"I think our race relations are better than other communities around the nation. I think our people are just simply better behaved and more respectful of authority than they might be in other communities. I think that would discourage the type of involvement that you've seen."
—Gov. Phil Bryant, responding to WAPT reporter Bert Case, about protests in Baltimore
Why it Stinks: Bryant needn't look much further than his home county of Rankin—also home to most of the 10 white defendants accused of participating in the events that led up to the death of James Craig Anderson, who was black—to get a flavor of how far race relations have come. What's more, what is this nonsense about Mississippians being "better behaved" than people in Baltimore? The underlying sentiment of Bryant's remark seems to be that the power structure here has sufficiently crushed its citizens into submission. What Bryant doesn't realize is that such crushing is the very thing that set Baltimore afire.
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