Monday, June 9, 2014

"A History of Liberal White Racism..."

Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic tells the truth, remarkably, about the close tie between racism and liberalism-progressivism:

A History of Liberal White Racism, Cont. 

It's not that northern liberals cut a deal with southern racists -- the southerners were very much married to to the prospect of progressive reform. 
There is some sense that when we talk about the period leading up to the New Deal and beyond, that we are talking about progressives in the North making a tragic, yet necessary, bargain with white racists conservatives in the South. In fact what Ira Katznelson shows in Fear Itself is something a little more complicated. The white supremacists in his book are, indeed, for the most part, Southern. But they also are very much married to to the prospect of progressive liberal reform. It may break our brains a bit to imagine, say, a Southern white supremacist backing railroad unions. But that's actual history. 
And if you think about it, it makes sense. Ben "Pitchfork" Tillman and Tom Watson were populist and (ultimately in the case of Watson) white supremacists. The division goes back to the days of pre-slavery politics when the South was somewhat divided between planters and yeoman farmers. I say"somewhat" because on the issue of White Supremacy, there was no division.  
No character in Katznelson's book troubles the waters like Mississippi's governor, and then senator, Theodore Bilbo. Here is a man who, in one breath, can be hailed as "a liberal fire-eater" and then in another dubbed "a bulldog for protecting traditions of the South." Bilbo was a Klansmen who stumped for Al Smith. But black equality was a bridge too far. 
If Roosevelt's agenda belongs to us, so does the man who said this:
...it is practically impossible, without great loss of life, especially at the present time, to prevent lynching of Negro rapists when the crime is committed against the white women of the South." 
And then claimed that the United States was:
...strictly a white man's country, with a white man's civilization, and any dream on the part of the Negro Race to share social and political equality will be shattered in the end.
We can not part ourselves from the man who recounted a meeting with a delegation of back labor leaders like this:

Theodore Bilbo worked to block funding for Howard University, tried to initiate a "Back to Africa" campaign for colonizing black citizens, attempted to segregate the national parks, dismissed multiracial children as "a motley melee of misceginated mongrels," attempted to ban interracial marriage in Washington, D.C., and raged against antilynching legislation that would compel "Southern girls to use the stools and toilets of damn syphilitic women." And he did this as a progressive.

It is not enough to claim that "liberalism" has, somehow, changed meanings thus allowing us to disown the Mississippi Senator. On the contrary, the Roosevelt administration congratulated Bilbo on his win in 1940 pronouncing him "a real friend of liberal government." When Bilbo himself first ran for Senate he promised to "raise the same kind of hell as President Roosevelt." When he was up for reelection Bilbo promoted himself to be "100 percent for Roosevelt ... and the New Deal."

If the New Deal is ours, so is Theodore Bilbo. Acknowledging this part of our history wounds us. Class interests, in the liberal mind, has always been seen as the great uniter. And yet we see for whole stretches of our history race not simply race trumping class, but race effectively functioning as class.

Does it mean that the New Deal was worthless? No. Is the point that Roosevelt was a covert anti-black bigot? Nope. But it is part of our history. And it is as important to acknowledge this--just as, when the history of marriage equality is written, it will be important to acknowledge the Democratic Party's "evolution."

Segregation in the South was wholly a Democrat-Liberal-Progressive program. It is, along with slavery, the most ambitious social engineering project in American history, and Dems-Liberals-Progressives own social engineering. 

It's time to face the obvious truth: American racism was, and is, owned by Democrats-Liberals-Progressives. 

After it became obvious in the 1960's that the racist Democrat-Liberal-Progressive system of segregation was collapsing, the race-baiting social engineers substituted the Great Society and a system of racial spoils for Jim Crow. It was the same basic intent: use race and fear and big government to secure votes. Just like old times. 

It's worked pretty well. Ms. Coates needs to be careful not to give the whole game away. 

21 comments:

  1. Commissar Boggs, Ministry of TruthJune 9, 2014 at 7:48 AM

    Egnor: "It's worked pretty well."

    That it has. In fact, if anything, it's worked almost too well for its creators.

