Washington Post: Rick Perry’s surprisingly frank speech about Texas’ racist past

By Max Ehrenfreund, Jul. 6, 2015, Washington Post

Rick Perry began his speech at the National Press Club on Thursday with an account of the mutilation and lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco, Texas, in 1916. Perry's honesty with the horrifying facts would have been shocking coming from any politician. Coming from Texas's former governor, though, his words were something new in the debate about race in America. (C-SPAN has a rough transcript of the speech, along with the footage.)

Perry faulted Democrats for failing to improve conditions for Americans of color, citing zoning rules in cities that he said have raised rents for working families in big cities. His most surprising argument, though, was a discussion of the importance of federal power in redressing the consequences of slavery. That idea is anathema to many Republicans, both because of the embrace of federal power and because of the suggestion that policies based specifically on race might still be necessary to create genuine equality.

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