Sessions Explains that Racially Charged Remarks Were Taken “Out of Context,” Declines to Provide the Context
Complaining that an apparently damning quotation was taken “out of context” strikes me as a not-very-convincing defense unless you can explain the context in some sort of exculpatory way. Take, for example, Jeff Sessions’ response to complaints that he’s a racist (via Mike Tomasky):
During the 1986 confirmation process, Sessions was accused of unfairly targeting black civil rights workers for election fraud charges as a federal prosecutor. A black lawyer under Sessions in the U.S. attorney’s office accused him of saying he thought the Ku Klux Klan was “OK” until he found out some of its members were “pot smokers.”
Sessions said the statement was meant as a joke and unfairly taken out of context.
But the confirmation process also revealed that Sessions had once called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union “un-American” and “communist-inspired.”
Sessions, who spoke with Obama on Tuesday about the Supreme Court vacancy, told POLITICO that those comments were made in a private conversation he had with an African-American on his staff in the U.S. attorney’s office — and that they were taken out of context.
On the first issue, I dunno. The black lawyer in Sessions’ office doesn’t seem to have thought Sessions was joking. And on the second what was the context. Okay, Sessions called the NAACP un-American in private. But why is it a better thing to say in private to a black subordinate? What is the “context” in which that’s a reasonable remark? Maybe Sessions has an answer, but if he does he’s keeping it pretty closely held.
28 Responses to “Sessions Explains that Racially Charged Remarks Were Taken “Out of Context,” Declines to Provide the Context”
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May 6th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
See, when Jefferson Beauregard said that the ACLU and NAACP were un-American, what he really meant was that their ideals were too influential and powerful to be limited to just one country, and affected the entire world. When he said that they were Communist-inspired, he really meant that they were inspired by the way a small group could transform an entire nation. It all makes sense in the right context.
May 6th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Calling the NAACP and the ACLU “un-American” and “communist-inspired” is “racially charged”? I dunno about that. The statement is incredibly stupid, but I don’t see how it’s “racially charged.”
May 6th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
What is the “context” in which that’s a reasonable remark?
One in which the country would revolt before it allowed a black President to be seated.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
But Sessions was taken out of context.
That being, the old C.S.A.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Sigh… There you go again, calling folks racist, just because the engage in racist banter and bigotry.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
I kind of wish there was a quote of him talking about those colored people, so he could justify it by saying that’s what the last two letters in NAACP stands for.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Don’t take this as a defense of Sessions, but I could see myself making a joke with a construction similar to, “I thought the KKK were okay until I found out they were potsmokers,” but it would only be funny because (1) I despise the KKK under all circumstances, and (2) I have no problem with potsmoking.
The joke is self-evident, but only if you know the speaker is anti-KKK and pro-potsmoking. If someone is anti-potsmoking, the joke makes no sense.
We can all try this, “I thought ______ was/were okay, until I found out he/they were ________.”
May 6th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
I’m offended as a Pothead-American.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
TPM had a great quote from Sessions in which he calmly explained that he could not possibly be a racist, because he once sent his children to a school at which blacks were allowed to attend. Plus he once shared a hotel room with one.
Pretty much stopped short of saying, “One sat down next to me on a train once, and I didn’t get up and move.”
May 6th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Actually, when I was growing up in the South [and I'm just a year younger than Sessions] it was common for politicians to regard both the NAACP and the ACLU as communist-front organizations, and even to pass laws against such “subversive” organizations operating within the bounds of the state. Sessions came out of that milieu, and, unlike southern Democrats [He was a Republican in college] never really had to make the transition away from it. I think it’s clear what the “context” is–he’s a politician caught in a time warp. Such views lubricated his career until he had to play on a national playing field, when he discovered that they don’t work there.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
I think that the context makes his comments more damning. I mean criticizing the NAACP today is not at all the same as criticizing it 3 decades ago. Today you could say something like the NAACP used to be a great political institution but it has lost it way. I don’t see why people who were racists long in their past can’t just admit their faults and try to do better. I don’t really care that Sessions was a racist 2 decades ago, but he really needs to acknowledge that he was wrong.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Oh, the horror! That someone would say that the American Civil Liberties Union – a group currently collaborating with a foreign government in a scheme that will help that foreign government profit from money that was earned illegally in the U.S. and that was started by a Communist and that constantly opposes our laws and the majority of Americans – is “un-American” and “communist-inspired.”
