12-24-2010: Welcome Matthew Yglesias readers. I address Yglesias’ defense of why he called Haley Barbour racist, and his attack on me, in an update below. And I see that Ta-Nehisi Coates is defending Yglesias, so I’ll address that too.
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1947 was the year in which the color barrier was broken in Major League Baseball. Prior to Jackie Robinson taking the field, MLB (or whatever it was called at the time) was segregated. Actually, it was more than segregated, it excluded blacks completely.
Using the logic of Matthew Yglesias of Think Progress, who is having his 15 minutes of race card fame, anyone who expresses any measure of praise for the pre-1947 Yankees necessarily would be “expressing affection for a White Supremacist” organization. It would not matter that the praise was for the Yankees’ baseball skills; any expression of anything less than complete condemnation of the Yankees necessarily evidences tolerance for racism because the Yankees were part of a racist system.
That logic is what Yglesias uses against Haley Barbour because Barbour made a statement that when Barbour was growing up in the early 1960s in Yazoo City, Mississippi, the “Citizens Council” stood up to the Klan and was organized to keep the Klan out of Barbour’s home town.
That apparenly is a true statement, but because the Citizens Council also supported the system of segregation, Yglesias has accused Barbour of “expressing affection for the White Supremacist Citizens Council,” and almost the entire nutroots blogsphere has picked up the meme that Barbour is a racist.
Yet nothing Barbour said, or has done in his professional life, supports the charge that Barbour supported segregation himself, although if he were a Southern Democrat during the 1960s he almost certainly would have supported segregation.
I usually refer to Yglesias only when Yglesias makes one of his stupid “how do they think this stuff up” posts.
The attack on Barbour goes beyond the usual Yglesias foolishness. Accusing Barbour of being racist is odious and evil because there is no evidence to support the charge. Yglesias merely does what I could do to anyone who praised the pre-1947 Yankees.
For more on the falsity of the Yglesias post and attacks on Barbour, see posts by Jim Geraghty, Tom Maguire, DrewM. and Robert Stacy McCain.
Update: And, anyone who praised the 1912 Yankees also would be crazy as well as racist.
Jim Geraghty has a follow-up to his post, rounding-up how Barbour is not extended the same benefit of the doubt that regularly accrues to liberals and Democrats who make comments which, were they made by a Republican or conservative, would be deemed proof-positive of racism. Did you hear the one about Joe Biden and Indian 7-Eleven store owners? Or Harry Reid and light-skinned candidates who avoid using the Negro Dialect?
Keep in mind, there is not a single Republican candidate who will not be accused of being racist by left-wing bloggers and the mainstream media. Not one.
Update No. 2 – Barbour has issued a statement pointing out what should have been obvious to everyone, which is that Barbour’s mention of the role of the Citizens’ Council is keeping the Klan out of town in no way was an endorsement — or in Yglesias-speak “expressing affection” for — the Citizens’ Council (emphasis mine):
When asked why my hometown in Mississippi did not suffer the same racial violence when I was a young man that accompanied other towns’ integration efforts, I accurately said the community leadership wouldn’t tolerate it and helped prevent violence there. My point was my town rejected the Ku Klux Klan, but nobody should construe that to mean I think the town leadership were saints, either. Their vehicle, called the ‘Citizens Council,’ is totally indefensible, as is segregation. It was a difficult and painful era for Mississippi, the rest of the country, and especially African Americans who were persecuted in that time.
Barbour’s response was slow in coming, perhaps because he is in the pre-decision phase of whether he will run for President; he probably doesn’t have a media team assembled, which made him vulnerable.
This should be a lesson for all Republicans even thinking about running. Think Progress and Media Matters, and the left-wing bloggers who regurgitate their action alerts, can spread a smear within minutes. Republican candidates need the internet equivalent of SWAT teams to deal with the race card players.
Update 12-22-2010: Powerline points out that Jimmy Carter actually supported segregation and helped fight implementation of Brown v. Bd. of Education in his role as a school board member. By contrast, nothing Barbour has said or done supported the segregationist policies of the Citizens Council, and Barbours original statement about the Citizens Council could not reasonably be construed as “expressing affection” for white supremacy.
