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I've been around colleges continuously since 1976 and I haven't been to one yet that didn't have segregated blacks-only fraternities, sororities, clubs, honor societies, etc.. These segregated associations don't seem to upset the liberals who are castigating Lott.

Lott grew up in a segregated society. Virtually all the whites of that era favored segregation, and admitted it. Lott admitted being a former segregationist in an interview. Most of his critics, if asked about the propriety of blacks-only fraternities today, would say that "African-Americans need to be able to have their own exclusive clubs to maintain their unique cultural heritage". They'd then launch into an assault on Lott for being a segregationist 41 years ago.

This is much ado about nothing, and an effort to demonize people who grew up in the south during that era. I went to segregated schools for a total of one year (first grade). My family objected to the schools being integrated. So did every white person in my town, to the best of my knowledge. But it all worked out in the end, and people around here aren't segregationist anymore.

It's just how things were and they didn't want it to change. People act like every southerner from that era was some crazed KKK grand dragon or something, out burning crosses and lynching blacks. Most people weren't. But most southern whites (I'd say easily 95% of them) didn't want to end segregation.

Fortunately, it's not that way now. I don't mind people criticizing segregation. It was a stupid and despotic system. But I easily understand why people who were born and raised in such a society, where segregation was reinforced by law, by custom, and even by religion, would object to outsiders trying to break up their system. I was only a kid, so I didn't understand what the big deal was. But if I'd been born earlier, and had been raised to understand that segregation was our way of life, I probably would have been a segregationist. And you know what? Virtually everyone on this board would have been one, too.

This business of demonizing people for their past is just plain wrong. I belong to an online pro-life club. We have among our members people who were formerly pro-abortion. We have women who have had abortions as members. Should we throw them out of our club because they weren't as "enlightened" as we were five years ago? One young lady in our club has a sister who is strongly pro-abortion, but she still loves her. Should I encourage her to hate her and have nothing to do with her until she becomes pro-life?

This Political Correctness has to be stopped or it will destroy us as a nation. For God's sake, give it a rest. Criticize Lott if you want for being a poor leader who has generally been weak, incompetent, and ineffective. But please stop hounding him for saying a few nice words about an elderly man who hasn't been a segregationist for decades. Lott isn't perfect. He wasn't blessed to be born in "enlightened" New England where they didn't have official segregation policies. He was born in a place where by definition you would have to work with segregationists to get started in politics. Bill Clinton's mentor was a segregationist. Big deal! The past is the past, including Senator Fulbright's. Clinton should have been ousted for his criminal conduct, not for being born in a state where all the politicians were segregationists.

This business of demonizing people for their past is just plain wrong.

The past was sound asleep. But Lott woke it up - HE SAID that some "problems" would have been avoided had Thurmond been elected.

I belong to an online pro-life club. We have among our members people who were formerly pro-abortion. We have women who have had abortions as members. Should we throw them out of our club because they weren't as "enlightened" as we were five years ago? One young lady in our club has a sister who is strongly pro-abortion, but she still loves her. Should I encourage her to hate her and have nothing to do with her until she becomes pro-life?

Once again, Lott spoke FAVORABLY of Thurmond winning the Mississippi electoral votes - and said the nation might have been better off had Thurmond won the presidency. If you have someone in your group who was pro-abort, now claims to be pro-life, but then speaks favorably of pro-abort positions, wouldn't you question their integrity towards the pro-life cause? Of course you would. This is not about the dead past, but the attitudes here and now about the problems of the past.

This Political Correctness has to be stopped or it will destroy us as a nation. For God's sake, give it a rest.

Sorry, but being strongly opposed to even the whiff of official, government segregation is hardly P.C. - this country was founded on the notion that all men are created equal, and upon the concept of equal protection under the law. Forced segregation is toxic to those hallowed notions, and resoundingly opposed by all who cherish what this country is about.

But please stop hounding him for saying a few nice words about an elderly man who hasn't been a segregationist for decades.

Once again, Lott resurrect the dead past, and now he's paying for it. Quit blaming us the way Hillary blamed the VRWC for Bill's predicament, and put the blame exactly where it belongs - on Trent Lott's shoulders.

Excellent post! I feel the same way.

I remember when Ft. Lauderdale's beaches were desegregated in 1966. I was a little girl and wasn't allowed to go to the beach; my dad went on the first day to see how everything was going. (Were the Negroes going to destroy beach? Would the water get dirty?)

Well, Ft. Lauderdale beach was ruined in ensuing years. But not by blacks. Instead, the beach became the haven of mostly white, drug-addicted, teenage runaways. Respectable black stopped going.

Finally, zoning put stop to "activities on the strip" by reducing parking and redeveloping the area. The runaways went some place else. I don't where; no one, black or white, cared.

People act like every southerner from that era was some crazed KKK grand dragon or something, out burning crosses and lynching blacks.

But the thing is that one of the things that Thurmond ran on was for southerners to retain the "right" to lynch blacks. There's a sample ballot printed by his party floating around in some of these threads. The sample ballot actually bemoaned the fact that Truman was anti-lynching.