Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

To Jeff Jacoby: Helms Was Always Racist

By

Jeff Jacoby had a very deceptive column in the Globe yesterday.  Jacoby implies that once civil rights laws were passed over Helms’ objections, Helms became a wise and benevolent non-racist.

In the one-dimensional demonology of the left, Helms comes across as an unreconstructed racist who dreamed of Jim Crow every night and whose first words each morning were “Segregation forever!” The truth was considerably different – and more admirable.

Helms came to prominence as a foe of desegregation. “He battled as hard as any of them,” editorialized the conservative National Review in 2001, “a shameful legacy, of which he was never ashamed.” In those days Helms was a Democrat, as were most Southern segregationists. But by the time he entered Congress in 1973, he had changed both his party and his mind. Far from using his office to roll back civil rights, argued Walter Russell Mead, a noted scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, Helms “deserves to be remembered as one of a handful of men who brought white Southern conservatives into a new era of race relations.”

But Helms stayed a racist.  In the Senate, in 1993, he used racism to taunt the only African-American female Senator.

Soon after the Senate vote on the Confederate flag insignia, Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.) ran into Mosely-Braun in a Capitol elevator. Helms turned to his friend, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), and said, “Watch me make her cry. I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ until she cries.” He then proceeded to sing the song about the good life during slavery to Mosely-Braun (Gannett News Service, 9/2/93; Time, 8/16/93).

Helms stayed a racist.  Jacoby can’t whitewash that stain.

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. A few more nuggets from the same link:

    <

    p>

    On CNN’s Larry King Live (9/15/95), when a caller praised guest Senator Jesse Helms for “everything you’ve done to help keep down the n*gg*rs,” Helms replied, “Thank you, I think.”

    Helms’ impeccable racist credentials include calling the University of North Carolina (UNC) the “University of Negroes and Communists.” (Charleston Gazette, 9/15/95)

    <

    p>Classy.

    • <

      p>Helms has objected most forcefully to Mappelthorpe photographs that he and others regard as pornographic. The senator has a standard packet of four Mapplethorpe photos he shows to reporters questioning him about his stance on “obscene” art. These include “Man in Polyester Suit,” depicting the polyester-clad torso of a black man, his uncircumcised penis dangling from his fly, and “Rosie,” a two- or three-year-old child caught, shocked, on film — her crotch exposed. Helms claims the latter is a clear example of child pornography.

  2. From a CNN Interview with William Link, author of “Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism” and a professor at the University of Florida.

    <

    p>

    CNN: There were some people who had similar stances to him, maybe not as staunch. They apologized for their feelings, previous feelings on race. But Jesse Helms never did that.

    LINK: No, he never did. He, in fact, as late as 2000 in a long interview that he gave, he said that he agreed — his position on the civil rights act of 1964, which, of course, was the sweeping piece of legislation that revolutionized race in the south, he opposed it in 1964. In 2000, he continued to oppose it, which is sort of unusual. There are very few southern white politicians that continued to have that point view over, say, 30 or 40 years.

  3. … summarizing my feelings on the matter is up at obsidianwings.

    <

    p>The post also makes a point about the message conservatives send when they hold people like Helms in public esteem by quoting Ezra:

    <

    p>

    “Some of my conservative friends often complain about the difficulty of constructing a “usable history” out of the movement’s recent past, and I sympathize with their plight. When leading exemplars of your political tradition were trying to preserve segregation less than four decades ago, it’s a bit hard to argue that your party, which is now electorally based in the American South, is really rooted in a cautious empiricism and an acute concern for the deadweight losses associated with taxation. That project would really benefit, however, if more of them would step forward and say that Helms marred the history of their movement and left decent people ashamed to call themselves conservative. The attempt to subsume his primary political legacy beneath a lot of pabulum about “limited government and individual liberty” (which did not apparently include the liberty of blacks to work amongst whites or mingle with other races) is embarrassing. But if it goes unchallenged, what are those of us outside the conservative movement to think?”

  4. Jeff Jacoby had a very deceptive column in the Globe yesterday.

    <

    p>Again? That must be about the fourth of fifth ….

    <

    p>Oh, right – he does that every time he writes.

      • Can’t remember a time when I read Jacoby’s column and thought, “don’t agree with him, but interesting ideas” or “well-argued”.  