Update 12-24-2010: Yglesias calls me an “idiot” and some other names because I pointed out the flaw in his attacks on Haley Barbour. Yglesias never addresses the main point of my post, that Barbour’s historically accurate statement that the Citizens’ Council in Yazoo City kept the Klan out of town was not an expression of support for the Citizens’ Council’s segregationist agenda.
Yglesias made up the allegation that Barbour “expressed affection” for the segregationist agenda. That was a characterization concocted by Yglesias so that he could make the logical jump from Barbour’s actual words to an attack on Barbour for supporting segregation. Yglesias took words that Barbour never uttered to paint Barbour as a racist who supported segregation.
Yglesias is a race card player of the worst type because he refuses to admit what he was doing, preferring instead to play word games and to invent words which never were said.
Yglesias can attack my analogy if he wants, but he cannot defend his baseless smear against Barbour. I did not equate segregationist baseball teams to the Citizens Council, but I did point out that Yglesias’ form of argument was flawed and used for the purpose of portraying Barbour as racist.
Those of you who claim Yglesias was not calling Barbour a racist are wrong. That was the whole point of Yglesias’ posts, to call Barbour a racist without having to use the term “racist”, but Yglesias gave away the game in his tweets:
Ta-Nehisi Coates asserts that Barbour was ignorant of history. Fine, call him ignorant. But don’t call him someone who had “affection” for “white supremacist” organizations, or who was a “fan of moderate strains of white supremacist ideology.”
Coates claims that Yglesias and others in the left-blogosphere did not use the term “racist,” but if you say that someone has an “affection” for a white supremacist organization, or shares such ideology, aren’t you calling them a racist? That is the tactic I so despise in Yglesias’ attack on Barbour. If you have the proof Barbour is or was racist, show us the proof. But if you don’t have it, don’t make the logical jump.
Yglesias knew exactly what he was doing by framing his accusations as such. And it had nothing to do with painting Barbour as ignorant; it was all about making the racism charge stick.
Coates, whose writing I have praised in the past, should acknowledge why Yglesias framed the “affection” argument as he did. Let’s not play word games; Matthew Yglesias sought to portray Haley Barbour as a racist, but the quote upon which Yglesias based the accusation did not prove the charge.
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Prior Posts About Matthew Yglesias:
Worst. Prediction. Ever.
Now Evan Bayh Is “Immoral”
Not So Scary Terror
How Do They Think This Stuff Up, Part 2
How Do They Think This Stuff Up
And Now We Stereotype Blacks As Liberal
Bangladesh Lost The MA Election
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Comments
Busing to force the integration of schools in my home town didn't start until about 1975. Anyone over about 50 who pines for any facet of the education system pre-1975 is racist.
In fact anyone over about 50 who waxes nostalgic for any aspect of society "when I was a kid" is apparently now a racist.
Don't idiots like Yglesias realize they've long since jumped the shark with their accusations of racism? I guess that as long as there are two of them they'll feel as if they have a willing audience for their drivel.
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The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
"Accusing Barbour of being racist is odious and evil because there is no evidence to support the charge."
Mr Yglesias does not even use the word racist.
Does the Associate Clinical Professor think that The Citizens’ Councils were, right in the state of Mississippi where Barbour is from, the respectable face of white supremacist political activism? Don't be surprised to find that when one sleeps with dogs, one gets up with fleas.
Ema Nymton
~@:o?
The LEFT – taking shit for being right since long before you were born.
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As a life-long Red Sox fan, I consider anyone who praises any Yankee team of any year a person of dubious character and probably guilty of whatever charge leveled at them.
(Are we talking about "Pasadena Jackie" Robinson here? I always wondered what became of him.)
As I've noted before, I believe it is a deliberate strategy of the Democratic Party (and it's surrogates in the lapdog media) to try to paint Republicans as racists. Democrats are obsessed with race for a rational reason. Political power.
