The thing is, if the people in the state are racist, don’t they deserve someone who represents their views? What sort of representative would Byrd have been if he said, “Even though the majority of people in my state think that the Civil Rights Act is wrong, I’m going to support it anyway”? How does that fulfill the trust that the people of West Virginia put in him?
The people of West Virginia put their trust in him to vote as he sees fit, and if they don’t like it, they can vote him out in the next election.
To the OP, a person who acts racist to get votes but deep down isn’t is, if anything, worse than the sincere racist. A sincere racist might perhaps be excused for ignorance, but there’s no such excuse for someone doing what he knows is wrong.
So once he’s elected, he shouldn’t care about what his people think at all? Why do politicians even run on platforms, then? Why not run saying, “Vote for me. You don’t need to know what I think. Just trust me that I’ll do what I think is right.”
No, because then he’s not representing the people in that state who have the wrong skin color. In fact, he’s actively their enemy.
Right, but he’s representing the majority of the population, or even if (assuming this is someplace other than West Virginia. Say it’s Alabama or apartheid South Africa or Rhodesia or something), the people with the wrong skin color are the majority, they can’t vote, so they’re not his constituents.
I mean, even putting race aside, you’re going to have a minority viewpoint anywhere on anything. True unanimity is impossible.
As a general rule, I’d say a person who advocates a belief system that he thinks is wrong in order to advance his self-interest is worse than a person who sincerely supports that belief system. Both are advancing a bad belief system but the first one is adding deceit, hypocrisy, and ambition to the mix.
In the later scenarios, he’s automatically scum simply for being part of such an evil government. As for the first, the tyranny of the majority is still a tyranny and he’s wrong for supporting it.
This isn’t about a minority viewpoint; this is about being born a minority or unfavored group. And this isn’t about unanimity, it’s about persecution.
On the contrary: He should care because he knows that if he doesn’t vote the way they want, then he might not get re-elected. But he can still decide if it’s worth the risk.
If representatives are always supposed to vote exactly the way their constituents want, then what’s the point of having the representatives at all? Just put every issue up to a direct popular vote and cut the middleman.
Why was he running in the first place if representing the views of his constituents would mean pushing an agenda he believed was morally wrong? If he wasn’t trying to gain office under false pretexts so he could then turn around and a radical Civil Rights agenda* but was just pandering to the common man because he wanted to win then the only motive I can imagine was a desire for power. If the people of West Virginia wanted a racist Senator then they at least deserved an honest racist, rather than one who placed his selfish desire for power above everything else – including his own sense of right and wrong.
*Not that I think this would be a very good idea, it would probably provoke a huge backlash and set back popular support for the cause, but it would be a motive that wasn’t purely selfish.
You’re making a false dichotomy here, though, aren’t you? For what it’s worth, I think that Clinton was probably wrong and that Byrd in his younger days was a racist, but lets look at our fictional non-racist candidate.
Lets say our fictional Senate candidate isn’t a racist, but he’s not an anti-racist either. He doesn’t care one way or the other whether black people have equal rights, whether schools are segregated or integrated, whether businesses can deny services to them or not. It’s just not a big issue to him. He’s got other issues he thinks are important…rural electrification and better living conditions to coal miners.
So, somebody in that position wouldn’t be placing his selfish desire for power over his sense of right and wrong. His sense of right and wrong wouldn’t come into it. He’d just be voting with his constituents on an issue that he personally doesn’t have any strong opinions about.
I’m not sure how anyone can say that he only represented racist views simply to get elected (to the House in 1952 and then the Senate in 1958), considering that once elected he carried out those views throughout the 60s with his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Thurgood Marshall’s SC nomination. These actions seem antithetical to faking the segregationist position just to get elected.
With regard to his KKK membership and “trying to get elected,” IMHO Clinton oversimplified a statement that Byrd himself made about his regret that in his immaturity he thought the KKK would provide an outlet for his talent and ambitions. Admittedly, having not read his autobiography, it seems to me that his early successes within the KKK organization appealed to his sense of self-worth at that time in his life and he apparently felt could go far in life, as success tends to indicate, through this organization. I think it’s fortunate that he managed to be more successful outside of the organization.
Two politicians: one who says, “I hate niggers” to get elected, but doesn’t legislate in a corresponding manner once in office. The second says, “I hate niggers” to get elected, and legislates in kind.
I have a problem with both, but less of a problem with the first one.
For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure Byrd had at least some racist views in his youth, and gradually grew out of them. I still have less of a problem with him than I did with, say, Strom Thurmond, who never grew out of it - but I would prefer not to have to vote for either.
In what way is this fictional Senator NOT a racist? He may not be a particularly virulent racist, but if he’s just fine with people of a particular race being denied equal rights then he’s a racist.
