dixiecrats in 1948.  Ironically, the children and the grandchildren of those same Dixiecrats now call themselves social conservatives.  Sen. Lott ultimately gave up his job as the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate. But in 2006 he made his political comeback complete by being elected back into leadership by his fellow Republican colleagues as then U.S. Senate Minority Whip. 

In the end, the key question concerning the whole issue is what this says about the fiber of this country.  America is fundamentally about three things: money, power, and class.  They are tied together, and they flow through the very fabric of our nation.  Most importantly, the issue of race trumps all of these issues, and is interwoven within each of them.
 
Our nation's history demonstrates to us the direction and the speed of change concerning race.  The only war ever fought on this soil was about race.  The civil rights movement by the grandchildren of slaves to gain basic equality and dignity continues today.  Regardless of all this bloodshed and pain, almost sixty years after Sen. Thurman’s pro-segregation run for the Presidency, it should not be surprising that the era of the Dixiecrats is so fondly recollected by Sen. Lott and many others.  Always remember Sen. Lott and many of his friends are the children and the grandchildren of those Dixiecrats.
 
I believe that the key issue is the future.  How do I explain the long and tortured history of race and racism in America to my children?  Will my grandchildren continue to deal with the issue of race in America?  I think they will, because history has shown us that change comes slowly and with great sacrifice.

I wonder what all of those “Old Dixiecrats” would think of Senator Obama?  It is going to be very interesting to see what the “new” Democrats think of him also. 

Everything may have changed, but actually nothing is really different.