Strom Thurmond's elder African-American grandson, a conservative doctor who lives in the Pacific Northwest, has spoken with touchy talk show host Bill O'Reilly about his grandfather. The most interesting aspect of the conversation is that Dr. Ronald Williams defends Thurmond, while his host cuts the longterm segregationist and father of the Republicans' Southern Strategy no slack.
O'REILLY: Well, your mother must have been — must be — she's still around — an extraordinary woman. She — she — you say she loved him, and yet he didn't really help black people, obviously, and he didn't really — wasn't really overgenerous with her or you. Another person might have said, hey, this is not a good guy.
WILLIAMS: Well, the way our view is — that he's provided her support, especially financial and moral support, emotional support at a time when she had no other man in her life, and she felt that was a great and important help to her, and she has acknowledged it as such.
O'REILLY: OK.
WILLIAMS: He apparently had some physical affection, would hug her at the beginning of a meeting, hug her when she left, and just treated her very well...
O'REILLY: OK.
WILLIAMS: ... and...
O'REILLY: I got it, but I still think your mother's an extraordinary woman for doing so. I would not...
WILLIAMS: You're right about that.
O'REILLY: I would — yes, I would not have been as kind. I would [not] have.
Now Strom Thurmond himself, as I said in the lead, was an ardent segregationist and, you know, arguably not a good help to the African-American community. Did that enter into your thinking at all when you evaluate him?
WILLIAMS:It does enter in. One of the greatest ironies I find is that around 1964, while the Civil Rights Act was being filibustered, my brother was integrating Savannah High School. That was quite an irony.
O'REILLY: Yes, that's for sure. This whole thing is ironic.
WILLIAMS: It is.
O'REILLY: This whole — this whole thing — and, you know, people who don't believe in God are crazy because this just shows you, you know? But it also shows you that Strom Thurmond was not a man of respect. And I know that he's your grandfather and I don't want to be disrespectful to you, but he isn't. He's a hypocrite, and that's just a fact, and I'm glad it's out in the open.
Prior to Mrs. Essie Mae Washington-Williams' famous press conference, her son had expressed hope she might not speak out since the white Thurmond family had acknowleged her paternity.
Article comments
1 - Al Barger
This isn't so much a race thing for this man as a family thing. It isn't just some politician to him. It's his GRANDPA.
I saw this interview. Dr Williams seemed pretty successful and happy. His way of looking at things seems to work for him.
You or I might want to just tear into ol' Strom- but this is his family and his life. I imagine grandpa probably did help him out (oh so discreetly), and he wants to look up to the alpha male in the family.
What good would it do him or his mother to judge grandpa in the harshest way that he could, or go around mad about it? Would he or his family be better off? After all, they're the ones who would be aggreived here if anyone is.
2 - Mac Diva
I find Ron Williams' attitude self-serving, Barger. 'Grandpa patted his darkies on the head from time to time, so never mind that he was the leader of the Dixiecrats and father of the Southern Strategy.' Bullfeathers!
And, I find your attitude surprisingly naive. Who better to have an opinion on the ways of white, Indian and black folks than a mixed-race person like me? The matter has colored (pun intended) my life in a way it definitely hasn't yours. How can anyone be so clueless?
3 - Al Barger
You have a right to whatever emotional states you wish to feel. I certainly don't have your experiences or perspective- nor do you have mine.
Nor do either of us have the experiences of Dr. Williams. I don't presume to tell you what you should feel or think. I certainly don't wish to presume to know what Dr Williams "should" think or say. I don't presume even to know what measures to use in judging the authentic way that a black man "should" feel in those odd circumstances.
Therefore, I'll tend to give him the benefit of the doubt. Not really knowing what would be the appropriate response, unless he were being obviously abusive, I would tend to cut the guy some slack.
He has apparently made those odd life circumstances work FOR him rather than against him, and that will tend to impress me.
I suppose Dr. Williams' attitudes are "self-serving" in that they end up serving his own best interest, and that of his family. Would he be somehow helping his mother outing her parentage against her will?
Or should he sacrifice himself and his family to the service of some minor making of a point for your personal racial solidarity thing or whatever the hell it is? Should he boil over in scathing public denunciations of his own grandfather in order to satisfy YOUR emotional needs?
4 - Louis Gross
Mac Diva:
I think that it is high time that black voters and intellectuals cease being so concerned with personality and start being concerned with policy. Right now, the black community gets behind progressive politics because its politicians claim to have love and concern for blacks. In turn, the black community despises conservative politicians because of their hateful attitude towards blacks. The result is that an unqualified support for progressive policies and Democratic candidates (and opposition to the other side) regardless of whose ideas work or who is most capable of implementing those ideas.
The best example of this is in our urban centers, where for 50 years or more we have tried a variety of progressive initiatives, most of which have failed and the ones that did show promise were either undermined by the bad initiatives or bungled by incompetent and often corrupt leaders.
