I guess it’s hard for many people today to understand the profound racism that animated people like Strom Thurmond for most of his life. It was a racism that didn’t forbid sexual relations with African-Americans, but kept them in a permanently second-class position. And look at the context: Thurmond had sex with Carrie Butler when she was a mere 16 years old and he was 22. She was his servant. And his power over her – and his daughter – was so great that neither woman went public with the fact until now, long after this bigot died. Everyone else in the family went along with this demeaning and dehumanizing escapade. Even now, Thurmond’s son, climbing his own way up the greasy pole of politics, reflects this attitude:
The family doesn’t know much about Williams, Thurmond Jr. said. “I had a conversation with my dad about it about 10 years ago. I asked about this, and he didn’t tell me whether she was or whether she wasn’t (his daughter),” he said. “I did not ask again.”
Why not? The answer is that Carrie Butler’s daughter was illegitimate, of course. But also that neither Butler nor Essie-Mae Washington-Williams, were racially pure enough to be included in Thurmond’s public or even private life, except under a penumbra of secrecy and hush-money. There is a racial closet as well as a sexual one. In the case of Thurmond, both closets were combined. What it reveals is the deep human and necessary hypocrisy of racism; the ancient tendency to sexualize African-Americans as a way to keep them at a distance from full human equality and dignity; and the lingering power of inter-racial sexual taboo. Fascinating also that Thurmond fought so long to maintain miscegenation laws he himself violated so early in his life. He was fighting against himself, against his own daughter, against his own country. And he was never publicly called to account. Better late then never.
The Dish 