A political science professor shares the sordid history of the democratic party in opposition to the civil rights movement.
The Democratic party has completely changed, as far as blacks, since the Truman presidency. In 1948 southern whites split off to form the Dixiecrat party. This movement was eventually captured by the Republican party, where it resides today.
It's old news comrade, but times have changed. You kinda missed the part where Southern Democrats left the Democratic Party and joined the Republican Party because of the pro civil rights positions Northern Democrats took in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_South http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/11/why-did-democrats-lose-white-south/ "Modern conservatives are oddly fond of pointing out that it was Democrats who were the party of racism and racists until half a century ago. There’s always an implied “Aha!” whenever a conservative mentions this, as though they think it’s some little-known quirk of history that Democrats try to keep hidden because it’s so embarrassing. It’s not, of course. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president, and Republicans were the face of Reconstruction and voting rights for blacks after the Civil War. Because of this, the South became solidly Democratic and stayed that way until World War II. But in the 1940s, racist white southerners gradually began defecting to the Republican Party, and then began defecting en masse during the fight over the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But wait: the 1940s? If Southern whites began defecting that early, then partisan changes in racial tolerance couldn’t have been their motivation. Right? But it was. The Civil Rights movement didn’t spring out of nothing in 1964, after all. Eleanor Roosevelt was a tireless champion of civil rights, and famously resigned from the DAR when they refused to allow singer Marian Anderson to perform at Constitution Hall in 1939. FDR was far more constrained by his need for Southern votes in Congress—and it showed in most New Deal Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!programs—but the WPA gave blacks a fair shake and Harold Ickes poured a lot of money into black schools and hospitals in the South. In 1941 FDR signed a nondiscrimination order for the national defense industry—the first of its kind—and he generally provided African-Americans with more visibility in his administration than they had ever enjoyed before. After decades of getting little back from Republicans despite their loyal support, this was enough to make blacks a key part of the New Deal Coalition and turn them into an increasingly solid voting bloc for the Democratic Party. From a Southern white perspective, this made the Democratic Party a less welcoming home, and it continued to get less welcoming in the two decades that followed. Harry Truman integrated the military in 1948, and Hubert Humphrey famously delivered a stemwinding civil rights speech at the Democratic convention that year. LBJ was instrumental in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1957, while Republican Dwight Eisenhower was widely viewed—rightly or wrongly—as unsympathetic to civil rights during the 1950s. In other words, Southern whites who wanted to keep Jim Crow intact had plenty of reasons to steadily desert the Democratic Party and join the GOP starting around World War II. By the early 60s they were primed and ready to begin a massive exodus from the increasingly black-friendly Democratic Party, and exit they did. Barry Goldwater, the 1964 GOP nominee, refused to support the Civil Rights Act that year, and influential conservative thinkers like William F. Buckley were decidedly unfriendly toward black equality. This made the Republican Party more and more appealing to Southern white racists, and by 1968 Richard Nixon decided to explicitly reach out to them with a campaign based on states’ rights and “law and order.” Over the next two decades, the Democratic Party became ever less tolerant of racist sentiment and the exodus continued. By 1994, when Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich won a landslide victory in the midterm elections, the transition of the white South from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican was basically complete. This history is what makes the conservative habit of pointing out that Democrats were the original racists so peculiar. It’s true, but it makes the transformation of the party even more admirable. Losing the South was a huge electoral risk, but Democrats took that risk anyway. That made it far more meaningful and courageous than if there had been no price to pay." - Mother Jones
Why not? Most everybody else in America does, and has for their entire adult life. The basic history of the Civil Rights movement is taught in high school. You blow off people who tell you stuff, you don't learn, you remain ignorant. That's how it works. Meanwhile, the KKK folks and the related organizations - the direct heirs, including specific people as will as all relevant political organizations, in all their sordid reality - left the Democratic Party and now work for the Republican Party. That essentially happened more than thirty years ago, under the Southern Strategy adopted in 1968 and employed by the Republican Party to this day, with some cleanup and formalities more recently in Dixiecrat country.
The number of conservatives who are apparently surprised by this history and feel a need to make a big deal out of their discovery only reminds, to the one, that they probably would have benefited from attending history sooner, and, to the other, that they have yet to develop basic historical literacy. Also, for as much as conservatives have fretted, over the years, about liberal elitism and rejection of conservative faux-diversity, here we find an illustration of the cyclical problem: Conservatives should not first present an argument built from and intended to promote ignorance, and then subsequently complain about the elitism of finding their ignorance stupid. Honestly, threads like these only denigrate American Republicans and conservatives. To wit, it would probably still be accurate to say I didn't know so many conservatives were so excrementally ignorant about history, though in truth that simply relies on the most absolute context of knowing. Kind of like I know the Universe isn't going to spontaneously fold in on itself and transform into a self-consuming singularity compiled from cotton candy and catalyzed with moose semen next Thursday 'round tea time. No, I don't actually know that won't happen, just like I can't be certain any given conservative posture of supreme stupidity is genuine. I mean, sure, I'll believe you, but that might be my confirmation bias talking. That is to say, why should anyone start believing you? But, yes, if you really want me to believe your passionate advocacy is, in fact, so shamefully ignorant, I will certainly accommodate.
Yeah, you are still ignoring the last century comrade. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
And didn't really end until 1980, when Reagan brought all the little chickkks under his wing with the famous "States Rights" speech. The KKK folks have been reliable Republican voters ever since - including 2016, when they chose the form of the Destructor.
Fun to watch you guys flail around trying to get a personal attack going. You think because some of your claimed ignorance is pretend, the rest isn't visible?
Can you be anything else besides an obnoxious know it all? It's getting really old. Personally, I doubt you even have a real job. Your communication skills don't cut it.
First I'm called stupid -- then I'm asked to listen with an open mind. The delivery doesn't sell. Does anyone here sell for a living? Apparently not.
You were informed. If you are smart, you will heed the knowledge you have been given. Your intelligence isn't the issue. Your willingness to learn is. You and millions more like you have been duped. That doesn't mean you are a bad person. It doesn't mean you are dumb. It just means you are human and misinformed. People like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, have preyed on you.
You seem to think that your pose of know nothing implies that objections to your bs involve claims of knowing everything. That's nowhere near the case. I will never ask you to listen with an open mind. And I'm not selling to you.
