Does Haley Barbour really have a warped and offensive view of America's racial history? Or is he just playing a dangerous game? Perhaps both.
The Mississippi governor, considered a potential Republican candidate for president in 2012, keeps displaying what appears to be an astonishing level of ignorance about our nearly 400-year struggle with issues of race. At this point, it's more than a pattern. It's either a pathology or a plan.
The latest outrage - and I don't use that word lightly - came Tuesday, when Barbour was asked to comment on a proposal for a state license plate honoring one of the most notorious figures of the Civil War era, Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. I question whether any Confederate officer is worthy of such recognition, given that they were all committing treason. But even for the Sons of Confederate Veterans - the group proposing the license plate - Forrest should be an embarrassment.
For those who do not see the Civil War through a revisionist gauze of gallantry and Spanish moss, Forrest is an abomination. In 1864, his troops mowed down scores of black Union soldiers who were trying to surrender, in what became known as the Fort Pillow Massacre. After the war, Forrest became one of the founding fathers of the terrorist Ku Klux Klan - and was the group's first national leader, or "grand wizard."
Barbour was asked whether he would denounce the idea of honoring such a figure. "I don't go around denouncing people," he told reporters. "That's not going to happen."
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