Lott told those at a 100th-birthday gala for South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond that he was "proud" his state voted for Thurmond’s 1948 presidential bid and that the United States would have been "better off" if the segregationist candidate had won.

Other senators and congresspeople have voiced outrage at Lott’s racist remarks and his longstanding racist record, from voting against extensions of the Voting Rights Act to cultivating ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens, the renamed White Citizens’ Council.

But Senator Lott’s remarks are not unique in the Senate or House. They are part of the Congressional cloak-room parlance of not a few Republican and Democrat politicians.

Sen. Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican, told a reporter during his 1994 campaign that a constituent asked him "how can you live back there with all those niggers" in Washington. Burns’ reply: It’s "a hell of a challenge." Asked later why he didn’t challenge his constituent’s use of the word "nigger," Burns answered, "I never give it much thought."

Senator Ernest Hollings, a Democrat from South Carolina, joked to reporters in 1993 about African leaders who attended trade conferences in Switzerland, saying that "rather than eat each other, they’d just come up [to Switzerland] and get a square meal."

Commenting on the subject of race during a television interview last year, Democratic senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who was once a high official in the Ku Klux Klan, said, "There are white niggers.... I’m going to use that word."

During his campaign Georgia Republican senator-elect Saxby Chambliss opined that to fight terrorism "every Muslim that came across the state line should be arrested."

Utah Republican senator Robert Bennett told an editorial board that George W. Bush would win the Republican nomination unless "some Black woman comes forward with an illegitimate child he fathered."

In his 1986 Federal Judiciary confirmation hearing Alabama Republican senator Jeffrey Sessions was accused of calling a Black assistant prosecutor "boy," describing civil rights groups as "un-American," and stating that he thought the "Ku Klux Klan was all right until he learned they smoked marijuana."

These are only a handful of the kind of comments that periodically get exposed. In each instance a statement is issued that is a variant on, "I regret the things I have said in the past."

As Lott’s position became increasingly untenable, a growing list of politicians distanced themselves from him, and finally decided to cut their losses by urging his removal from the Senate majority post.

Florida governor John Ellis Bush said, "It doesn’t help to have this swirling controversy that Senator Lott...doesn’t seem to be able to handle well." He added, "This can’t be the topic of conversation over the next week." Secretary of State Colin Powell said he was "disappointed" at Lott’s remarks and that he "deplored" them. President George Bush described Lott’s remarks as "offensive" and "wrong."

Several Republican senators defended their colleague. Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter called Lott’s words "foolish to the extreme. But it’s an occupational hazard we have," he added.

One defense of Lott’s remarks came from Ward Connerly, head of the so-called American Civil Rights Coalition. Connerly, who is Black and an aggressive opponent of affirmative action, explained, "Supporting segregation need not be racist. One can believe in segregation and believe in equality of the races."

President Bush and other capitalist politicians who have felt compelled to condemn Lott’s remarks have commented on them as if they were simply a thing of the past, not relevant to today. But they have everything to do with the reality of racist discrimination today and the struggles against it.  
 
Ongoing resistance
The deep understanding of this fact among millions, particularly working people who are Black, and the ongoing resistance to police brutality, attacks on affirmative action, assaults on the right of immigrants, and other social struggles are the source of the maelstrom of denunciations that led to Lott’s fall.

That is why the continued presence of the Confederate battle flag at the South Carolina state house, as well as the recognition of a holiday for the Confederacy or for Confederate leader Jefferson Davis’s birthday by several state governments, have been the focus of ongoing protests and demonstrations, in some cases numbering tens of thousands.

"There are calls now for the ouster of Trent Lott as the Senate Republican leader. I say let him stay. He’s a direct descendant of the Dixiecrats," wrote New York Times columnist Bob Herbert on December 12. "Keep him in plain sight. His presence is instructive. As long as we keep in mind that it isn’t only him."
 
 
Related articles:
Dixiecrats 1948: Democrats, defenders of racist lynchocracy
What was the State’ Rights Democratic Party?  
 
 
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