I was am listening to Fresh Air with Terri Gross (an NPR program) where she is interview Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the black daughter of Strom Thurmond whose existence was revealed after his death and who has recently written the book Dear Senator.

She opines that Strom Thurmond's racist policies were not personal, but political. She (grudgingly) admits of his hypocrisy, but says that as a person he went along with the racism of the time and place because there wasn't anything he could do about it, not because he personally believed it. That he
said all the things about how inferior blacks were and that the South would never be made to mix races because he had to, and the REAL Strom Thurmond is the one she saw privately and the outwardly non-racist he was in his later career.

My father was living in South Carolina in the late 70s, and was horrified at how popular Strom Thurmond was. Thurmond had left behind his segregationist presidency run and strong opposition to the civil rights act. Black politicians had pictures with them shaking hands with Thurmond on their walls, and this was a thing that was good for their careers. Thurmond came to the college my father was at while he was in class, and almost alone my father did not rush downstairs to meet Thurmond during a break in class given for that very purpose. His professor asked him why, and my father responded that he saw Thurmond's actions as only to benefit himself and could not forgive him for his segregationist opinions.

My father assumed that Thurmond was always deeply racist, and used racism to further his goals, giving it up publicly but not privately when it became completely untenable. The revelation of a black daughter made it all even worse from the perspective of my father.

Essie Mae Washington-Williams assumes that Thurmond was never terribly racist and simply was a champion for racism because his constituents wanted it.

Which is probably true? Which would be worse? Is there any way to apologize for Thurmond, to say that he was wrong about one thing but that doesn't make him a terrible person? Does the fact that he had an unacknowledged black daughter (for whose college he paid while publicly preventing blacks from getting anywhere in life) make his hypocrisy worse, or is it a humanizing factor? Does this kind of sordid affair only possible in a segregated world mean nothing in our outwardly integrated culture?

There was once a lovely character named George Wallace; Dixie-crat governor type of what's now a red state. He was never all that noted for hating blacks (and in fact, didn't hate them any more than the next man); but after losing an election to someone who talked up segregation more than he did, he swore that "no one will ever out-seg me again". This is how one appealed to southern voters; and he wanted to win elections.

Barring the difference that one man would admit to their hypocrisy while the other wouldn't, I suspect it was the same for Strom. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that Strom was a soft racist in his own beliefs; who used race hatred as a vehicle. In my own humble opinion, this is more evil than doing it because you really hate someone; it's certainly much more dangerous to the target population.