RUTHFULLY YOURS

We are living in the age of cancel culture. All icons from the past associated in any way with mistreatment of minorities are in the process of being eradicated.

Statues of Confederate figures? They’re mostly already gone. But that was just the start. How about statues of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson? In New York, First Lady Chirlane McCray will decide on their fate. How about a statue of Ulysses Grant (who may have done more than anyone other than Lincoln to free the slaves, but also once briefly owned a slave before freeing him)? His statue in San Francisco was toppled yesterday. How about the weathervane atop the Dartmouth College library (featuring a sculpture of a Native American)? It now must go (it “do[es] not reflect Dartmouth’s values” says the president). Aunt Jemima? Uncle Ben? They are now unacceptable racial stereotypes.

And God forbid you are a conservative at a U.S. university who fails to toe the official party line, such as by criticizing Black Lives Matter. You will be subject to an unrelenting campaign to get you fired and silenced. (Read about the case of William Jacobson of Cornell Law School here.). Or a journalist who dares to publish something critical of Black Lives Matter. (Read about the case of Lee Fang here.)

Readers can undoubtedly come up with dozens of additional recent examples of social media mobs descending to ostracize well known individuals or institutions for conduct deemed insufficiently sensitive, often conduct that is far in the past.

But what American institution of all those existing today has the longest and deepest association with violent bigotry and grotesque racism, including slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, and the Ku Klux Klan? The answer is the Democratic Party.

When we consider the history of racism in the Democratic Party, we are not talking about some debatable lack of “sensitivity” or uncaring use of stereotypes. No, this is something fundamentally different. This is the most overt, explicit and direct sorts of actions targeted specifically at the oppression of African American citizens.

Isn’t it time that this institution with a long history of the most vicious racism gets canceled?

In a post back in August 2017 (at the time of demonstrations about Confederate statues in Charlottesville, Virginia), I compiled a small sample of some of the most egregious racist conduct of the Democratic Party. Rather than re-do that work, I will include a substantial excerpt here:

In the late 19th century, the Democratic Party gradually took control of each state in the South from the Republican reconstructionists, and over time proceeded to institute a regime of segregation and disenfranchisement of blacks.  Each state has its own sordid history, but consider this summary of events from North Carolina (from Sean Braswell at The Daily Dose, February 17, 2017, “When the ‘White Man’s Party’ Rocked North Carolina”):

In the years after the Civil War, Reconstruction Era Republicans in North Carolina were able to expand voting rights and political representation for African-Americans in their state. But, in 1898, the Democrats — then the party of white Southern conservatives — struck back with a “white supremacy” electoral campaign, and subsequent disenfranchisement strategy, that would devastate the state’s democracy for decades to come. . . .  Calling themselves the “white man’s party,” they threw down the gauntlet for the 1898 election, proclaiming “North Carolina is a WHITE MAN’s state and WHITE MEN will rule it ” . . .

[After winning the election,] the Democrats immediately set to work on several measures, including a constitutional amendment, to disenfranchise Black voters. . . .  By February 1899, the amendment, containing a literacy requirement and poll tax (as well as a “grandfather clause” to ensure illiterate whites could still vote), had been passed, and was rapidly enforced to disenfranchise most of the state’s Black population.

In the early 20th century, we got that great Democratic and progressive icon Woodrow Wilson as President.  What is his record in the field of race relations?  For starters, Wilson segregated the formerly integrated civil service in the federal government.  From Paul Rahe at FEE, September 17, 2016, “Woodrow Wilson: This So-Called Progressive was a Dedicated Racist”:

Prior to the segregation of the civil service in 1913, appointments had been made solely on merit as indicated by the candidate’s performance on the civil-service examination. Thereafter, racial discrimination became the norm. Photographs came to be required at the time of application, and African-Americans knew they would not be hired.  The existing work force was segregated. Many African-Americans were dismissed. In the postal service, others were transferred to the dead-letter office, where they had no contact with the general public. Those who continued to work in municipal post offices labored behind screens — out of sight and out of mind.

Wilson provides a treasure trove of racist quotations.  Here are a couple from this compilation:

• “The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation—until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.”

• “Segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.” 

Yet somehow Wilson remains a respectable figure, with his name all over Princeton University.

Franklin Roosevelt?  He gladly accepted the support of Southern segregationists in his presidential runs, and was the guy who appointed ex-Ku Klux Klansman and Democratic Senator from Alabama Hugo Black to the Supreme Court in 1937.  Black went on to write the Supreme Court opinion in 1944 upholding the confinement of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during World War II.

And is this all ancient history?  Well, how about Robert Byrd?  He served as Democratic Senator from West Virginia from 1959 all the way to 2010, including two stints as Majority Leader in the 1970s and 80s.  In the 1940s he was a Grand Cyclops in the KKK, head of a chapter and active in recruiting.  Here are a couple of quotes from Byrd appearing in his Wikipedia biography:

• From a letter to Senator Bilbo of Mississippi in December 1944:  “I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side … Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”

• From a 1946 letter to the Grand Wizard of the Klan:  “The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation.”

In the 1960s, Byrd was a leader of the filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Also in my lifetime, we have the likes of Bull Connor — long-time member of the DNC and Democratic Commissioner of Public Safety for Birmingham, Alabama — who became famous in the 1950s and 60s for offering no protection to civil rights demonstrators against KKK violence, and then as the guy who jailed Martin Luther King.

Hundreds more such examples can easily be compiled. The association of the Democratic Party with racism and oppression of African Americans is so extensive that there is no possible undoing of it.

Yet just two days ago, there was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordering portraits of four of her predecessor Speakers removed from the Capitol Building on the grounds that each of the four had at some point served the Confederacy. The New York Times article reporting on Pelosi’s action quotes the Speaker as follows:

“There is no room in the hallowed halls of Congress or in any place of honor for memorializing men who embody the violent bigotry and grotesque racism of the Confederacy.”

Somehow both the Times and Ms. Pelosi failed to mention that three of the four were members of the Democratic Party. (The fourth was a Whig. None were Republicans, the Republicans of course being from inception the anti-slavery party.) Today, our Speaker proudly associates herself with the party that has been the home of this “violent bigotry and grotesque racism.” She hopes that we will not notice, but we do.