Republicans’ politics and policies with regard to race don’t always align.

During the period 1976 to 1979 then state GOP chairman Charles Pickering and gubernatorial candidate Gil Carmichael worked hard to attract minorities but with minimal success.

In November 1981 the Memphis Commercial Appeal spread across the top of its Tri-State section this headline, “Official Urges GOP to Correct Its ‘Antiblack’ Image.” The article began, “A letter from a Republican Party county chairman to the statewide GOP chairman urges that the party correct its ‘serious image problems’ among blacks in an effort to wrest more black votes from Democratic control.” Sen. Thad Cochran responded but it wasn’t until the spring of 1983 that one of those changes happened when the Senator finally coaxed the state executive committee to expand from 30 to 35 members and add three minority members. Again, this had minimal impact on attracting blacks to the party.

Indeed, major Republican candidates tend to take political positions off-putting to black voters. However, some do pursue more conciliatory policies once elected. An illuminating example is former Gov. Haley Barbour.

In 2003 challenger Haley Barbour used opposition to changing the state flag to help take down Democratic incumbent Gov. Ronnie Musgrove. Remember the slogan, “Keep the flag – Change the governor”? But, once elected, Barbour actively included minorities in his administration.

Then, In 2006, as veteran columnist Mac Gordon noted recently, “Gov. Haley Barbour signed into law a bill that created the nation’s first civil rights course. The governor said, ‘To not know history is to repeat it. To learn the good things … and the bad things about Mississippi and America is important for every Mississippian.’” The law provides that all kindergartners to 12th-graders be exposed to civil rights education, e.g. the Emmett Till lynching, Freedom Summer, etc.

In 2011 Barbour got the Legislature to approve funding for the state’s Civil Rights Museum saying this would be, “an appropriate way to do justice to the Civil Rights Movement and to stand as a monument to remembrance and reconciliation.”

That said, national politics these days looks to shove Republicans’ policy efforts on to the off-putting pathway by making critical race theory a top campaign issue.

Last June, Texas passed legislation that effectively bans the teaching of critical race theory by prescribing how teachers can talk about race and history in classrooms.

In August at the Neshoba County Fair, Gov. Tate Reeves and Speaker of the House Philip Gunn promised to pass similar legislation for Mississippi. And the former British Brexit politician who now heads the Mississippi Center for Public Policy further inflamed the issue by labeling the theory Marxist and claiming it is invading our schools.

There is little evidence of critical race theory being taught in Mississippi schools. It is more of a university social studies myopic. Yet, the off-putting invective about it will be heard far and wide for months to come.

It will be informative to see if Reeves’ and Gunn’s politics, in their zeal to fight this non-issue, get the Legislature to overturn the school policy established by Barbour’s exemplary law.

“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with malice” – Ephesians 4:31.

Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.