History of Racial Violence: Exaggerations and Hypocrisy

This weekend, the Huffington Post published an in-depth profile of Mississippi governor and potential Republican presidential candidate Haley Barbour. The author considers Mr. Barbour's candidacy in the context of his state's racial past and Mr. Barbour's own white-washing of that history.

Yet the 63-year-old has shown a penchant for airbrushing his state's segregationist past, a period he's inclined to describe as more like Mayberry than "Mississippi Burning."

Critics have dogged him for such comments, and Barbour has recently attempted to make amends, a sign he's aware that if he is to carry his party's banner next year against the country's first African-American president, he will have to be more forthright about Mississippi's troubled history.

His critics have accused Mr. Barbour of "insensitivity" and purposeful obtuseness about the state's racially charged violence. The governor himself has done little to assuage his opponents:

Just days ago, the governor told The Associated Press he remembers little about the racial violence pulsating through the state and the South during his youth. What does Barbour recall about the Freedom Summer of 1964, when he was 16, and the slayings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi shocked the nation?

"Not much," Barbour said casually, the kind of answer his critics find at once unbelievable and predictable.

The overall tone of the criticism is predictable. Apparently, Mr. Barbour doesn't spend enough time or energy wallowing about the state's violent history or understanding the persistent melancholy of his state's black citizens. Of course, a (white conservative) politician who refuses to prostrate himself as a sort of metaphysical racial sacrifice is often privy to such disdain. But as with most anti-racist rhetoric, one must question the justification of said grievances and the hypocritical stance of today's views on racial criminality.

Elite academia has largely reduced American history to a few important wars and seminal moments in black freedom. To support this narrative, "history" depicts whites as violent oppressors, from slavery to 20th century lynching as in the unfortunate case of Emmett Till. According to history texts, pre-60's America was a scary place for blacks with the potential for murder around every block.

The Mississippi in which Barbour grew up was home to some of the deadliest conflicts of the civil rights era, as black citizens sought to gain voting rights and to integrate public facilities, including schools and universities.

Yet such evident truths somehow escaped Mr. Barbour's purview, a reflection that perhaps most whites simply didn't care and that the violence has been exaggerated somewhat. Now I wouldn't make such a seemingly outlandish claim based on merely a logical premise, so let's consult a first-person account of black and white relations in that time period. Here's founding neocon Norman Podhertz's essay My Negro Problem and Ours:

Nor can [I] altogether gainsay the evidence of my [own] senses - especially such evidence of the senses as comes to being repeatedly beaten up, robbed, and in general hated terrorized, and humiliated.

I am standing alone in front of the building in which I live. That day in school, the teacher has asked a surly Negro boy named Quentin a question he was unable to answer. As usual I had waved my arm eagerly and, the right answer bursting from my lips, I was held up lovingly by the teacher...As I turn to walk into the building, the corner of my eye catches the motion of the bat [Quentin's little brother] has handed him. I try to duck, but the bat crashes colored lights into my head.

That afternoon, walking home, I am waylaid and surrounded by five Negroes, among whom is the anchor man of the disqualified team...This is all they need to hear and the five of them set upon me. They band me around, mostly in the stomach and on the arms and shoulders...For days, I walk home in terror.

How many times had I been called a liar for pleading poverty and pushed around, or searched, or beaten up.

Now the above incidents took place in New York and not the South, but many will recognize the described behaviors. Yet despite the seeming ubiquity of such violence, why does history view pre-60's blacks as helpless and oppressed?

Further, if the anti-racist crowd can bash Mr. Barbour merely for his professed ignorance and his lack of projected racial shame, then what of today's blacks? And similarly, why do we hear so often of pre-Civil Rights white racial violence, yet the facts of today's disproportionate violence is outright silenced. I won't provide specific numbers for the latter point because it's simply depressing, but there's plenty out there.

The hypocrisy is quite obvious here; blacks have no collective shame and their preponderance for violence is simply never mentioned. And if one dares speak the truth, empty pejorative commences instead of reasoned analysis, a situation summed up well by the term "hate facts." In fact, many of the anti-racist zealots go even further and seek to blame whites for black violence. As an example, Ferdinand profiled a sick woman who forgave her Haitian rapist as a nod to white colonialism.

So I applaud Mr. Barbour's position here, as he has actually denounced pre-60s violence but does not dwell on past transgressions in which had no part. We need mainstream politicians to take this route more often.