    Because the only way leftists could see to maximize the political benefits of racism was to adopt a neotribalist "us against them" racial strategy. Zero-sum economics, cultural/lingusitic/racial anti-assimilation (aka "diversity"), tribal spoils... all these were, and are, in play.

    It worked so well the Jim Crow Democrats generalized the strategy to other visually or behaviorally identifiable "tribes": Latinos, Asians, the disabled, gays, etc. Thus the Democrat Party balkanized into a Tribe of Tribes.

    It's amusing to watch the internal jockeying for power. Whose tribe is ascendant today? A Latino male or a black male (Zimmerman vs Martin)? A white woman or a black male (Clinton vs Obama)? Latinos/blacks vs Asians (the current U Cal affirmative action brouhaha).

    It's sad for America and the young folks who are going to inherit this whole moral and fiscally bankrupt mess. If I had children, which I thankfully do not, I would encourage them to emigrate to Asia before even more punitive controls on capital flight are fully implemented. But I must admit to a grim fascination while watching the whole thing play out from the sidelines of retirement, like watching a slow motion train wreck. And I'll get paid for watching.

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    1. Commissar Boggs, Ministry of TruthJune 9, 2014 at 9:27 AM

      Oops, Popito! You did another troll-stinky! Bad Popito! Bad!

      My pressure washer is gassed up and ready to go.

      Trolls suck.” (jezebel.com)

      Delete
    2. Republicans, on the other hand, are united: all-white, all-male. Just look at their congressmen.

      Hoo

      Delete
    3. Commissar Boggs, Ministry of TruthJune 9, 2014 at 9:33 AM

      Tootles: "look at their congressmen"

      I'll leave that to you, Tootles. It's more in your line of work.

      Delete
    4. Hey Gramps, good to see ya driving around in that wheelchair.

      How many black Republican Representatives are there in Congress?

      Hoo

      Delete
    5. Hoo, there's no doubt that blacks prefer the Democratic Party. That doesn't prove that the Republicans are the racist party. Blacks vote for Democrats because Democrats offer them a better deal: preferential treatment rather than equal treatment.

      I'm a registered independent anyway. But there's no doubt that in today's hyper-racialized politics, it's the people on the Left who always insert race where it doesn't belong, thus dividing people along racial lines. All they have to do is drag out the imaginary white racist boogeyman. It works every time.

      JQ

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    6. People on the left, JQ? I though Egnor was a conservative. That's the opposite direction.

      Hoo

      Delete
  2. Commissar Boggs, Ministry of TruthJune 9, 2014 at 9:04 AM

    Daily Chuckle™:

    There's a new sport in America, and it involves that vehicle beloved of the Modern Eek!oloon: the "Smart" Car.

    The sport is called car tipping. Here's an amusing slide show from a Bay Area NBC affiliate.

    But if you want to know what a Craigslist ad reads like for a Real American Car, go here. That's the stump jumper you'll need to drag your fresh elk carcass out of a ravine in a "no motor vehicles allowed" area.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Senile old fart,

      You really are a sad fuck, aren't you? You're really off topic this time. Don't you have anything else to do?

      Perhaps you should get out your V-8 powered wheelchair and terrorise the old age pensioners in your old folks home?

      You're so juvenile that you think that the size of your penis is reflected in the size of your car. Or your gun.

      You've written recently that you don't have any children. What's the matter - have you been firing blanks? Or was your wife (assuming you managed to attract one) so horrified that any children she had with you would take after you, that she secretly took oral contraceptives or secretly had abortions?

      You're a troll.

      Delete
  3. Yet another trip in the time machine to find the mythical Democratic racists. 70 years in the past this time! Of course he was a southerner representing the bigoted constituents of Mississippi, all of whom vote Republican these days. These little history lessons do nothing to change the fact that it’s Republicans like Bundy and Sterling who are the face of this kind of racism today.

    -KW

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    1. Ben, the elected official you're referring to is Harry Reid, the Senate Majority leader.

      JQ

      Delete
    2. KW - the southerners who voted for Bilbo 70 years ago are almost all dead. The children have learned from the errors of their fathers and rejected them.