That's becuase the black vote is the most reliable and loyal bloc in the Democratic coalition. There's plenty of evidence suggesting around 90% of blacks who vote in presidential elections, vote for the Demcratic candidate. With Obama it was about 97%. If large numbers of blacks start to find reasons to vote Republican, it will severely damage the Democratic Party. Democrats MUST stop that from happening. So they make assertions of racism where none exists. We even have proof of it from the Journolist assclown who admitted he was willing to falsely smear Karl Rove and Fred Barnes as racists if "the right" used Obama's association with Reverend Wright against him. The same assclown also despicably suggested other Journolistas do the same.
On a side note, because of the post's title I thought you were suggesting the Yankees gave Robinson his break. I was going to correct you that it was the Brooklyn Dodgers. On the second reading, however, I realized you didn't link Robinson to the Yankees and my mind played a trick on me. I wonder if I'm the only one that happened to? And was it your intention?
@Maggot, no I was not suggesting that Robinson played for the Yankees when he broke the color barrier, I just used the Yankees as an example because it is the most famous and successful team from the pre-integration baseball era.
Just for the record, I am well aware that the Red Sox had the first crack at Jackie Robinson but was rejected by owner Tom Yawkee (southern tobacco millionaire) because Jackie was "not our kind of player".
Back on topic, the inability of the Republican party to come up with an effective defense against the charges of racism is one of the biggest failings of the party. I believe it is a direct result of the party being dominated by out-of-touch elitists who simply won't stoop to the low-end politics of actually communicating with the people who actually make politics work at the local level. People like me.
The Republican establishment is not racist so much as being a country club of elitists snobs who rely on big money, tactical messaging and negotiating with Democrats.
There is no point whining about it. We already know what we have to do (pay attention you new Tea Party congressman and senators): fight the corrupt elitist leadership for control of the party. It's not enough to talk tough with the right message, you have to actually fight in the trenches.
You can depend on one thing: The NAACP (National Association for the Agitation of Colored People), aided by alien influences, bloc vote seeking politicians and left-wing do-gooders, will see that you have a problem in the near future.
The Citizens' Council is the South's answer to the mongrelizers. We will not be integrated. We are proud of our white blood and our white heritage of sixty centuries.
http://orig.jacksonsun.com/civilrights/sec2_citizencouncil.shtml
Gee, I guess this means that Yglesias is hoping President Obama will get even more than the 96% of the Black vote he got in 2008?
"Democrats are obsessed with race for a rational reason."
Because racial division and hatred has been the core of the Democrat party's power since Reconstruction. All they've done is shifted who they play for votes.
Yes, "Zachriel", Democrat party rhetoric can be quite ugly. We're all aware of that.
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Democrats don't believe in the time arrow or accuracy; it's all about an air-brushed not even a nostalgic gauzy Then projected onto Now.
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Only one problem: Then, there were mostly Jim Crow southern Dems who fought civil rights and some moderate Repubs who supported them. Now, it's the Progressive Democrats who are just as reactionary and determined to keep blacks in their place, I mean constituency pocket, by invoking the days of yore decades ago of a racist South that really weren't so clearly as black and white/ Democrat vs. Republican as they rewrite in order to indict history and discredit the present (Pubs-white man- western civ).
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Meanwhile, the two Kings, ML and Rodney, who exhorted us to colorblind good character and to see the need for everybody to "just get along" are snubbed by today's Dems as hopelessly naive and politically self-sabotaging.
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Progress (D) means we should keep picking old scabs to show someone's bleeding somewhere. Above all, never ever let time heal all wounds or admit there's a new insult to the body politic– the new race industry.
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The argument that it's a deliberate strategy of the Democrats to try to paint Republicans as racists would hold more water if prominent Republicans would stop praising white supremacist organizations without solicitation.
If rising national stars in the GOP are going to continue arguing against the Civil Rights Act and in favor of the White Citizens' Council, how do you expect the Democratic Party to respond? I'm not saying Paul and Barbour were speaking on behalf of Republicans or conservatism, but if you make deeply ignorant and hurtful racial comments apropos of nothing, you're going to get some pushback. They weren't entrapped or backed into a corner to make these comments, they offered them willfully.
