Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Ta-Nehisi Takes on Barbour

Coates' take on Boss Hog Haley Barbour,

If Barbour wants to praise the good people of Yazoo City for their extraordinary restraint in not employing violence as they hounded from their community those black parents brave enough to demand a decent education for their children; to laud their public disavowal of the local Klan even as they turned a blind eye to its activities; or to extol their grudging cession of the inevitability of court-ordered integration after fifteen years of stalling, for its absence of lynchings or riots, that's his prerogative. For the rest of us, though, Yazoo City should serve as a poignant reminder that the civil rights struggle really was "that bad."

As always with Ta-Nehisi, read it all.

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