Conservatism Does Not Equal Racism

[John Dolva]

The following is primarily for the dominant races:

I don't know if members are familiar with Jane Elliot.

"JANE ELLIOTT AND THE "BLUE-EYED/ BROWN-EYED" EXERCISE

Jane Elliott, a pioneer in racism awareness training, was first inspired to action by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. As a third grade teacher in an all-white, all-Christian community, she struggled for ways to help her students understand racism and discrimination. She adopted the "Blue-Eyed/brown eyed" exercise, (in which participants are treated as inferior or superior based solely on the color of their eyes) as a result of reading about the techniques the Nazis used on those they designated undesirable during what is now called the Holocaust.

The purpose of the exercise is to give white people an opportunity to find out how it feels to be something other than white."

She's a teacher / facilitator and appears in a number of interesting videos that are not hard to get hold of. Seeing the process of turning a bunch of 'non racist' whites into second class citizens and vice versa is an eye opener. Probably the most important thing that I learnt is that racism is a state of mind that goes deep into everyones psyche waiting to rear its head in the 'right' circumstances. It might be hard to understand what I say now, but a reading of this site might help

http://www.newsreel.org/guides/blueeyed.htm

"Jane Elliott does not intellectualize highly emotionally charged or challenging topics. She creates a situation in which participants experience discrimination themselves and therefore feel its effects emotionally, not intellectually. She throws aside conventional wisdom about adult learning. Instead of respecting students' existing knowledge, affirming their sense of self, etc., she uses participants' own emotions to make them feel discomfort, guilt, shame, embarrassment and humiliation. Jane Elliott would say that protecting white people from the pain of racism only serves to perpetuate it. Her skillful use of confrontation is intended to dislodge white people from their comfortable privilege long enough for them to learn."

One learns that in the complacency of 'I am not a racist' resides the seed of racism. As an emotion and not an intellectual posture, it reflects in the self projection that occurs the moment one opens ones eyes in the morning, in how one steps out and interacts with the world.

One realises that, yes 'I am a racist'. Through self awareness that does not deny such a fundamental truth one can enter upon a journey of self discovery that in time may lessen the grip of such mindsets on behaviour.

Denial begs a dogma that justifies. In the worst case this becomes 'supremacy', 'eugenics', 'the holocaust'.

EDIT:removed quotes as it may possibly inicate that this post was directed specifically at the previous posters. It isn't, it's just some thoughts around the concept of I/you are/am racist.

Edited February 21, 2006 by John Dolva

[Tim Gratz]

John wrote:

It is of course wrong to say that all conservatives are racists. However, it is accurate to say that in a historical sense, all racists are conservatives. For example, in the United States in the 1960s, conservatives supported the racist view that African-Americans should be denied the vote in the Deep South. Tim’s hero, William Buckley was one of the conservative “intellectuals” who argued this racist philosophy (it was based on the idea that African-Americans in the Deep South were not “intelligent” enough to be given the vote).

John you have made this charge about Buckley before. I would like to see it substantiated.

To say that all racists are conservatives may depend upon how you define conservative. I would not welcome a racist into the legitimate conservative movement. When I was a young teen-ager watching the Southern racists mistreat (and in some cases kill) black people and people who supported the civil rights cause those Southern racists were all Democrats, most of whom had probably supported the Kennedy-Johnson ticket in 1960.

And by the way, who is the real racist, a person who has never uttered a single racial epithet in his life or a politician who claims to support the civil rights agenda but privately uses racist terms and insults?

Would you be gentleman enough to admit you were wrong to call me a racist soley because I support a conservative economic program?

[Tim Gratz]

A column from the February 5, 2005 issue of National Review by Deroy Murdock:

Today marks the 90th anniversary of a very special White House ceremony. President Woodrow Wilson hosted his Cabinet and the entire U.S. Supreme Court for a screening of D. W. Griffith's racist masterpiece, Birth of a Nation. The executive mansion's first film presentation depicted, according to Griffith, the Ku Klux Klan's heroic, post-Civil War struggle against the menace of emancipated blacks, portrayed by white actors in black face. As black civil-rights leader W.E.B. DuBois explained: In Griffith's 1915 motion picture, "The freed man was represented either as an ignorant fool, a vicious rapist, a venal or unscrupulous politician, or a faithful idiot."

Thumbs up, Wilson exclaimed. The film "is like writing history with lightning," he remarked, adding, "it is all so terribly true."