So Mr. Yglesias takes on Haley Barbour, but has no comment whatsoever about the unbelievably racist statements made by Chicago Democratic mayoral candidate Rev. James Meeks within the last week (scroll down)? Figures…
Hmmmm, methinks something may smell fishy in MSM land…..Yglesias dishing the "raaaacist" dirt and now our local McClatchy propaganda outlet The State is running a series of hit pieces on SC commemorating the secession from the United States…written by no other than Wayne Washington. Oh, and I am so sorry for Jim Clyburn's daughter Mignon. She was a huge radical during our days at the Univ. of SC where she and her Alpha Kappa Alpha "sustahs" kept the rabble-rousing going and going and going and going……….
Haley Barbour>: I just don’t remember it as being that bad.
It’s not a crime to be young and ignorant. But it’s just not reasonable for a 63 year old person to still hold these views. Along with many others, he’s accepted the narrative that racism wasn’t all that bad, because he doesn’t want to face a painful truth.
For Barbour to suggest that the Citizen's Council was a force of moderation was beyond the pale. The South has come a long way, but rewriting history doesn't help.
Your analogy is flawed.
While the Yankees operated in a white supremacist milieu the Citizen Councils had one purpose – to stop integration and maintain white supremacy.
Comparing the Yankees to the Citizen Councils is like comparing Ford Automotive to the Nazi's. One group was dedicated to eliminating my people. The other group was dedicated to making and selling cars and also happened to sell cars to the Nazis. I will buy a car from Ford now but I won't buy a car from a Nazi.
There's a big difference.
You're a professor? Of law? And law involves logic?
Am I off base by pointing out that:
1) Yglesias didn't call Barbour a "racist" and although it is convenient way to end a conversation by saying "Who you calling a racist?" it doesn't really move things forward.
2) Yglesias main point is that Barbour was whitewashing the history of the Citizen Councils (yes they were against violence, no they weren't pro integration)
3) Liberals aren't making this up, the reference to integration appeared in a hit job on Barbour in the Weekly Standard. Apparently the conservative Weekly Standard doesn't want Barbour to carry the Republican banner.
3) Barbour's actual words might be useful here, "Both Mr. Mott and Mr. Kelly had told me that Yazoo City was perhaps the only municipality in Mississippi that managed to integrate the schools without violence. I asked Haley Barbour why he thought that was so.
“Because the business community wouldn’t stand for it,” he said. “You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”
That isn't affection? And Yglesias' point (not a small one) was that although Barber claims that the Citizen Council's would deploy the boycott tactic against KKK supporters, in fact the Yazoo City Citizen Council organized a boycott against black business owners who signed an integration petition.
Reality should count for something.
Look, this whole defense of Barbour turns on a really obtuse reading of what he said. He was asked how the schools integrated in Yazoo City without violence. The correct and honest answer was "local leaders favored economic and political intimidation of blacks over outright violence." But what he said was "see, we had these Councils that fought the KKK!" If that's not expressing admiration for the Citizens Councils, it's at least papering over their very ugly true character. Either way, it deserves calling out, and this automatic retreat to "he's calling him a racist!!!1" isn't helpful.
Lordgodalmighty. Really?
The Yankees raison d'etre was to play baseball. Segregation and white supremacy were incidental to their primary purpose.
The Citizens Councils' raison d'etre was to preserve segregation and white supremacy.
Praising the former group implies support for baseball. Praising the latter implies support for their core policy goal.
Gov. Barbour is quoted as saying:
“You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”
Mr. Yglesias describes Barbour's statement as an expression of "affection for the White Supremacist Citizens’ Council".
Prof. Jacobson asks:
"[Y]ou say that someone has an "affection" for a white supremacist organization, or shares such ideology, aren't you calling them a racist? That is the tactic I so despise in Yglesias' attack on Barbour."
First, let me answer Prof. Jaconson's question. Mr. Yglesias's stated that Barbour has affection for the White Supremacist Citizens’ Council" because:
1) Barbour's words are a statement of affection for the Yazoo City Citizen's Council"
2) The Yazoo City Citizen's Council was a white supremacist organization.
