Truman made racist comments in 1911, how awful. His actual record on civil rights as President is vastly more important. I am wary of condemning people for words spoken long ago that look bad by modern standards, even if they were Democrats. Washington owned slaves. Should we despise him, too?
I agree in principle, but the point of this post is to document that the long held characterization of the democrats as the champions of minorities is a joke. It accomplishes that.
History is deeper than sound bites. Here is more information on the subject for you... Washington's Slaves.
"These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."
--Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D., Texas), 1957
"I did not lie awake at night worrying about the problems of Negroes."
--Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, 1961
"I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia [Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan recruiter] that he would have been a great senator at any moment. . . . He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this nation."
--Sen. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.), 2004
"I mean, you got the first mainstream African American [Barack Obama] who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy."
-- Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., (D., Del.), 2006-07
"I am a former Kleagle [recruiter] of the Ku Klux Klan in Raleigh County. The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia. It is necessary that the order be promoted immediately and in every state in the union."
-- Democrat Senator Robert Byrd
"Blacks are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both of body and mind."
-- Father of the Democrat party Thomas Jefferson
"White folks was in caves while we was building empires... We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it."
-- 'The Rev' Al Sharpton
"Jews, that's J-E-W-S"
-- Democratic state representative Bill McKinney on why his daughter Cynthia lost in 2002
"You f*cking Jew b@stard"
-- Democrat Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to political operative Paul Fraymark
"I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be."
-- Democrat Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin
Black people owned slaves too. During the War Between the States, the third largest holder of slaves in South Carolina was black former slave.
Should we despise blacks too? (rhetorical)