Former Democratic President Woodrow Wilson may be purged from his alma mater, Princeton University. The old “Schoolmaster of Politics”, as he was known for his academic background at Cornell, Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan and finally president of Princeton U, has been thrown under the bus by its current president for being a politically incorrect progressive. Also known as a plain old racist.
Woody was indeed a racist. Though even on his worst day he was still about 40% less racist than a #BlackLivesMatter protester screaming about “whiteness”. But if Princeton wants to get rid of him, it also needs to jettison his motto, “Princeton in the Nation’s Service” or in its current transnational incarnation, “Princeton in the Service of the Nations”. And then it needs to get rid of the color orange that defines its brand. The orange is in honor of William III whose reign oversaw the slave trade.
But if Princeton has to rename anything carrying Woodrow Wilson’s name, are there any Democratic presidents that the party and its faithful partisans can keep?
FDR enforced segregation through red-lining and liked to tell jokes about “darkies”. Truman wrote, “I think one man is as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a n–ger or a Chinaman.” JFK was disgusted by interracial marriage. LBJ liked to describe the Civil Rights Act as “the n–ger bill”. Jimmy Carter ran for governor promising that “I can win this election without a single black vote” and accused his opponent of liking Martin Luther King. Bill Clinton’s view of Obama? “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.”