South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is under fire — again — for his recent comments where he referred to segregation as “the good old days.”
The comment was made on Wednesday (Oct. 14) while he was asking Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett about her views on Brown v. Board of Education. Graham then said, “You’re not aware of any effort to go back to the good old days of segregation by a legislative body.”
After being called out by U.S. Senate candidate Jaime Harrison, Graham is now saying that he was being sarcastic and his opponent is “manufacturing” an attack against him. “It was with deep sarcasm that I suggested that some legislative body would want to yearn for the good old days of segregation,” he said.
“The point that I’m trying to make — there is nobody in America in the legislative arena wanting to take us back to that dark period in American history,” he continued. “For my opponent to suggest that says far more about him than me.”
Earlier this week, REVOLT reported that Graham was under fire for saying that young Black people were safe in South Carolina, as long as they’re not liberal. During a recent forum for South Carolina Senate candidates, Graham was asked about his thoughts on police brutality and the death of George Floyd.
He said that Floyd’s killing “was wrong and people should pay the price,” but he also said that he had the “cops’ back.”
“Do I believe that our cops are systemically racist? No. Do I believe that South Carolina is a racist state? No,” the senator said. “To young people out there of color, to young immigrants, this is a great state. The one thing I can say without any doubt, you can be an African American and go to the Senate. You just have to share the values of our state.”
“In South Carolina, folks, it’s not about the color of your skin or where you came from, it’s about your ideas,” the politician continued, name dropping Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, “the only African American Republican in the country” and the former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley, who is the “daughter of Indian Americans.”
“I care about everybody,” Graham said. “If you’re a young African American, an immigrant, you can go anywhere in this state. You just need to be conservative, not liberal.”
Check out the video of Graham’s most recent comments below.