Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi wants us to believe that she’s completely unaware of her state’s ugly, violent, and long history of lynching black people. That’s why she’s playing innocent and doubling down on her comments about attending a public hanging with a supporter of hers. Hyde-Smith is currently locked in a runoff race for her senate seat with Democrat Mike Espy, who is black. Apparently, at a campaign event, Hyde-Smith and her supporters got a chuckle out of her joke referencing how highly she regards the person she was talking about. As written in the New York Times, the scene went as follows:
With her arm around a cattle rancher, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, Republican of Mississippi, drew laughter and applause at a recent campaign event when she gushed about how highly she thought of him: “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”
We all know this isn’t remotely funny. And if this is really a saying in Mississippi (or anywhere else), it should have been retired long ago. Hyde-Smith likely knows this. Even though she’s from the Deep South, at 59, she’s just not old enough to credibly claim this is an acceptable thing to say publicly amongst her age group. Except she doesn’t really need credibility or a reason, does she? She doesn’t care. Her party doesn’t care. And the racists that support them most certainly aren’t bothered by it.
Republicans have been doing this kind of thing with increasing frequency over the last few years. They make racist, white supremacist statements and then feign shock and confusion when they get called on it. It is not quite the “Trump effect” per se (hint: the Republican Party didn’t suddenly get racist in 2015) but there’s definitely a direct correlation between who is currently leading the party and the hateful, racist rhetoric which is now the bedrock of the party’s platform and ideology. Republicans know racism works with their base and though they had the common sense to disguise it decades ago, they can’t be bothered to now.
Hyde-Smith’s strategy is to make this a partisan issue. She seems to think the real problem is that anyone would even be offended by her remarks. In a statement released this statement over the weekend, Hyde-Smith said: “In referencing the [person] who invited me [to a speaking engagement], I used an exaggerated expression of regard, and any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous.”
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What’s really ridiculous is that a sitting United States senator running for election, against a black man, wants us to be unbothered by her references to public hangings. Especially when more than 600 documented lynchings took place in her own state between 1877 and 1950. A state with a history or racism so gruesome that singer Nina Simone penned a protest song about it entitled, “Mississippi Goddam.” Especially in 2018 when Nazis and white supremacists are openly marching and are increasingly responsible for the deadliest domestic terrorist attacks in American history. But sure, Hyde-Smith wants us to seriously believe she just used an innocent expression that is no big deal.
It is, in fact, a big deal. As Koritha Mitchell wrote in a recent CNN article, hanging isn’t funny and jokes should never be made about it. Especially because it is so “inextricably linked” to our politics today.
Lynching literally shaped the political landscape Americans have inherited; our politics today are in part defined by the belief that white people should have the right to hold themselves and each other to incredibly low standards -- that they shouldn't have to be decent toward people who aren't white.
Earlier this year, a lynching memorial and museum opened in Alabama to recognize the more than 4,000 victims of lynching in the United States. We are finally reckoning with this painful part of our past, though we have so much more work to do. Hyde-Smith should know this. There are people living in Mississippi today who are the descendants of those who were lynched. But she has no problem invoking this ugly era of our history without thought, regard for those impacted by it and she’s unapologetic about it. This kind of thinking and behavior doesn’t belong in the senate (or anywhere else) and she doesn’t deserve to win this election. Let’s hope Mike Espy wins the runoff. Mississippi can be much better than this.