Mr. Yglesias has certainly posted strong evidence for the second, and the first flows from any reasonable reading of Barbour's words. Prof. Jacosbson does not dispute either part. Presumably Prof. Jacoson agrees with both, and that a skilled litigator (like Prof. Jacobson) would not pass up on the chance to challenge the factual accuracy of an assertion when doing so would support his position.
Prof. Jacaobson's concern is that others will infer an accusation of racism from Mr. Yglesias's factually correct assertion. Prof. Jacobson "despises" Mr. Yglesias's "tactic" because Prof. Jacobson presumes Mr. Yglesias's intention was to evoke the connotation of racism.
Prof. Jacoboson, of course, has no evidence that this was Mr. Yglesias's intent.
Is Prof. Jacobson's tactic — attacking Mr. Yglesias for an intention that Prof. Jacobson imputes without evidence — one we should despise?
Best,
Jim Bales
Let's say Barbour had praised the Klan, instead of the Citizen's Council. Would that have been indication of racist sentiments?
Given that both the Klan and the Citizen's Council both existed with the sole purpose of furthering racial segregation, why do you come to a different conclusion about Barbour's enthusiasm for the Citizen's Council?
Way to argue which you are seeing in the midst of entering a discussion of the forest!
Barbour's brother was the mayor AND joined the Republican party in 1965 after the Republican Party accepted a segregationist plank at its 1964 convention. Or, did you not know that?
I'm not too scared to say he's an ignorant, corrupt corporate tool of plutocrats who will use "the Southern Strategy" more comfortably and more easily than you will leap to defend anyone with an "R" after his/her name.
Other than recommending TNC's response to the Professor, I would refer the good professor to Nicholas Lemann's book, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War for some foundation.
Foundation, I believe is also a legal term.
I find that having some background on the topic at hand is helpful in matters such as this.
I find it amusing that so many here think Democrats and liberals (Venn diagram time) are "obsessed" with race. REPUBLICANS invented the southern strategy which was premised on stoking and fueling racism to garner votes for the Republican party. The same dogwhistles that were outlined then are still in play in the GOP now, despite an apology by Ken Mehlman for using racism to rally the base.
I also find it fascinating that so many infantilize blacks who vote Democratic as mindless drones who only do so because of a Democratic noise machine churning out unfounded racism cries.
Black people in this country are very mindful of their history even if many others are not. They vote Democratic because they see the long line of racists, avowed and undercover, that seek safe haven in the GOP. Of course there are ignorant folks in the Democratic party, but last time I checked (a) Democratic politicians weren't hanging the flag of an army whose sole purpose was to prolong and defend white supremacy in their offices, or (b) attempting to tinker with the 14th amendment to the constitution, which undid the horror of Dred Scott.
It is willful ignorance to pretend that the differences between the two parties on race are cosmetic. It is insulting to insinuate that blacks are unable to easily parse out those differences for themselves.
(Oh, and to the person who said that the left belittled MLK….? I guess that's why Obama (the left's titular head) quotes him regularly? Come on.)
The most pervasive form of political correctness in today's US polity is the taboo against noticing that racism is or was racism. Yet those most politically correct (in this sense) most notice reverse racism. Funnily, they're invariably Republicans.
"" But don't call him someone who had "affection" for "white supremacist" organizations… ""
Ummm, let's see.
(a) Haley Barbour expressed admiration for the Citizens' Council. I don't think that is seriously in dispute, is it?
(b) The Citizens' Council was a white supremacist organization, in the very simple sense that it was organized in order to uphold white supremacy against the NAACP and other "radical" organizations. (See the quote from Matt's original link, direct from the source: "The Citizens’ Council is the South’s answer to the mongrelizers. We will not be integrated. We are proud of our white blood and our white heritage of sixty centuries.") That was its mission, its very reason for existence. (The New York Yankees, by contrast, was and remains an organization dedicated to playing baseball.)
(a) + (b) = Haley Barbour expressed admiration for an organization dedicated to white supremacy.
I really don't see what your issue is with this characterization. It's sort of true on all counts.
