My takeaway from this article and subsequent ones about what should be done following the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action is that we ought to personally struggle with the history and possible futures for America. My own struggle is : Two North Stars: One for Liberty, One for Equality - Minding The Campus
This is not a right or wrong answer approach, but doing one's own work for what it personally means to be an American (ultimately North, South and Cental).
Jun 3, 2023·edited Jun 3, 2023Liked by Free Black Thought
The Republicans before 1968 were not 'the racist party.' The Southern Dems were. Correct.
The Republicans since 1969 have been, by any measure of the word racist (whether in its 1970s guise or todays ridiculously broad metric), 'the racist party.'
Reparations is a laughable notion, on which the GOP are right and the woke Dems are just deluded.
The 1619 project is arguably more of a myth then the Frontier Thesis/1776 worldview.
Both these parties are similar in the middle, and equally deluded, and dangerous to democracy, in the extremes.
A 3rd party option might be good, but it would have to be a Centrist Party.
The whole notion that one of these parties are sinners and the other are saints is pointless to discuss though.
By any measure, since MLK, the Dems (hypocrisies as with any large political party predictably in place) HAVE worked for the black vote. And got it. So either black people are easily led or they like what the Dems have done. Its clearly the latter.
By any measure, since MLK, the GOP has tried to ignore the issue of slavery, civil rights etc. They have certainly not done anything for poor blacks, though they have for middle and upper class/wealthy blacks, which is why they vote for the GOP. Reagan alone could be held responsible for so much black pain...
If I shouldn't pay for my father's sins, then why on Earth should I be paying for my father's, father's, father's... sins. Or conversely why do I deserve to be paid for my father's, father's, father's... 'virtue' of being a slave. Only an individual can be responsible for his or her own actions. All of this nonsense comes about when collectivism (the only worth of a person comes from the group he or she belongs to) is the coin of the realm.
The Democratic Party is also the party of the Indian Removal Act, for which the consequences have been and continue to devastate many thousands of First Americans.
I just did a search. The "Democratic Party" is mentioned 65 times in that essay. I have never voted a straight party ticket or registered with either party. As far as I am concerned the Republicans are on the side of the rich and the Democrats pretend to be on the side of the non-rich. Neither side has mentioned mandatory accounting/finance in the schools. The miseducational system is designed to produce brainwashed workers when it accomplishes that much.
Black Americans should have created a Black Power Party decades ago. I think it would have been really funny to see the reaction of the White Power Structure if MLK and Malcolm X had combined in advocating mandatory accounting for Black kids.
Black Man's Burden (1961) &
Border, Breed nor Birth (1963) by Mack Reynolds
Both of those are in Project Gutenberg now but I did not discover them until the 1970s. I find it really amazing/funny/disturbing to imagine MX and MLK reading them in the early 60s.
Of course if you point them out today some Negroes are going to say, "They were written by a White man!" LOL
Great piece. Lyndon Johnson was one of the most cynical politicians ever, saw the need to support the civil rights legislation. My observation from just being alive during these times is that the Democratic Party got credit for his move. A lot of people in this country wanted to move past our racist past, and the Republicans benefited by being able to ignore race and pivot to other issues. In my (admittedly limited) view, the Republicans then became the war party, ironically another inheritance from Johnson. Nixon taking up the cudgel of Vietnam turned many, many people off and minted a bunch of new Democrats. It’s so interesting to see the Democrats pivot to becoming the war party. But apparently their current followers are too dazzled by virtue signaling to notice.
Bravo, Jeffrey! Please check out my 9/20/21 essay, Systemic Racism: The DNA of the Democratic Party (https://open.substack.com/pub/jeffeinstein/p/systemic-racism?r=7hc45&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web) on Jeff Einstein 2.0. Very much aligned with your thoughts. As noted in the essay, I stepped away from the Democratic Party back in 1976, and have been politically independent ever since. Keep up the good work.
@Jeffery People. Excellent and magnificent. The fact is the Democrat Party always has been and continues to this day to trade in the currency of racialism. It’s was slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow in the past for white Southern votes and today it is BLM, reparations, and progressivism for Black votes and urban progressive whites
No one take about the (even just ) 25 million Europeans that came here at the end of the 1800's who had NOTHING to do with slavery in the U.S. Why should I be held responsible for what happened before we set foot here? BTW we had to have sponsors and a job to even GET here!
Very good analysis. Who you dig into what "everybody knows," you often find the conventional wisdom is not only wrong but diametrically opposed to the truth.
But it is important to many that we focus on the distant past so we don't focus on the recent past.
For what it’s worth, my view is that the debt for slavery was fully paid with the blood of 300,000 Union soldiers.
