Party of Chains - The greatest oppressors of blacks have been Democrats, says Bruce Bartlett.

Two years ago, on his Daily Kos website, Markos Moulitsas asked: “Is it any wonder the GOP is the party of racists?” While Moulitsas conceded that “not every Republican is a racist,” he maintained that “the opposite—every racist is a Republican—is just about right.”

Such sentiments typify a common view that racism is the soul of the Republican Party, and that black Republicans are traitors to their race, or at least peculiar. Bruce Bartlett sets the record straight in Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past, in which he observes to the contrary that “virtually every significant racist in American political history was a Democrat.” Democrats are today best known as the party of the “little man,” but the party’s original agrarian base included plantation owners distinctly uninterested in the abolition of slavery. The Democratic Party, then, was home to politicians determined to maintain blacks as possessions.

Bartlett begins his history, naturally enough, with the now-familiar contradictions in the life of Thomas Jefferson—apostle of liberty, slaveholder, and founder of what would become the modern Democratic Party. He continues with former presidents such as Andrew Johnson, who welcomed prominent ex-Confederates back into Congress and fought civil rights legislation, and Woodrow Wilson, who segregated federal government buildings and barely allowed any black participation in his administration. Franklin D. Roosevelt, meanwhile, appointed a Klansman to the Supreme Court and largely ignored black concerns, reluctant to jeopardize his relationship with Southern committee chairmen.

John F. Kennedy’s racial priorities were similar to Roosevelt’s; his few progressive efforts on racial questions were due to political expediency. Kennedy would have done nothing significant for black Americans had the growing political and public-relations problem of Jim Crow in the South not forced his hand. The influence of television—and America’s ongoing propaganda war with the Soviet Union, in which the Soviets could cite American hypocrisy on human rights—made it imperative for Kennedy to act.

Bartlett also examines the roles of lesser-known figures like Senator James Vardaman of Mississippi, an ardent defender of lynching who also spoke of his love for the “Mammy” who helped raise him. Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi tirelessly advocated that blacks be given their own state in the West, in order to ensure that no one would force “our Southern girls to use the stools and toilets of damn syphilitic nigger women.” All of these characters, and many others whom Bartlett profiles, were Democrats.

Some readers will value this book as an historical chronicle of American racism in the “never forget” vein, but Bartlett’s aim is more concrete: he hopes to dissuade black Americans from voting monolithically for “the party to which their greatest oppressors belonged.” Yet the number of black people who will start voting Republican upon learning that Woodrow Wilson didn’t like them is minuscule. The figures whom Bartlett covers were not only Democrats but Southerners, and it will be no surprise to contemporary readers that white Southerners tended to be open bigots back in the day. In addition, the Democratic Party’s platform has changed so substantially since then, and the political landscape with it, that treating the Democratic Parties of 1850, 1910, and 2008 as a single entity doesn’t make much sense.

Where Wrong on Race does have contemporary relevance is in clearing away myths about Republican racism. Bartlett debunks the widely held view, for example, that Richard Nixon courted racist white votes in the South in 1968. Nixon could not have pulled off such a thing, since George Wallace—who had the racism market pretty well cornered—was running as a third-party candidate. Once in office, Nixon helped initiate affirmative action and did more to desegregate holdout Southern schools than any president since the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling. In 1968, a year before Nixon entered the White House, 68 percent of black students in the South went to all-black schools; just two years later, in 1970, only 14 percent did. Similarly, Bartlett points out that Ronald Reagan was accused of racism largely because of his opposition to the government programs that many blacks had come to depend on since the sixties. Reagan developed his small-government convictions, however, long before he entered politics, and hardly with blacks in mind. Blacks’ median income actually rose during Reagan’s terms in office.