    • But he is a conservative writer so many on this blog will dislike him.

      <

      p>His “defense” of Helms was completely wrong. I’m reminded of the expression… “You put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig” Well Helms has a long history of racial remarks and the fact that he was elected and re-elected so many times tells you something about his constituents.

      <

      p>BTW, I consider Jesse Jackson, former KKK member Robert Byrd, Sen Strom Thurmund, Louis Farrakhan and many other notable racists to be in a class of their own. We often try to pin the label “racist” on people who make racially insensitive remarks (Senator Joe Biden “You cannot go to a 7-11 or Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian Accent.” or when B Obama said his grandmother is a “typical white person” who has fears about black men). These remarks will typically cause people to be branded a “racist” (at least if they are white and/or Republican), but they don’t in my book.

      <

      p>Helms is a Racist and should never have been elected. The world is a better place without him or the rest of them.

          • since he did not, and this in my view, leaves a rather poisoned legacy.

            <

            p>In any event, I think Strom got a pass.  Not a “pretend it never existed” but a pass.

        • “Of course I’m not anti-black, and any number of African-American friends and Capitol Hill staffers would be happy to set that record straight. I have always been opposed to violence from any quarter; to unconstitutional quotas; and to politicians who try to rob people of their ability to dream their own dreams and reach their own goals through their own efforts by selling them the lie that they can’t succeed without the government running their lives. I have always believed that the American Dream is the birthright of every American, and that the free-enterprise system is the route to secure that dream.”

          <

          p>That’s Helms, from a National Review interview.  

          <

          p>With respect to Helm’s voting record, I’m not sure the same opportunities to vote the ‘racist card’ existed after Helms took office in the late 70s, so I’m not sure what he’d repent.  Perhaps you know the racist facts or his conscious thoughts not expressed, better than me.

          <

          p>I do know Helms vocally opposed busing in his NC area (he was a news commentator) in the 70s much the same as residents of Boston opposed it.  The result both in Boston and NC’s Charlotte resulted in white flight that desimated the inner city schools, with affect lingering 30 years later.  So, in hindsight, would a hypothetical vote against forced integration by busing be racist, considering the unintended consequences?

          <

          p>

          • After the Civil Rights legislation of LBJ’s presidency… the way to do that was to change the focus of the debate from something a majority of the voters didn’t agree with (for example “colored” seating in public accomodations) to things that a majority of voters did agree with–like busing.  Any leadership toward a new era of race relations on Helms’ part had more to do with his political calculations about overt racism being unpopular than with his seeing black people as equals.

            <

            p>But while Jesse Helms knew that he would be publicly chastised for saying he was “anti-black,” he kept his mouth shut about that in public.  But in private, he thought it was funny to sing Dixie at an African-American woman… so there was something twisted in Helms’ soul.  Not to mention that the song Dixie is largely a romanticized call to treason in defense of slavery.

            • The story regarding Helm-Braun in the elevator is far better, if you know the backstory.

              <

              p>Jesse Helms, in ’93 (Braun was elected in ’92) sought approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee for an extension of the Daughters of the Confederacy design patent. Moseley-Braun el al., sought to kill the latest extension in committee. Helms took the fight to the floor.  

              <

              p>Moseley-Braun took the podium to say something to the effect of, in this day and age when we see Confederate symbols hauled out we all know what that means. (loosely quoting) The Senate folded to implications that a yes vote was a racist vote.

              <

              p>Helms lost his vote to a rookie senator.  Braun made an enemy, and under the circumstances would have made that same enemy, regardless of skin colour.

              • But had his new “enemy” not been African-American, his response probably wouldn’t have been to try to “make her cry” by singing Dixie.

                • But had his new “enemy” not been African-American, his response probably wouldn’t have been to try to “make her cry” by singing Dixie.

                  <

                  p>Had his new “enemy” been Stephen Harper and he compared him to Dudley-DoRight, you’d probably lament that he was a bigot towards all Canadians.

              • the government’s continued legal protection of their design patent.  The Confederacy was outright treason (to preserve slavery, no less), so why should our country go out of its way to support people romanticize the attempt to destroy our union?

                <

                p>

                Braun made an enemy, and under the circumstances would have made that same enemy, regardless of skin colour

                .