This vignette — recently recounted in Ken Burns's PBS documentary, Unforgivable Blackness — was neither the first nor last time a prominent Democrat plunged a hot knife in black America's collective back. Each February, Black History Month recalls Democrat Harry Truman's 1948 desegregation of the armed forces and Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson's signature on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the greatest black legislative victory since Republican Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in 1863. This annual commemoration, however, largely overlooks the many milestones Republicans and blacks have achieved together by overcoming reactionary Democrats.

The House Policy Committee's 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar offers 365 examples of GOP support for women, blacks, and other minorities, often over Democratic objections. Among its highlights:

"To stop the Democrats' pro-slavery agenda, anti-slavery activists founded the Republican party, starting with a few dozen men and women in Ripon, Wisconsin on March 20, 1854," the calendar notes. "Democratic opposition to Republican efforts to protect the civil rights of all Americans lasted not only throughout Reconstruction, but well into the 20th century. In the south, those Democrats who most bitterly opposed equality for blacks founded the Ku Klux Klan, which operated as the party's terrorist wing."

Contemporary partisan hyperbole? Consider this 1866 comment from Governor Oliver Morton (R., Ind.), who is immortalized in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall: "Every one who shoots down Negroes in the streets, burns Negro school-houses and meeting-houses, and murders women and children by the light of their own flaming dwellings, calls himself a Democrat," Morton said. "Every New York rioter in 1863 who burned up little children in colored asylums, who robbed, ravished, and murdered indiscriminately in the midst of a blazing city for three days and nights, calls himself a Democrat."

White supremacists worked club in hand with Democrats for decades:

May 22, 1856: Two years after the Grand Old party's birth, U.S. Senator Charles Sumner (R., Mass.) rose to decry pro-slavery Democrats. Congressman Preston Brooks (D., S.C.) responded by grabbing a stick and beating Sumner unconscious in the Senate chamber. Disabled, Sumner could not resume his duties for three years.

July 30, 1866: New Orleans's Democratic government ordered police to raid an integrated GOP meeting, killing 40 people and injuring 150.

September 28, 1868: Democrats in Opelousas, Louisiana killed nearly 300 blacks who tried to foil an assault on a Republican newspaper editor.

October 7, 1868: Republicans criticized Democrats' national slogan: "This is a white man's country: Let white men rule."

April 20, 1871: The GOP Congress adopted the Ku Klux Klan Act, banning the pro-Democrat domestic terrorist group.

October 18, 1871: GOP President Ulysses S. Grant dispatched federal troops to quell Klan violence in South Carolina.

September 14, 1874: Racist white Democrats stormed Louisiana's statehouse to oust GOP Governor William Kellogg's racially integrated administration; 27 are killed.

August 17, 1937: Republicans opposed Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Supreme Court nominee, U.S. Senator Hugo Black (D., Al.), a former Klansman who defended Klansmen against race-murder charges.

February 2005: The Democrats' Klan-coddling today is embodied by KKK alumnus Robert Byrd, West Virginia's logorrheic U.S. senator and, having served since January 3, 1959, that body's dean. Thirteen years earlier, Byrd wrote this to the KKK's Imperial Wizard: "The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia." Byrd led Senate Democrats as late as December 1988. On March 4, 2001, Byrd told Fox News's Tony Snow: "There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time; I'm going to use that word." National Democrats never have arranged a primary challenge against or otherwise pressed this one-time cross-burner to get lost.

Contrast the KKKozy Democrats with the GOP. When former Klansman David Duke ran for Louisiana governor in 1991 as a Republican, national GOP officials scorned him. Local Republicans endorsed incumbent Democrat Edwin Edwards, despite his ethical baggage. As one Republican-created bumper sticker pleaded: "Vote for the crook: It's important!"

Republicans also have supported legislation favorable to blacks, often against intense Democratic headwinds:

In 1865, Congressional Republicans unanimously backed the 13th Amendment, which made slavery unconstitutional. Among Democrats, 63 percent of senators and 78 percent of House members voted: "No."

In 1866, 94 percent of GOP senators and 96 percent of GOP House members approved the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing all Americans equal protection of the law. Every congressional Democrat voted: "No."

February 28, 1871: The GOP Congress passed the Enforcement Act, giving black voters federal protection.

February 8, 1894: Democratic President Grover Cleveland and a Democratic Congress repealed the GOP's Enforcement Act, denying black voters federal protection.

January 26, 1922: The U.S. House adopted Rep. Leonidas Dyer's (R., Mo.) bill making lynching a federal crime. Filibustering Senate Democrats killed the measure.

