OXFORD — Haley Barbour is white. He’s a Republican. He’s conservative. He’s from Mississippi. That yields an easy label: racist.

Applying labels is what shallow media and shallow people do. It’s shorthand. It’s code, as in, “Oh, he’s a preacher” or “Oh, she’s a liberal.” It’s affixing a stereotype, sometimes for the purpose of adding context, but often for the purpose of discrediting.

Because Barbour, whose accomplishments for the national GOP are legendary, has been peeking out from the party’s war rooms, he’s become a target. Opinion-makers and policy-shapers who have decided he will hinder their agenda are rallying, trying to thwart a campaign before it can begin.

“Racist” is about the worst label that can be applied to anyone. It’s up there with “child molester.” Yet it has been proved time and again — ask Charles Pickering — that it’s not necessary to show a target for this label has ever spoken racist words or committed racist acts. In fact, the opposite can be true. Witnesses said Pickering, of Laurel, was a steadfast and public nonracist in his hometown of Laurel. But when nominated for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, mere hints tied to the fact that he’s not only a white, Republican, conservative from Mississippi, but also a Baptist erased any chance of Senate confirmation.

Barbour, on the way out after eight years as governor of Mississippi, has attracted a trifecta — maybe more — of allegations of “racially suspicious” behavior.

One relates to his tacit approval of a petition by the Sons of Confederate Veterans to have a state-sanctioned license plate. That he didn’t object is evidence of some kind of complicity or endorsement of the organization.

A problem, at least, is that the SCV is affirmatively nonracist. Members are mostly historians who like studying the War Between the States. They find the strategies and personalities of the era compelling. Under the theory that they are racist, members of the Daughters of the American Revolution would be banned from visiting England as insurrectionists.

A second charge is pure media spin. In December, Barbour ordered early release for Gladys Scott and Jaime Scott who were serving life. The African-American women’s case had been a hot item on the Internet. Their champions called them victims of “Mississippi justice” based largely on the fact that a robbery netted them only $11.

The reason it netted $11 was that’s all their shotgun-beaten victims had. If the real victims had $1 million, it would have netted the sisters $1 million. Also, Barbour wasn’t even living in Mississippi when the Scott sisters were arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced.

The rest of the case is technical. The sisters, 36 and 38, had served 16 years, not enough for parole. So the discharge order from Barbour took the legal form of conditional medical releases. Jaime needed a kidney and Gladys, who was healthy otherwise, said she was willing to donate.

The Washington Post reported the events accurately, but commentators went berserk. “Barbour orders black woman to donate organ as condition of freedom” and such. Glossed over was that but for Gladys volunteering to help her sister, there would have been no legal basis for her release.

Much has also been made of a Barbour comment that Citizens Council members in his hometown of Yazoo City played a role in the peaceful desegregation of public schools there in the 1970s.

Guess what? It’s true.

The indignities, the injustices, the violence inflicted on black Americans in Mississippi for a solid 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation is a permanent badge of shame. From the mid-1950s on, Citizens Councils were the “uptown KKK,” active believers in segregation. But it’s equally true that when court orders were issued for Yazoo City, Greenville, Meridian, Vicksburg, Oxford and elsewhere, many of these same people worked, as Barbour said, across racial lines, to blend schools without the riots and mayhem of Little Rock and elsewhere.

Barbour was asked for his memories of desegregation. He remembered that when a crucial time came, many stepped up and did the right thing.

Regardless, if he keeps poking his head outside the state as he moves toward a decision on whether to run for president, torrents of “racist” will keep coming in his direction.

How will he respond?

At a press conference while seeking a second term, walked out prominent Mississippi Democrats to endorse him. One of them was Yazoo City attorney Mike Espy, a Democrat who had served in President Bill Clinton’s cabinet as the first black Secretary of Agriculture.

“He’s my homeboy and we’ve worked together for generations,” Espy said.

Cameras were rolling, including what appeared to be a private crew.

If Barbour runs, expect to see that footage in a TV commercial. It may not change the minds of anyone who has concluded Barbour is a racist, but it does show our governor plans ahead.

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Charlie Mitchell is a Mississippi journalist. Write to him at Box 1, University, MS 38677, or e-mail cmitchell43@yahoo.com.