Oh, my, I’m having a CAP-inspired fainting spell!
Obviously, there’s a huge difference between being started by a Communist and being “communist-inspired.” I have no real idea what that is, but I’m sure that MattY – winner of the Amanda Terkel Award for Clear Thinking Award – will rush to let us know.
May 6th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
I don’t understand why no one is asking whether Sessions will repudiate and reject those remarks, even if he says they were taken out of context. I thought that was the current standard.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
The 93-time winner of the Lonewacko Award For Cheeto-Eating also has a long dossier on how the 47th state of the union is collaborating with a foreign government by virtue of its name.
Funny how he shows up to froth and derail whenever the discussion is certain people who seem to have trouble with certain other people of a different skin color.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
The big lie is that these guys really think that things are better now than before the civil rights movement. I lived briefly in the South in the late 1980’s and racism was overt. No matter how you slice it, the Trent Lotts of the world would prefer a return to the good old days. Strom Thurmond fathered a child with a black girl who worked for his family while in his 20’s and she was a minor. How is that not at least statutory rape? Sessons is a product of dixie and those old attitudes have not died yet.
May 6th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
I’m sorry, but that first one is funny almost irrespective of context, whether he meant to be funny or not, but the attempt to pretend not seems forced to me. It’s such an obvious, classic comedic gambit in both structure and content – my estimation of Sessions actually improved … until the quackery of the second.
May 6th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
I don’t imagine that the Senator and I would agree about much of anything important, but charging him with racism, that’s not going to get him, or any of his many supporters, to accept whatever Matt or these commenters wish for the Senator to support. Tolerant? The Senator, not so much. These commenters, not so much.
May 6th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
sessions is exactly what he appears to be.
you couldn’t come up with a better example of a retrograde, redneck, racist politician if you could have gone back to hollywood central casting back in the 30’s or 40’s. he looks like he just stepped out of a william faulkner novel. whenever i see him, and especially when i hear him talk i think about faulkner’s character from sanctuary, popeye.
sessions has a meanness, a certain vicious quality that he can barely disguise and it’s not difficult at all to imagine those qualities being used to the disadvantage of people of color.
he is what he is, the genuine article, a real-life redneck racist politician from alabama whose only real regret is that lots of folks don’t take too kindly to that sort of guy nowadays. at least lots of folks outside of his comfort zone in alabama.
May 6th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
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May 6th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Me, too. And also, it’s pronounced “Poe-Theed,” thank you very much.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
My Aunt, a legislative director for a Southwestern senator, told me that during the immigration debates a couple years ago, she saw Sessions go up to a hispanic-looking staffer and say “Your people are a disgrace to our country.”
May 6th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
winner of the Amanda Terkel Award for Clear Thinking Award
Fucking stop it.
May 6th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
ronathan richardson: what’s your name? Your aunt’s name? If you’re going to smear, have the balls to leave us some identifying information.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:47 am
Lonewacko: what’s your name? If you’re going to defend racists while pretending that you’re not a defender of racists, have the balls to leave us some identifying information. And your tax returns, to see where you get the money to run your campaign of hate.
May 7th, 2009 at 1:29 am
A good friend of mine, a black guy, grew up in Baton Rouge in the 1960’s. He use to tell me how -when he was a little kid- the Klan would march down his street a couple of times a year. Being a born entrepreneur, he used to set up a Kool-Aid stand and sell Kool-Aid to hot and sweaty Klansman for a nickel a pop.
When he got older, he used sell nickel bags to Klan. He said business was always brisk when the Klan was known to be having a secret meeting in town or a rally out in the swamp.
My friend considered his youthful entrepreneurial relationship with the Klan “the definition of doing business.”
May 7th, 2009 at 4:27 am
Sessions looks like a psycho to me. That smooth nothing face, concealing even more nothing. Why are semi-humans like this in Congress?
May 7th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Most of these comments are excusable in the south sadly if placed in the right conext.
In 2002 Sessions reportedly called a white civil rights lawyer working voting rights cases in Alabama a “traitor to his race”. I would love to see Sessions explain the “context” around this remark, because there is no context that makes it anything but the statement of a blatant and enthusiastic racist.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
charging him with racism, that’s not going to get him, or any of his many supporters, to accept whatever Matt or these commenters wish for the Senator to support.
Right, but who gives a *fuck* if we get Session’s (or the fucking cretins who clearly make up the majority of Alabama voters) support on this or anything else. Fuck ‘em sideways.