DEAR EDITOR:
On Jan. 10 Mr. Mark Zappa wrote a letter in which he
stipulated
”
that Trent Lott made stupid comments
”
giving the impression that he supported segregation.
DEAR EDITOR:
On Jan. 10 Mr. Mark Zappa wrote a letter in which he stipulated “that Trent Lott made stupid comments” giving the impression that he supported segregation.
Mr. Zappa then proceeded to state that two particular facts (liking Strom Thurmond and not voting for the MLK holiday) do not make Mr. Lott a racist. I am not writing to support whether Lott is or is not a racist. I believe the readers can make up their own minds regarding Mr. Lott. However, there are many more pieces of the puzzle that Mr. Zappa left out of his dissertation.These facts may or may not assemble a different picture of Mr. Lott than the edited version of Mr. Zappa’s:
In 1980 Mr. Lott stated, “if we had elected that man (Thurmond) 30 years ago, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.” In 1981 Lott fought to keep Bob Jones University tax-exempt (a Christian college that bans inter-racial dating) stating “Racial discrimination does not always violate public policy.” In 1982 Lott voted against extending the Voting Rights Act. In 1983 he voted against the Martin Luther King Holiday stating there were others more deserving (more deserving than a man who died working to bring constitutional rights to every man, woman, and child regardless of their skin color?).
In 1990 he voted against amending the Civil Rights Act which would ban workplace discrimination, and in 2002 again stated how much better the country would be off had we voted for Mr. Thurmond (who walked out of the Democratic Convention when Hubert Humphrey called for civil rights and integration).
Mr. Lott has also maintained a friendly relationship with the Council of Conservative Citizens, a spruced up version of the old White Citizens Council of Mississippi.
Lastly, when JFK was leading the struggle towards integration, Mr. Lott, student at the University of Mississippi and president of his national fraternity, Sigma Nu, helped lead a successful fight to keep blacks out of all chapters of the fraternity (source: Time Magazine.com).
Let’s all be careful about forming judgments (for better or worse) based on edited versions or puzzles with missing pieces.
Kristine Dillon, Gilroy
Submitted Monday, Jan. 13 to ed****@ga****.com
