Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour won't say if he's running for president in 2012, but he's already working to shape the narrative around a potential bid, especially when it comes to issues like race and his background as a former lobbyist.
In an interview with the Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson, the GOPgovernor offers up some provocative comments about growing up in the racially charged deep South in the 1960s. By Barbour's account, things weren't "that bad" in his hometown of Yazoo City, Mississippi, which escaped some of the violence other nearby towns suffered during the civilrights movement.
"I just don't remember it as being that bad," Barbour, who was in high school at the time, tells Ferguson. "I remember Martin Luther King came to town, in '62. He spoke out at the old fairgrounds and it was full of people, black and white."
Barbour, who was 15 at the time, says he attended the rally because he wanted to hear what King had to say but ended up spending most of the time talking to his friends. "The truth is, we couldn't hear very well. We were sort of out there on the periphery. We just sat on our cars, watching the girls, talking, doing what boys do," Barbour tells Ferguson. "We paid more attention to the girls than to King."
Asked why Yazoo City was more peaceful than other parts of the South, Barbour offers credit to the CitizensCouncil, a controversial group that has been likened by its critics to the Ku Klux Klan. But Barbour says this critique is unfair and that the group actually cracked down on the KKK.
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14 comments:
If this was his experience why is this news? Oh because he's a white republican. nothing more than a racial attack.
Just trying to infuriate black people. It's a shame the left wing media thinks black people are so easily mentally controlled.
so true 1119!
It is news because he has been named in several lists of possible GOP candidates in 2012, a possible successor to MIchael Steele, AND becuase it is a fantastically stupid thing to say.
So stupid that he is backing as far away from those comments as he can today.
If he is not defending himself, why are you guys defending him?
C'mon, you guys who've already posted believe the same thing Barbour does, he just has the courage to say it out loud while you only talk about what you really believe when whispering to your buddies.
Wasn't bad for him...cuz he's white. Just how stupid is this guy?
Explain what is wrong with his experience ? As for what we honkies say to each other while whispering just shows your hatred and paranoia for white people.
Husband says childbirth not that bad.
What you "honkies" say while whispering is being heard by your children. Until it stops the chains of slavery and this country's ugly past can not be broken. Stop the racism.
Does Barbour at all recall from his childhood being a white guy?????????? What an hilarious and asinine comment.
2:09 You are assuming all white people sit around whispering in
front of our kids about black people. What a joke your not spoken of or even thought about, this paranoid racial fascination you have about white people is unfounded as you have been brainwashed by the media. It's also interesting that blacks are arrested far more often then whites for hate crimes so clean up your own back yard before you comment on mine ! You are the racist here!
2:09 You are doing exactly what this article has intended for you to do. You are controlled and don't even know it.
I wouldn't assume 2:09 is black. All you need to do is listen to just about any group of white folks around this area to understand what is being talked about. The racist rants here on hte Eastern Shore are disgusting and ignorant.
Good for him, that means he's a right-winger but no neoconservative rationalizer of the left.
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