Actually, a lot of people came to dislike the 1947 Yankees, at least the management, which continued to exclude Black players for another 8 years until they finally brought Elston Howard up to say. Also, there is a nuance here about Hayley Barbour's whole record and history, as documented in this very Weekly Standard Article; the story of how "Eastland Democrats" became "Goldwater and Nixon Republicans" who have supported policies for the last 35 years for the folks in the big house and left both the Blacks and the working class whites on the out in Mississippi. Yglesias point is not that Barbour is publicly the White Supremacist Racist that James Eastland, and to a lesser extent, John Stennis were, but that he continues that tradition in his current politics and policies, and that he is rather unempathetic to those outside the white tribe.
And you are a fine one to complain about ad hominen argument when your whole onslaught against Yglesisias and DeLong is ad hominen.
Any praise of the Yankees for any purpose is, as pointed out above, morally dubious. The only question anyone needs to ask about the Yankees is whether they are a metaphor for evil or the embodiment of evil.
Mr. Jacobson, you have been read:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/12/its-not-that-youre-racist/68522/
As far as I can tell, Mr. Jacobson is the one who is making the claim that expressing affection for a white supremacist organization is synonymous with racism. What was the purpose of Barbour's comments if not to express some sort of admiration for the Citizen's Council? What was the purpose of the Citizen's Council if not for the promotion of white supremacy? If we're accepting Jacobson's definition of racism, then the shoe fits. The Coates/Yglesias argument seems to be more that Barbour's comments reflect a deep ignorance/indifference to issues of racial justice. The Jacobson argument, if actually applied to the comments, seems to be that Barbour is a racist.
“Because the business community wouldn’t stand for it,” he said. “You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”
… That's the full quote from the Weekly Standard. If "affectionate" isn't an appropriate descriptor of Barbour's comments to the Standard's reporter, that's the fault of the Standard and not any of your bogeymen on the left. Specifically, Barbour notes that people "up north" thought the Citizens Councils were like a noted instrument of white supremacy, but he disagrees. It's telling that you quote Barbour's clarification in full in your update, but do not quote his original statement in full.
In fact, your summary of his statement makes it sound as if Barbour had some passing familiarity with the Council. Instead, he's apparently familiar with a particular resolution and specifically cites the Council's boycotting techniques. As Yglesias and others have pointed out, the Citizens Councils (including Yazoo City's in particular) primarily used this technique to prevent anti-segregation organizing in their town and forestall court-ordered desegregation for a decade or more. In fact, I haven't seen any evidence that backs up Barbour's claims that boycotts were used against the KKK as well as supporters of the NAACP.
All evidence points to Barbour having, at best, a twisted view of his city's Citizens Council… a view that I can only understand as being blinded by, well, affection.
As far as your conspiracy theories go, you might consider how this comment made it into the Standard in the first place. Is it more likely that folks on the left are out to sink a nascent Barbour candidacy, or that folks within the Republican establishment are planting seeds to sink 2012 candidates? Why would the Standard publish such an obviously inaccurate and inflammatory comment? Surely the writer or an editor should've raised an eyebrow at this anecdote and done the small amount of research necessary to realize it's a good idea to ask Barbour to clarify his remarks.
Well, the purpose of the 1947 Yankees was not to exclude blacks from its membership. It was to play baseball, and they didn't play baseball in order to further the objective of preventing blacks from playing baseball.
The CC's, or the WCCs, as they were often called, were formed for the explicit purpose of fighting integration. Fighting integration was their baseball. They pushed out the Klan to advance the cause of fighting integration. Everything they did was to advance that purpose.
So, that's a completely obvious distinction you are willfully ignoring in order to bash a bunch of lefties as race-baiters. But I understand that you don't care, and it's easier to pretend that its the lefties that have the problem. So have fun blowing on that hot little coal of self-righteousness. It is cold outside, after all!
Sigh. This conservative game of putting out provocative statements then whining about people being provoked is really tiresome and transparent. I thought the GOP had acknowledged and renounced this "Southern strategy", but here it is alive and well. The gov of TX talking secession, the gov of VA ignoring slavery, the gov of MS praising the WCCs… Yeah nothing to see here. Pffft. The Southern strategy is alive and well.