MB Civic

By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  May 14, 2006 | The Boston GlobeGIVEN A career of hostile histrionics, Trent Lott received a stunning free pass from the media during the spring immigration rallies.

The Republican senator from Mississippi castigated the marches as ”intimidation and extortion.” He said he was ”highly offended” how demonstrators ”take jobs illegally and then protest and wave foreign flags.” He said, ”When they act out like that, they lose me.”

To CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Lott said, ”These big demonstrations are counterproductive, and they hurt a guy like me, who is trying to look at this in a way that is responsible. . . . if they’re waving foreign flags, I take offense to that.”

Blitzer’s follow-up was: ”Let’s move on to some other issues quickly.”

That sums it up on how reporters let Lott froth at the mouth for two months about Mexican flags without reminding him that he lost his position as Senate majority leader by glorifying treason, civil war, intimidation, lynching, extortion, segregation, and stealing of millions of black livelihoods in the name of the Confederate flag.

In a Nexis search, the only media effort that nailed Lott’s flag hypocrisy was a column by the Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman. Chapman recently wrote, ”The complaint about ‘foreign flags’ is especially nervy coming from Lott, who as a cheerleader at the University of Mississippi used to carry a Confederate battle flag onto the football field. Unlike the architects of the Confederacy, those people waving flags from Mexico or Honduras never tried to tear this country asunder.”

The nervy Lott demands a media with nerve. For the extremely short of memory, Lott spent most of his life destroying his credibility on racial and ethnic matters with everyone except racists. Lott supported segregation at the University of Mississippi in the 1960s. In the 1990s, Lott gave three speeches to the Council of Conservative Citizens, an offshoot of the anti-integration citizens councils. In one speech, Lott said the CCC stood for ”the right principles and the right philosophy.”

Twice, in 1980 and in 2002, Lott praised the late Senator Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist presidential campaign. In the 2002 incident, Lott said, ”I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.”

Just as Lott played to racists as it pertained to black people, his recent comments mesh nicely with the anti-immigration sentiments of the Council of Conservative Citizens and other romantics of the Confederacy. The CCC’s website has headlines such as: ”Hispanic births are skyrocketing,” ”Hispanics chase jobs to middle America,” ”Illegal aliens growing bolder by the day,” and ”More photos of Hispanic extremism at Los Angeles march.”

A photo album of a CCC-sponsored anti-immigration rally in Greenville, S.C., showed several Confederate flags flying among American flags. Confederate flags have been displayed at other anti-immigration demonstrations around the nation.

The anti-immigration rallies have been tiny compared to the hundreds of thousands of people who have marched for fairness around the nation. But the toxin cannot be ignored. The Anti-Defamation League published a report last month that says violent anti-immigrant rhetoric on white supremacist websites has reached ”a level unprecedented in recent years.” Half of ethnic hate crimes in 2004, according to the FBI, happened to Latinos.

Lott may have thought he was joking when The New York Times quoted him wishfully thinking about deporting immigrants waving Mexican flags. ”We had them all in a bunch; you know what I mean?” But a leader of Aryan Nations takes that one step further, saying, ”this infestation of cockroaches need deportation or extermination!”

On his Senate website, Lott wrote columns to his constituents saying, ”Many illegal immigrants don’t see America through some bright prism as a fertile crossroads but see us through sinister cross hairs. . . . even the fraction of a percent who don’t could bring death and destruction to our shores . . . time is ticking, no pun intended.”

That is little different than a headline in a CCC newsletter: ”Mass Immigration: Weapon of Mass Destruction.” The next time Lott opens his mouth about the time bomb of immigration, the media should remind him that he never had much to say about the mass destruction inspired by the Confederate flag. Too many people waving that flag still have people of color in their cross hairs.