Discussion on news and current evenJaz Brisack, the first female student at the University of Mississippi to receive the prestigious Rhodes scholarship, called Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) a “white supremacist” in an interview with The Oxford Eagle on Sunday.
Brisack, a college senior, told the Eagle she was “honored to get to be a role model for other Mississippi girls looking for ways to make their voices heard in a state still very much dominated by patriarchal structures.”
“Given that our state amplifies the voices of white supremacist women like Cindy Hyde-Smith who reinforce and uphold misogynist policies, I’m glad to be able to provide a very different example of how an empowered Southern woman acts,” Brisack told the newspaper.
Hyde-Smith has come under increasing scrutiny in recent days for a series of past and present behavior seen as racially inflammatory.
A snippet of Brisack’s interview was shared on Twitter on Sunday night and quickly went viral:
Jaz Brisack, the first female Rhodes Scholar from the University of Mississippi, calls Cindy Hyde-Smith a white supremacist on the front page of the Sunday local paper pic.twitter.com/J1VDUy9jyH
— claire howorth (@clairehoworth) November 26, 2018
Hyde-Smith, the first woman to represent Mississippi in either chamber of Congress, was appointed earlier this year by Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant ® to fill the seat vacated by former Sen. Thad Cochran ®. She lost a large amount of donations to her campaign over the weekend after reports came to light that she’d joked about being willing to attend a “public hanging” earlier this month.
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Groups including Major League Baseball, Walmart, AT&T, Leidos, Union Pacific and Boston Scientific have all asked for their donations to Hyde-Smith’s campaign to be returned.
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Hyde-Smith has apologized for the remark, claiming that her opponents manipulated her words and that what she’d said was not a reference to race-related lynchings. But other questionable elements of Hyde-Smith’s past have surfaced.
In addition to attending a de facto “segregated” school when she was younger, Hyde-Smith was seen celebrating Confederate history at a museum in a 2014 Facebook post. In that photo, she’s wearing a Confederate soldier’s hat and holding a rifle, with the caption: “Mississippi history at its best!”
President Donald Trump is holding rallies in Mississippi this week in support of Hyde-Smith, who is expected to face off against Democratic challenger Mike Espy in a special election on Tuesday.
