I guess people are agitated that Haley Barbour said some kind of stupid things again about his life growing up in Yazoo City, Mississippi. I read what he said and I don’t think it’s much of a scandal. He said that his local White Citizen’s Council kept the Ku Klux Klan from using violence or opening an active chapter in his hometown. And he said that the civil rights era in Yazoo City had not been that big of a deal. “I just don’t remember it as being that bad.”
Haley Barbour isn’t going to get what’s wrong and insensitive about his statements. He had a wonderful childhood. He was very successful. He was extremely popular. He was a good athlete. He had a nice family that had some money and a good reputation. He just isn’t ever going to see all that as wrong or tainted or in any way less than idyllic. His brother was the mayor that oversaw the desegregation of Yazoo City schools. Within a few years the public schools were 80% black. Haley and his siblings were sent to a school specifically built for families that didn’t want their kids to go to school with coloreds. How can you expect Haley to really get it?
It wasn’t a big deal to him then, and it isn’t a big deal to him now. He’s about the laziest racist you are going to find.