Fortunately, in a CNN interview, Dr. Boyce Watkins defends Sen. Reid and opines that he is NOT a racist. Unfortunately, he opines that his comments were. Similarly, in a Fox News interview, Rev. Al Sharpton offers that Sen. Reid’s statements pale in comparison to those of former Senator-turned-lobbyist Trent Lott, while contending that he was offended by Reid‘s words.
For those who don’t remember, in 2002, at a birthday party for noted segregationist/longtime Republican Senator Strom Thurmond, Lott said this:
“I want to say this about my state [Mississippi, which Lott represented]: When Strom Thurmond ran for president [in 1948, as a Dixiecrat], we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”
(CNN.com 12/09/2002)What did Trent mean by the “other problems”? Well, it might help to recall that, according to the same CNN article, Strom Thurmond - then a self-avowed segregationist - was quoted during his 1948 presidential campaign as saying that,
"All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches."
And his Dixiecrat Party’s platform declared that,
"We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race."
Clearly, Lott’s praise of Thurmond - and obviously his Dixiecrat platform as a cure-all for “all these problems over the years” - are no comparison to Sen. Reid’s comments.
