Talk:Robert Byrd/temp
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I have reorganized and rewritten the part of the "Controversy" section that deals with Byrd's racial attitudes, in an effort to attain a more neutral point of view. If you make any changes here, please document and discuss them at the bottom of the page. --Paul
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[edit] Controversy
[edit] Ku Klux Klan membership and racist attitudes
Byrd was a local leader of the Ku Klux Klan for a period of time in the early 1940s, holding the title of Kleagle, or Klan recruiter. In 1952, while running for Congress, Byrd claimed to have resigned from the Klan after about a year and to have disassociated himself from the organization since then. However, in 1971 the New York Times reported on a letter Byrd had written in 1946 to the highest-ranking Klan official in Georgia, in which Byrd said that "The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia."
Byrd was an ardent segregationist during his time in the West Virginia state legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives, and for several years after being elected to the U.S. Senate. Typical of segregationist elected officials from the South at that time, Byrd often couched his racial sentiments in flowery, overheated language, such as in a 1947 letterin which he wrote that he would "never submit to fight beneath that banner (the American flag) with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds." Byrd strongly opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and at one point during the debate he filibustered the bill for 14 straight hours in an effort to prevent its passage.
Byrd continued to oppose the U.S. civil rights movement throughout the 1960s. In 1967, when President Lyndon Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, Byrd wrote to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover asking him to investigate Marshall's background for evidence of ties to Communists. In 1968, after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. visited Memphis, Tennessee briefly to inaugurate a civil rights march that then turned violent, Byrd charged that the famed civil rights leader "fled the scene... leaving it to others to cope with the destructive forces he had helped to unleash."
[edit] Charges of contemporary racism
Some conservatives contend that Byrd's more recent opposition to a number of African-Americans whom Republican presidents have nominated to fill federal posts has been motivated by racial prejudice. Three commonly cited examples are Clarence Thomas, whose Supreme Court nomination Byrd and other Democrats unsuccessfully opposed in 1991; Janice Rogers Brown, whose 2004 federal Appeals Court nomination was blocked by Democrats, and Condoleezza Rice, who became Secretary of State in 2005 over the objection of Byrd and 12 other senators. The latter action, which Byrd helped lead, earned the senator a charge of racism from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a nonpartisan civil rights organization that supported Rice's nomination. [1]
Byrd's defenders say that the senator's opposition in all three cases was more likely the result of significant political disagreements with the nominees, rather than racism. They respond that all three nominees are considered very conservative, and that their nominations were opposed on the left by many people of different ethnicities; that Rice specifically was an architect of the U.S. military action in Iraq, which Byrd has long opposed; and that Byrd has not opposed other people of color that recent presidents have nominated, including Secretary of Education Rod Paige and Secretary of State Colin Powell, both of whom served during the first term of President George W. Bush.
[edit] "White nigger" remark and controversy
In an interview that aired on Fox News Sunday on March 4, 2001, Byrd said:
"[Race relations] are much, much better than they've ever been in my lifetime. I think we talk about race too much. I think those problems are largely behind us.... I just think we talk so much about it that we help to create somewhat of an illusion. I think we try to have good will. My old mom told me, 'Robert, you can't go to heaven if you hate anybody.' We practice that. There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time; I'm going to use that word. We just need to work together to make our country a better country, and I'd just as soon quit talking about it so much.
Byrd was widely criticized for his use of the word "nigger," which most people consider a highly offensive and racist term, and the senator's office later issued an apology: "I apologize for the characterization I used on this program. The phrase dates back to my boyhood and has no place in today's society. As for my language, I had no intention of casting aspersions on anyone of another race."
After Trent Lott resigned as the Senate's Majority Leader in 2002 for making an allegedly racially insensitive remark at a birthday party for Senator Strom Thurmond, some conservatives claimed that the disparate media coverage of the two remarks was evidence of a liberal bias in the mainstream media: Lott's comments had caused a furor that eventually led to his resignation from the Senate's leadership, while Byrd's remarks had received scarce coverage outside conservative talk radio.
There are three separate issues that I have tried to address:
- Documentation of Byrd's past as a segregationist and opponent of civil rights, which no one denies. The goal here, I believe, should be to present this information fairly and dispassionately in a way that neither glosses over Byrd's racist actions and sentiments nor reads like a laundry list of grievances compiled by right-wingers with an agenda.
- Contemporary allegations of racism regarding some black Republican nominees to federal positions, which are hotly contested and, in my opinion, not backed up by anything remotely resembling compelling evidence. When covering controversial subjects, the object should be to present opposing points of view fairly and sympathetically, without giving undue preference to either side. I've made an effort to do this, although others may disagree and probably will.
- The "white nigger" controversy, which I agree is significant enough to warrant its own subsection, but which currently contains a great deal of text that doesn't really qualify as a criticism of Byrd--specifically, allegations of media bias and an implied criticism of Christopher Dodd. If these passages belong anywhere, they belong in those two articles, not here. As it is, my version could use more information on reactions to Byrd's remarks, contemporaneous or otherwise, from people of color, civil rights leaders, Democrats, and others, if anyone would care to dig them up.
I certainly don't expect that this first draft will satisfy everyone who might have an interest in this article, but I do hope that anyone who wishes to participate in revising it does so in good faith and without the personal attacks and insults that've come to characterize this dicussion recently. I hope that we can reach a compromise that can be merged into the main article without any significant disagreement. --Paul 19:15, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