For all of their rhetoric on race, the Democrats, Bartlett argues, will likely concentrate most closely on the Latino vote in the near future—especially as the perceived anti-immigrant tendency in the Republican Party leads Latinos to the Democrats in greater numbers. He argues compellingly that if blacks increased their Republican vote by 10 to 20 percent, they would qualify as an important voting bloc in the party. So far, so good. But Bartlett also makes the dubious argument that reparations would make blacks feel welcome under a Republican Big Tent, which would pave the way for the elimination of affirmative action. More likely, blacks would indignantly regard the suggestion as a bribe, and incantations like “Katrina” and “Willie Horton” would continue to substitute for serious thought about how to make Black Power more than a slogan.

In fact, the younger generation of blacks, growing up in an increasingly multiracial America, will be less encumbered by the reflexive sense that voting Republican is somehow straying from racial authenticity. In the meantime, Bartlett’s book, especially its later chapters, provides a useful perspective for blacks interested in resisting, once and for all, the idea that any political party should own their votes.

John McWhorter is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Race and Ethnicity. His book on hip-hop music and culture, All About the Beat, will appear in May.

“Submitting oneself to slavery is the ultimate expression of racism. I would die a free man rather than submit to slavery.”

Penetrating a lifetime of liberal brainwashing is tough work, but still I persist with my family, where, and when I can.

I find that they can only ingest small doses of truth, covered in a sugar pill, for it to stay down. Doing things like encouraging them to support (and take pride in) our troops has led to a heightened tolerance level on their part to at least listen quietly to small tidbits of conservative truth.

I know for a fact that my brothers and sisters never willingly submitted to the slavery they defend today. It took many decades of constant left-liberal reinforcement to dilute, then supplant the solid moral foundations with which they were raised.

In fact, I have stymied their arguments many times by pointing out the conflicts between their political stance and the imperatives of their upbringing.

That usually produces an angry sibling (see my tag).

The bottom line is, that until a person takes the personal responsibility to honestly inform themselves of ALL the data, they will remain ensnared in the chains of their brainwashing.

One of the central and unspoken tenets of liberal doctrine, is that one must never examine the enemy’s data. To do so would expose liberalism for the lie that it is, and rapidly convert the observer.

But that is the price of freedom. One must be willing to LOOK.

“...we all know the modern liberal definition of a racist: anyone that they cannot compete with in a rational debate.”

Ain’t that the truth?

As to blacks and the Republican party... When I was a kid, all of the elder members of my family were Republicans. They were all born in the deep South in the early years of the 20th century, and knew hard racism, firsthand.

Yet, I can’t recall ever hearing any of my grandparents voicing a racist thought. Sure, they may have said to me openly that “You’re going to have to be twice as good to get half as far”, and things of that nature, but they never expressed hostility toward the majority culture.

I once asked my grandfather why he was a Republican, and he told me, “Well, that’s the party of Lincoln”, as if it should be plain as the nose on my face.

My father’s generation, on the other hand, were practically all Democrats. Mom once explained to me that blacks had shifted to the Democrat side because of their allegiance to FDR. I’ve since discovered that to be the true point at which it happened.

Still, the fact that so many blacks could move to the party of Jim Crow and solid racism is a testament to how deep their love for FDR was. Once the shift had occurred, the Democrat party set about exploiting that population with all of the marxist slavecraft they could muster.

And so today, you find a black population that is nearly completely left-marxist in its thinking and agreements. Among blacks, the Republican party has been so thoroughly vilified, that most blacks would run screaming if you tried to even explain the simple tenets of Republican political philosophy to them.

I know it firsthand, because I suffered that indoctrination and its effects for decades before I escaped the plantation.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/561839/posts?page=17#17
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/561839/posts?page=19#19
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/561839/posts?page=56#56

Ebonics Slang No Substitute for Standard English
Project 21 | 8.23.02 | Michael King
Posted on 08/23/2002 12:22:20 PM EDT by mhking
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/738223/posts

“Anyone who wants to find out more about the Ebonics debate should read the book by University of California-Berkeley Linguistics Professor John McWhorter, Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of ‘Pure’ Standard English. He closely examines the argument for Ebonics. He also touches on it in his book Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. In the latter book, McWhorter argues that educators who rely on Ebonics as a crutch for students to learn ‘the Queen’s English’ accomplish nothing more than leaving young minds further behind.”