                <

                p>I wonder if a Jewish Senator like Joe Lieberman or Russ Feingold had become enemies with Jesse Helms–would Helms have chosen, instead of ‘Dixie’, to make comments about gas chambers?

                <

                p>It would be anti-semitic to do that, and likewise, it was racist to sing ‘Dixie.’

                <

                p>Thanks, though, gary, for the story about Braun defeating Helms.  That’s a satisfying little historical nugget.

  5. He is almost always wrong. However, he consistenly opposes torture and he is supportive of the immigrants among us.We must give him credit for these positions.

  6. Soon after the Senate vote on the Confederate flag insignia, Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.) ran into Mosely-Braun in a Capitol elevator. Helms turned to his friend, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), and said, “Watch me make her cry. I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ until she cries.” He then proceeded to sing the song about the good life during slavery to Mosely-Braun (Gannett News Service, 9/2/93; Time, 8/16/93).

    <

    p>If I remember correctly, Mosely-Braun then turned to Helms and said something to the effect of “Senator, your singing would make me cry if you sang Rock of Ages.”

  7. Anyone else catch Helms’s funeral on TV? It was on C-SPAN or C-SPAN2. They showed the audience and the choir. As far as I could see, not a black face among them. What more do we need to know? “Segregation forever!” for Jesse (whether by his or his family’s intention or the simple lack of interest in attending by folks of color – both of which are plausible). If anyone saw the funeral and did spot any people of color, please do tell.

    • So, I thought I’d look.  Here’s the video.  You can advance it approximately 65% through and yes, if, when the camera pans to the audience there appear to be a number of black faces in the audience, although I’m not sure why that fact alone is meaningful.

      • I thought I’d look too.  I went to just past 50%, when a granddaughter is speaking.  I watched her speak, a grandson speak, and then a singing period.

        <

        p>The camera panned the crowd a number of times.  I saw exactly one black person, a man seemingly in his 50s.  I also saw a friend’s father’s friend’s wife in the choir.  Go figure.

        • I watched even more of it, stomv, even though the Red Sox game is on. I watched from the 50% point (Jimmy with the blue tie talking) through the grand-daughter and the grandson and all of Amazing Grace – i.e. well before and well beyond the 65% point.

          <

          p>You were so right, gary. In the audience camera pans, I did spot “a number” of black men: THREE (two in one pan and one in another pan). That’s quite impressive in a packed 800-seat sanctuary.

          <

          p>Three African-Americans visible in a church in Raleigh, NC, packed with 800 mourners. He was obviously beloved by the black community in his home state.

          <

          p>Did I miss any additional African-Americans, gary? Please let us know exactly where.

          • In case anyone is wondering if enough blacks live in Raleigh, NC to attend the funeral of Jesse Helms that was held at Hayes-Barton Baptist Church:

            <

            p>

            As of the 2000 United States census[1], there were 276,093 people and 61,371 families residing in Raleigh. The population density was 2,409.2 people per square mile (930.2/km²). There were 120,699 housing units at an average density of 1,053.2/sq mi (406.7/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 63.31% White, 27.80% African American, 0.36% Native American, 3.38% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 3.24% of other races, and 1.88% of two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 7.01% of the population.

          • Did I miss any additional African-Americans, gary? Please let us know exactly where.

            <

            p>Did you miss any?  Gee I don’t know.  YOU’RE the one who said there were none.  I pointed out you were, of course, completely WRONG.  So, you say, well, there weren’t none. There were few.

            <

            p>How many do you seek?  You a quota guy?  You want a represented class of each minority at all funerals? weddings? Barmitsvas?

            <

            p>Wonder how many jews, blacks, asians were at say Tip O’Neil’s funeral, Reagan.  Then let’s step back and ask WTF does it matter or prove you racist.

            • I did not say there were none. Re-read what I said if you actually care about being accurate. You’re the one who was misleading, citing “a number” of African-Americans at the church when so far, we can spot just three out of an estimated 800 people at the funeral.

              <

              p>The point is Jacoby’s claim that the truth about Helms and race is considerably “more admirable.” I’d expect black residents of NC to know best about that. And if that were true, I’d expect to be able to spot more than three – THREE! – black mourners in multiple camera pans of the crowd at his funeral in Raleigh.

    • We were being sly, describing a man who would foam at the mouth at the very mention of the United Nations as an UN-reconstructed racist?

Archives