We have places that have had terrible schools, high crime rates, bad housing and infrastructure, social breakdown, and a chronic inability to draw industry for decades, and the masses and their leaders convince themselves that they are somehow better off because progressive Democrats who like them are running the joint instead of conservative Republicans who loathe them.
I say that after awhile, one should start to consider whether a conservative could do a better job attracting industry, running the schools, making the streets safer and infrastructure better, and delivering basic services. At some point we need to forget about judging what's in these people's hearts and start looking at the job that they are doing. So, while Thurmond may have kept his segregationist views, he clearly abandoned them politically long ago. So during that time was he or was he not an effective Senator after abandoning segregation? That is the question that truly matters, and that is what everyone should ask not only about Thurmond but everyone from the President on down to your local school board official (actually I would say ESPECIALLY your local school board official particularly if you live in an urban center) and give up pondering their personal views about black people.
5 - Mac Diva
Louis, I agree with much of what you say. It is part of the reason why I have begun to refer to myself as a moderate or independent instead of a liberal or a Democrat. Too often, liberals are all talk, and no action. And, some of them have deep racial bias problems of their own.
Still, that said, the Right usually does worse, in regard to both general policies and race and class related issues.
My concern for Dr. Williams is related to my research on the neo-Confederate movement. He is the sort of person of color they like to exploit. If he is malleable enough, they will have him marching around in a gray uniform with a huge Confederate flag quicker than he can say 'stat.'
I look forward to hearing from you again and urge you to read my blogs.
6 - Louis Gross
Mac Diva:
"Still, that said, the Right usually does worse, in regard to both general policies and race and class related issues."
We could debate that, especially if you are an urban dweller. Often the problem isn't that the left is all talk and no action, but that the action that they take doesn't work. You do realize that we spent 60 years in this country governed by the center - left coalition that started with Roosevelt's New Deal and didn't end until 1994. Even now, the areas of the country that contain the most blacks are directly controlled by Democrats and in some cases black Democrats. That progressive era took blacks quite a ways in some areas, but failed blacks in others. They did a lot of stuff, but let's admit it ... a lot of that crap didn't work. This notion that you could stimulate economic growth and development with job training programs. That you could take a hardened criminal, give him a few sessions of psychotherapy and release him out on the streets. Virtually all of the "education reform" proposals, like social promotion was ever going to work. Trying to use social workers to replace two parent and extended families. Raising taxes and regulations on businesses, forcing some out of busiess and the rest to the suburbs. All of that good stuff.
Now it appears that black advancement is coming in spite of government policies rather than because of them, and in some areas blacks are losing ground. I think that it is high time that blacks start actually living by the old civil rights slogan "No permanent friends, only permanent interests" and switch to the other team. The 60s are over, the concept of civil rights and a basic safety net for blacks is now mainstream. The problems of today's blacks seem to be governance of urban centers (especially schools), economic problems, and social problems. Affirmative action and social welfare is only going to go so far. Republicans are the "party of the rich", maybe blacks should consider their proposals for building wealth. It is interesting to note that Bill Clinton adopted some of Nixon and Papa Bush's initiatives for enterprise zones and home ownership, those seem to have worked don't you think? Nixon "used" the black Republican Arthur Fletcher and Bush Sr. "used" the black Republican Louis Sullivan to create and implement many of those initiatives. And while Colin Powell is probably very unpopular for conceding to Bush's demands for the Iraq invasion, Powell has done a great job getting mroe blacks into the State Department and was a major impetus behind Bush's AIDS proposal for Africa (the likes of which no Democrat ever seriously proposed). If Dr. Williams gets "used" in a similar manner, i.e. to create a program to fight AIDS and out of wedlock pregnancy in the black community THAT ACTUALLY WORKS (despite claims to the country the anti - AIDS programs obviously don't work because black AIDS infections keep rising, and the out of wedlock pregnancy rate didn't start falling until welfare reform which included MANDATORY NORPLANT for many black female recipients ... kudos to Bill Clinton on that one), then the better for him and for black people.
I was reading a story about Jeb Bush's voucher program in Florida. Of the first batch of 58 kids who took them, 38 are still in private school and 36 of those have shown significant improvement. The most striking is a kid who was in the 5th or 6th grade receiving As and Bs on his report card despite not being able to read a lick, which of course also just MIGHT have affected his performance in science and math don't you think? The kid is now in an 8th grade at Catholic school having caught up in every subject but spelling. The school that gave him As and Bs is now shut down and the administrators fired ... and the local civil rights leaders and teachers' unions stated how this was an example of how vouchers and high statkes testing ruin public education. And that a kid could get to 6th grade making As and Bs despite being COMPLETELY ILLITERATE wasn't an example of how public education was ALREADY RUINED for kids who had attended that long failing school?
Again, if progressive policies and politicians aren't working, it is time to give the other side a swing are two. After all, if the right may use Dr. Williams, then what black leaders are the left using? Hmmm ...