Racism in Republican Mississippi

By Michael J.W. Stickings

What, goes the old joke, has for 'i's and can't see? Mississippi.

It's not exactly the most progressive place:

Americans nationwide are evenly divided over the issue of same sex marriage. But Republicans in Mississippi are divided over a wholly different wedlock issue: interracial marriage.

In a PPP poll released Thursday, a 46% plurality of registered Republican voters said they thought interracial marriage was not just wrong, but that it should be illegal. 40% said interracial marriage should be legal.

It's easy to forget, given how far America has come, that such racism thrives all over the place, and not just in the overtly racist/Republican bastions of the Confederate Deep South.

But obviously it's pretty bad in Mississippi, or more specifically among Republicans in Mississippi (I shouldn't impugn the entire state, I suppose), and it hardly comes as a surprise that the leading Republican in that state is Haley Barbour, whose views on race are a tad, well, old-fashioned.

For more, see:

-- Haley Barbour, Jim Crow Republican; and

-- Haley Barbour and the KKK: A perfect Republican match?