BY MARTIN KICH

The “what” in this case can refer, of course, to many things—the causes, the effects, and/or the political, cultural, and moral implications of the two issues and the ways in which they are (or are not) being addressed. But I would like to focus on simply a similarity in which the evidence of both racism and sexual harassment and assault have been typically revealed, at least in the last few years.

When the first accusation of sexual impropriety against the actor Kevin Spacey surfaced, I was skeptical. I have very much admired Spacey’s work, and I have especially enjoyed his appearances on late-night talk shows during which he has demonstrated a sophisticated wit and a real facility for doing celebrity impersonations. Moreover, beyond seeming out of character, the initial accusation against him seemed rather tenuous. In short, my response was essentially what celebrities who are predators depend on to avoid being called to account for their actions.

After I had expressed my doubts to one of my colleagues, she said, “Wait a week. If he’s guilty, the accusations will very likely start to snowball within a week.”

She was right.

Well, in much the same way as sexual harassment and assault are serial behaviors, racist comments are very seldom simply a slip of the tongue or a statement taken out of context.

Witness how the revelations about Cindy Hyde-Smith have piled up and are seriously undercutting any claims that he reference to a “public hanging” had nothing to do with Mississippi’s horrible history of race-related lynchings. The following excerpts are from an article written by Quint Forgey for Politico, though Forgey has drawn heavily on the reporting in the Jackson Free Press. I have somewhat rearranged the materials to present them in the order in which they have been revealed by reporters:

On Nov. 11, a video appeared on social media showing Hyde-Smith saying that if she were invited by one of her supporters to a “public hanging,” she would be in “the front row.”

On Nov. 15, another video emerged of Hyde-Smith telling a group of people that “there’s a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who that maybe we don’t want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. So, I think that’s a great idea.”

 And on Tuesday, a Facebook post surfaced in which Hyde-Smith is seen posing for a photo wearing a Confederate soldier’s hat and holding a rifle. “Mississippi history at its best!” she wrote in the post.

A photograph from the 1975 edition of the Lawrence County Academy yearbook, published Friday by the Jackson Free Press, appears to show Hyde-Smith among a group of cheerleaders — including a mascot holding a Confederate flag, who appears to be wearing a costume imitating a Confederate general’s uniform. A sophomore girl in the picture is identified in the caption as Cindy Hyde. . . . [Following the federally mandated and enforced integration of public schools,] Lawrence County Academy in Monticello, Miss., was one of many high schools established in the South on behalf of white parents who did not want their children to be educated alongside black students.

Hyde-Smith would go on to enroll her daughter at Brookhaven Academy, another Mississippi segregation school founded in 1970, the Free Press reported.

An unattributed article for CNN’s website adds these revelations:

As a state senator in 2007, Hyde-Smith cosponsored a resolution that honored then-92-year-old Effie Lucille Nicholson Pharr, calling her “the last known living ‘Real Daughter’ of the Confederacy living in Mississippi.” Pharr’s father had been a Confederate soldier in Robert E. Lee’s army in the Civil War.

The resolution refers to the Civil War as “The War Between the States.” It says her father “fought to defend his homeland and contributed to the rebuilding of the country.” It says that with “great pride,” Mississippi lawmakers “join the Sons of Confederate Veterans” to honor Pharr. The measure “rests on an odd combination of perpetuating both the Confederate legacy and the idea that this was not really in conflict with being a good citizen of the nation,” said Nina Silber, the president of the Society of Civil War Historians and a Boston University history professor. . . .

The 2007 resolution wasn’t the only legislation Hyde-Smith backed that would elevate Mississippi’s Confederate history. The Washington Post reported that in 2001, Hyde-Smith introduced a bill as a state senator to rename a stretch of highway to what it had been called in the 1930s: the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway, after the president of the Confederacy.

The escalating attacks on “fake news” and the continuous challenging of the nature of facts have led a number of commentators to point to the increasing importance of teaching critical thinking. At the same time, more deeply entrenched political polarization has made it increasingly perilous to treat political topics in the classroom. But, without taking sides, I think that it might be possible to use this Senate election in Mississippi (or the recent confirmation hearings for Justice Kavanaugh that featured testimony by Christine Blasey-Ford) to address issues such as the following:

–To what extent should the rules of evidence in a criminal or even a civil trial be used as the standard for judging a candidate or nominee for an office?

–To what extent does it matter if apparently accurate revelations about a candidate or a nominee for a public office have been uncovered by candidate’s or nominee’s political opponents?

–To what extent is a candidate’s self-revealing lifelong document trail relevant to his or her current pursuit of a political office?

The focus then might be less on arguing about the specific cases and more on an effort to define principles that might be applied to any case.

 

Quint Forgey’s complete article is available at: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/24/cindy-hyde-smith-segregation-high-school-mississippi-senate-1012700.

The complete article for CNN is available at: https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/24/politics/cindy-hyde-smith-confederacy-mississippi-senate-race/index.html.