My takeaway from this article and subsequent ones about what should be done following the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action is that we ought to personally struggle with the history and possible futures for America. My own struggle is : Two North Stars: One for Liberty, One for Equality - Minding The Campus
https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2022/10/19/two-north-stars-one-for-liberty-one-for-equality/
This is not a right or wrong answer approach, but doing one's own work for what it personally means to be an American (ultimately North, South and Cental).
The Republicans before 1968 were not 'the racist party.' The Southern Dems were. Correct.
The Republicans since 1969 have been, by any measure of the word racist (whether in its 1970s guise or todays ridiculously broad metric), 'the racist party.'
Reparations is a laughable notion, on which the GOP are right and the woke Dems are just deluded.
The 1619 project is arguably more of a myth then the Frontier Thesis/1776 worldview.
Both these parties are similar in the middle, and equally deluded, and dangerous to democracy, in the extremes.
A 3rd party option might be good, but it would have to be a Centrist Party.
The whole notion that one of these parties are sinners and the other are saints is pointless to discuss though.
By any measure, since MLK, the Dems (hypocrisies as with any large political party predictably in place) HAVE worked for the black vote. And got it. So either black people are easily led or they like what the Dems have done. Its clearly the latter.
By any measure, since MLK, the GOP has tried to ignore the issue of slavery, civil rights etc. They have certainly not done anything for poor blacks, though they have for middle and upper class/wealthy blacks, which is why they vote for the GOP. Reagan alone could be held responsible for so much black pain...
If I shouldn't pay for my father's sins, then why on Earth should I be paying for my father's, father's, father's... sins. Or conversely why do I deserve to be paid for my father's, father's, father's... 'virtue' of being a slave. Only an individual can be responsible for his or her own actions. All of this nonsense comes about when collectivism (the only worth of a person comes from the group he or she belongs to) is the coin of the realm.
The Democratic Party is also the party of the Indian Removal Act, for which the consequences have been and continue to devastate many thousands of First Americans.
I just did a search. The "Democratic Party" is mentioned 65 times in that essay. I have never voted a straight party ticket or registered with either party. As far as I am concerned the Republicans are on the side of the rich and the Democrats pretend to be on the side of the non-rich. Neither side has mentioned mandatory accounting/finance in the schools. The miseducational system is designed to produce brainwashed workers when it accomplishes that much.
Black Americans should have created a Black Power Party decades ago. I think it would have been really funny to see the reaction of the White Power Structure if MLK and Malcolm X had combined in advocating mandatory accounting for Black kids.
Black Man's Burden (1961) &
Border, Breed nor Birth (1963) by Mack Reynolds
Both of those are in Project Gutenberg now but I did not discover them until the 1970s. I find it really amazing/funny/disturbing to imagine MX and MLK reading them in the early 60s.
Of course if you point them out today some Negroes are going to say, "They were written by a White man!" LOL
Great piece. Lyndon Johnson was one of the most cynical politicians ever, saw the need to support the civil rights legislation. My observation from just being alive during these times is that the Democratic Party got credit for his move. A lot of people in this country wanted to move past our racist past, and the Republicans benefited by being able to ignore race and pivot to other issues. In my (admittedly limited) view, the Republicans then became the war party, ironically another inheritance from Johnson. Nixon taking up the cudgel of Vietnam turned many, many people off and minted a bunch of new Democrats. It’s so interesting to see the Democrats pivot to becoming the war party. But apparently their current followers are too dazzled by virtue signaling to notice.
Bravo, Jeffrey! Please check out my 9/20/21 essay, Systemic Racism: The DNA of the Democratic Party (https://open.substack.com/pub/jeffeinstein/p/systemic-racism?r=7hc45&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web) on Jeff Einstein 2.0. Very much aligned with your thoughts. As noted in the essay, I stepped away from the Democratic Party back in 1976, and have been politically independent ever since. Keep up the good work.
One of the most informative and logical articles I’ve read on this subject. Every American should read it.
@Jeffery People. Excellent and magnificent. The fact is the Democrat Party always has been and continues to this day to trade in the currency of racialism. It’s was slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow in the past for white Southern votes and today it is BLM, reparations, and progressivism for Black votes and urban progressive whites
Superb
No one take about the (even just ) 25 million Europeans that came here at the end of the 1800's who had NOTHING to do with slavery in the U.S. Why should I be held responsible for what happened before we set foot here? BTW we had to have sponsors and a job to even GET here!
Excellent piece.
A blatantly one sided screed. There was a Southern strategy that no amount of machinations or blaming Democrats for their past can ignore.
Very good analysis. Who you dig into what "everybody knows," you often find the conventional wisdom is not only wrong but diametrically opposed to the truth.
But it is important to many that we focus on the distant past so we don't focus on the recent past.
wow!