The racism of the American past that the Left uncourageously crusades against from the present is the Left's history as well. Robert Owen's New Harmony commune that effectively launched the American Left banned African Americans. The Communist Party ejected Japanese Americans from its rolls after Pearl Harbor. The Democratic Party countenanced the Theodore Bilbos and John Rankins, but just one black member of Congress before World War II. In my National Review Online article on the Left, racism, and the historic Barack Obama campaign (click and read), I tackle the Left's version of American Exceptionalism that posits that leftists have always held superior attitudes on race vis-a-vis their fellow countrymen.
Dan,
Thank you for writing that article. I found it to be both enlightening and eloquent.
I was rather surprised at some of the facts.
I copied your article (with full credit) onto the PBA discussion forums. If you wish me to remove t, I shall. There has been a rather ugly debate there on both sides of the spectrum. I thought such a well-written and researched piece of work would open a few eyes and shut a few mouths.
I admit that I have not read your latest work, Dan, for that I apologize. Money is tighter than ever. That being said I want to thank you for these articles as they are nice works for some of us to enjoy.
Quick question though....when did the Democrat party suddenly become the anti-racist party? Was that change a backlash from the "States Rights" democratic candidacy of Strom Thurmond?
Be well,
Sponge
Ironically, it wasn't racial but economic issues that untethered blacks from their ancestral political home (GOP) and sent them into the arms of the Democrats. Most put the Great Depression and the New Deal as the demarcation point between Afriican Americans voting solidly for Republicans and African Americans voting solidly for Democrats. As blacks became more loyally Democrat, Democrats, in the North at least, became more in tune with their concerns. In 1924, to cite one example, a proposed plank of the party's platform condemned the KKK for its violence. Tellingly, the measure failed by a few votes. Eight years later, African Americans shifted into that party. Strange.
Beats me how the same people who start discussions with how race doesn't matter are the first ones to use it as a club when it's politically and socially expedient to do so.
Truth is, if you're not a person of color, you're supposed look at the world like we're one big happy colorless family. But, affirmative action has taught those of color that pigmentation matters and it's to be used often to forward an agenda.
If race and color truly don't matter, then it shouldn't. But it does and the trouble and resentment that follow it will never end until it doesn't.