*Then he’s a racist who is using his power to advance a racist political agenda.
If we were describing an ordinary citizen with no special power or authority then I’d say the racist who’s fine with the oppression of a particular race but is honest about not being particularly worked up about it is somewhat less bad than the racist who believes it’s really important that people of a particular race be kept down. But if this man is in office and is both claiming to be opposed to equal rights for people of all races and is actively opposing equal rights by making the same political decisions that a more extreme racist would make, he has no claim to moral superiority at all.
Well all of you purists are just wrong. You should not sacrifice ultimate progress to your principles.
Better to pander I say. If you are politically progressive and the only way to get elected is to pander, you can either:
a) Pander and get into office, where you can attempt to change things from within (or at least use parliamentary procedure to try to impede any harmful legislation), and at the same time pursue a progressive agenda on matters other than race; or
b) Not pander, and be defeated by someone who is genuinely racist, and who will also work to thwart a progressive agenda on matters other than race.
You really think “b” is better, from a practical perspective? I think Fulbright had the right idea.
The fictional senator isn’t a racist. He’s fine with people of a particular race being denied equal rights, but he’s equally fine with them being granted equal right. He just personally doesn’t care. And you’re also confusing two things here, which is being a racist…that’s to say, believing some race is superior or inferior to another, and supporting equal rights for everyone regardless of race.
A person could be a racist and support equal rights. That’s to say, he could say, “I deeply believe that blacks are inferior to whites, but the 14th amendment says that blacks are equal citizens to whites, and that’s the law, by gum, so everyone should be equal under the law, even inferior people.” Or, a person could not be a racist and still oppose equal rights, like our fictional senator, who might say something like, “Well, I don’t personally think that blacks are inferior to whites, but a lot of people do, and if we give blacks equal rights, that’ll upset the white population and lead to violence, so it’s in everybody’s best interest if we continue segregation, even though it’s not very rational.”
I actually addressed exactly this point in post #20, but it doesn’t apply very well to Byrd because, for at least the first 20 years or so of his political career, he didn’t attempt to change things from within. I’ve never lived in West Virginia and all I know about Byrd is what I’ve read in Wikipedia, but he opposed both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He didn’t just vote against the former either, he filibustered it for 14 hours. He was opposed to desegregation. He’d been not merely a member of the KKK in the 1940s, but recruited enough members to found a new chapter which he led. So regardless of Byrd’s secret personal beliefs, he was doing a damn fine job of not merely mouthing racist beliefs but actually supporting a racist political agenda.
Byrd apparently did vote in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (the Fair Housing Act), so whatever his personal beliefs were he apparently was eventually willing to support some equal rights for people of all races. But he was not doing so for a good portion of his political career.
Yes, he is.
*I have bolded the portion that makes him a racist. He’s just a racist who isn’t especially “devout” and doesn’t care to challenge the status quo.
*I’m not confusing them, that was the hypothetical. You’re the one who wrote it, so I’m surprised you’ve forgotten it already. You described a politician who does not in fact support equal rights for everyone regardless of race, and who actually takes political action against equal rights because that’s what his constituents want.
*He could, but that wasn’t the hypothetical. I was responding to the scenario you actually described, not some other possibility.
How does that make him a racist? He doesn’t think blacks are inferior to whites, and he doesn’t actively believe that blacks should be denied equal rights. He just doesn’t care one way or the other about it. How is that racism?
We are addressing a hypothetical.
Funny, that wasn’t a part of your original hypothetical. It’s almost as if, after repeatedly claiming your fictional Senator isn’t racist, you want to retroactively add details to the scenario to make him sound less racist. Nice try, but I’m not buying it.
*You said, and I quote, “He’s fine with people of a particular race being denied equal rights”. Being fine with people of a particular race being denied equal rights is racist. If this hypothetical person doesn’t feel especially strongly about this then he’s not an especially strong racist, but a person who is not racist would not be fine with that.
I am genuinely sorry for you if you cannot recognize racism when you describe it yourself, but if you are unwilling to accept that a person who is just fine with denying people of a particular race equal rights under the law is in fact a racist then there’s nothing I can do about it except repeat myself again. I’m happy to spend my holiday weekend posting on the SDMB, but not posting the same thing again and again. If you want to keep on defending your hypothetical Senator then fine, I won’t argue with you about it any more, but he’s a racist whether you recognize it or not.
Has it occurred to you that Byrd could safely filibuster the Civil Rights knowing it was going to pass anyway?
At any rate, I wan’t addressing Senator Byrd specifically, but rather the hypothetical.
But OK, let’s assume our hypothetical senator doesn’t try to do anything progressive on race. And yet he is progressive in all other areas.
So would you rather have him as a senator, or his hypothetical opponent – someone who is not only racist, but also is actively fighting against the progressive agenda in areas other than race?