      And Bundy? Not much good at either verbal expression or PR, but not a racist on any evidence I've seen. The comment about blacks being being off under slavery than in present day south-side Chicago was a stupid and awkward way of saying 'they went out of the frying pan and into the fire'. It was comparing bad with bad. And it's too bad that the racism which envelopes you like water envelopes a fish prevents you from seeing that.

      Delete
    3. that should have been '...being better off...'

      Delete
  4. The meaning of the word has changed several times, and continues to change. These days it means something more akin to authoritarian thought police goon squad, but it wasn't always that way.

    In the mid-twentieth century, a liberal was a man who adhered the philosophy of FDR's New Deal, which is to say big government. He was likely to describe himself as a >>Roosevelt Democrat.<< There were lots of them. My parents called themselves Roosevelt Democrats. And why shouldn't there be lot of them? He was incredibly popular, even if he kind of sucked as a president.

    The South was jam-packed with Roosevelt Democrats for two reasons: the region had always been a Democratic Party stronghold, and because the New Deal rained money on the South. Think Tennessee Valley Authority. Before Roosevelt came to power, large parts of the South were without electricity.

    Being a liberal had almost nothing to do with issues of race, meaning that a liberal could be for or against Jim Crow and still be a liberal in good standing. Al Gore's father, Senator Al Gore, Sr, was a pretty good example of a big government liberal who happened to be a defender of segregation. So was Bill Clinton's mentor, Senator William Fulbright.

    JQ

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    1. The meaning of what word?

      --Francisca S.

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    2. Oh, I'm sorry. The meaning of the word >>liberal.<<

      JQ

      Delete
  5. Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

    The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported early Monday morning that the shooters are believed by police to be white supremacists.

    Krista Koch, a resident of the complex, told the paper the suspected shooter was 'militant' and obsessed with conspiracy theories to the point he often talked about them.

    Jared claimed to have been booted from Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's property at the end of the standoff there earlier this year, Monroe added.
    The couple openly ranted about killing police officers, 'going underground' and not emerging 'until the time was right, she added.

    The shooters then ransacked the dying cops' bodies for ammunition and weapons before covering them with the famous 'Don't Tread On Me' flag from the American Revolutionary war.


    Obsession with the military. Check
    Anti-government conspiracy theorists. Check
    White supremacists. Check

    Must be liberals of some sort.

    Hoo

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    Replies
    1. Knock 30 points off Egnor’s IQ and you get these people.

      -KW

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    2. KW, batshit crazy doesn't necessarily correlate with IQ, either low or high.

      Delete
    3. David,

      Being batshit crazy does correlate with low IQ, at least with Robert Byers (see comment below...)

      Delete
  6. This Canadian has come to the conclusion there is not and was never any such thing as racism or was there any moral wrong with Southern segregationists desires.
    The only reason AFRICANS , the word more honestly used today as opposed to Americans of a different shade, HAVE anything in America is because of the contract upon becoming citizens.
    Therefore the Southern people were morally right to desire a segregated society, if they did, and morally right to have one single society YET its all about the moral rights of the original creators of the land.
    The African could of got their way if they had simply argued for American citizen rights. Not African rights as they do now.
    Its wrong to accuse or put down the old Southerners. They are no more segregated back then then ethnics, including Africans, are today.
    Its just southerners rightly saw their country as theirs and not unwanted immigrants.
    However a contract is a contract. These Africans did have complete claim to America after becoming citizens.
    However today they break this contact in many ways including voting for Obama because of his identity and thus rejecting another person who is a American. They do what they complain about the old ones.
    The Southerners were morally right to only desire their own people to gain their home and society. YES there can be a bigger ideal but right is right.
    Foreigners do not have a moral claim to another peoples home. Its a gift and can be as restricted as the native desires.
    no bitching about Southerners by modern segregated identifies.
    You wouldn't of said back then to them. They wouldn't take it. Southerners today are a kinder identity then most other identities in modern America and put up with too much malice . They just want to be normal Americans. However they do need to protect themselves.

    ReplyDelete