No Qualifiers Needed (Turning down the ironic insult of racial preference)
World Magazine | 2/1/2003 | Prisca Shrewsbury
Posted on 01/30/2003 11:16:47 PM EST by Otta B Sleepin
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/833000/posts

“The common belief that all black people, regardless of class, suffer from racism to such an extent that it hampers academic achievement cannot be fully confirmed or denied using simple statistics, but minority author John McWhorter in Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in the Black Community (Perennial, 2000) challenges the view that systemic racism still pervades American society... Mr. McWhorter notes that the black students populating his classes at the University of California-Berkeley were from the middle class and not from the ranks of the poor, whose plight is often invoked in support of affirmative action... As Mr. McWhorter asks, are black people so weak that we cannot achieve in any but ideal circumstances?”

Rich, Black, Flunking (Education Study)
East Bay Express | Susan Goldsmith
Posted on 05/23/2003 10:06:51 AM EDT by rattrap
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/916557/posts

“John McWhorter, the author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, says Ogbu’s book roiled the waters of academia, which he believes is too invested in blaming whites for the problems plaguing black America. ‘There’s a shibboleth in the academic world and that is that the only culture that has any negative traits is the white, middle-class West,’ says McWhorter, a UC Berkeley professor of linguistics who is currently serving as a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a New York think tank. McWhorter’s own book, based largely on the author’s experiences as a black man and professor, blames a mentality of victimhood as the primary reason for most of the problems in black communities — including educational underachievement. ‘There’s an idea in black culture that says Plato and hypotenuses are for other people,’ he says. ‘There is an element of black identity today that sees doing well in school as being outside of the core of black identity. It’s a tacit sentiment, but powerful. As a result of that, some of what we see in the reluctance of many parents, administrators, and black academics to quite confront the ‘acting white’ syndrome is that deep down many of them harbor a feeling that it would be unhealthy for black kids to embrace school culture too wholeheartedly.’”

Minister: Blacks’ Loyalty to Democratic Party ‘Unfounded’
NewsMax.com | 6/22/04 | Jon E. Dougherty
Posted on 06/22/2004 5:35:10 PM EDT by kattracks
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1158186/posts

“Syndicated columnist Robert Tracinski says liberal orthodoxy espoused by Democrats has failed, and the ‘ideological momentum has shifted to the right.’ He says the gauntlet of conservatism has been picked up by ‘new black intellectuals’ like Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and John McWhorter.”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1207851/posts?page=35#35
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1207851/posts?page=73#73

Slavery Reparations Gaining Momentum
AP | July 09, 2006 | Erin Texeira
Posted on 07/09/2006 2:16:25 PM EDT by TomServo
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1662800/posts

“Reparations opponents insist that no living American should have to pay for a practice that ended more than 140 years ago. Plus, programs such as affirmative action and welfare already have compensated for past injustices, said John H. McWhorter, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute. ‘The reparations movement is based on a fallacy that cripples the thinking on race - the fallacy that what ails black America is a cash problem,’ said McWhorter, who is black. ‘Giving people money will not solve the problems that we have.’”

Barack Obama: white America’s candidate (guilt ridden white liberals)
spiked-online.com | 22 January 2008 | John Browne
Posted on 01/30/2008 3:14:38 AM EST by neverdem
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1961854/posts

“A significant majority of people do look far beyond a candidate’s race or gender when deciding whether to vote for him or her. But Obama’s candidacy reflects a lot more than that. Many white liberals feel that his success in coming this far - and especially if he wins - tells us so much about how the United States feels about itself. David Greenberg called him the ‘great white hope’, and quoted social critic John McWhorter as saying: ‘What gives people a jolt in their gut about the idea of President Obama is the idea that it would be a ringing symbol that racism no longer rules our land.’”

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