May 17, 1954: As chief justice, former three-term governor Earl Warren (R., Calif.) led the U.S. Supreme Court's desegregation of government schools via the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. GOP President Dwight Eisenhower's Justice Department argued for Topeka, Kansas's black school children. Democrat John W. Davis, who lost a presidential bid to incumbent Republican Calvin Coolidge in 1924, defended "separate but equal" classrooms.

September 24, 1957: Eisenhower deployed the 82nd Airborne Division to desegregate Little Rock's government schools over the strenuous resistance of Governor Orval Faubus (D., Ark.).

May 6, 1960: Eisenhower signs the GOP's 1960 Civil Rights Act after it survived a five-day, five-hour filibuster by 18 Senate Democrats.

July 2, 1964: Democratic President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act after former Klansman Robert Byrd's 14-hour filibuster and the votes of 22 other Senate Democrats (including Tennessee's Al Gore, Sr.) failed to scuttle the measure. Illinois Republican Everett Dirksen rallied 26 GOP senators and 44 Democrats to invoke cloture and allow the bill's passage. According to John Fonte in the January 9, 2003, National Review, 82 percent of Republicans so voted, versus only 66 percent of Democrats.

True, Senator Barry Goldwater (R., Ariz.) opposed this bill the very year he became the GOP's presidential standard-bearer. However, Goldwater supported the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts and called for integrating Arizona's National Guard two years before Truman desegregated the military. Goldwater feared the 1964 Act would limit freedom of association in the private sector, a controversial but principled libertarian objection rooted in the First Amendment rather than racial hatred.

June 29, 1982: President Ronald Reagan signed a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Republican party also is the home of numerous "firsts." Among them:

Until 1935, every black federal legislator was Republican. America's first black U.S. Representative, South Carolina's Joseph Rainey, and our first black senator, Mississippi's Hiram Revels, both reached Capitol Hill in 1870. On December 9, 1872, Louisiana Republican Pinckney Benton Stewart "P.B.S." Pinchback became America's first black governor.

August 8, 1878: GOP supply-siders may hate to admit it, but America's first black Collector of Internal Revenue was former U.S. Rep. James Rapier (R., Ala.).

October 16, 1901: GOP President Theodore Roosevelt invited to the White House as its first black dinner guest Republican educator Booker T. Washington. The pro-Democrat Richmond Times newspaper warned that consequently, "White women may receive attentions from Negro men." As Toni Marshall wrote in the November 9, 1995, Washington Times, when Roosevelt sought reelection in 1904, Democrats produced a button that showed their presidential nominee, Alton Parker, beside a white couple while Roosevelt posed with a white bride and black groom. The button read: "The Choice Is Yours."

GOP presidents Gerald Ford in 1975 and Ronald Reagan in 1982 promoted Daniel James and Roscoe Robinson to become, respectively, the Air Force's and Army's first black four-star generals.

November 2, 1983: President Reagan established Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday as a national holiday, the first such honor for a black American.

President Reagan named Colin Powell America's first black national-security adviser while GOP President George W. Bush appointed him our first black secretary of state.

President G.W. Bush named Condoleezza Rice America's first black female NSC chief, then our second (consecutive) black secretary of State. Just last month, one-time Klansman Robert Byrd and other Senate Democrats stalled Rice's confirmation for a week. Amid unanimous GOP support, 12 Democrats and Vermont Independent James Jeffords opposed Rice — the most "No" votes for a State designee since 14 senators frowned on Henry Clay in 1825.

"The first Republican I knew was my father, and he is still the Republican I most admire," Rice has said. "He joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I."

"We started our party with the express intent of protecting the American people from the Democrats' pro-slavery policies that expressly made people inferior to the state," wrote Rep. Christopher Cox (R., Calif.), who authorized the calendar last year as House Policy chairman. "Today, the animating spirit of the Republican Party is exactly the same as it was then: free people, free minds, free markets, free expression, and unlimited opportunity."

"Leading the organized opposition to these ideas 150 years ago, just as today, was the Democratic Party," Cox continued. "Then, just as now, their hallmarks were politically correct speech; a preference for government control over individual initiative...and an insistence on seeing people as members of groups rather than as individuals."

But what about racial preferences? The GOP's embrace of color-neutral policies parallels Martin Luther King's dream of racial equality over racial scale tipping. "The constitutional amendments that the Republican party supported after the Civil War did not advance preferences by race," Cox told me. "They made government view every person as an individual, not as a member of a racial group."

Alas, even as Republicans promote work over welfare, educational choice, and personal retirement accounts, all of which would empower blacks, some 90 percent of blacks vote Democrat as reflexively as knees kick when tapped with rubber mallets. After inspecting the Democrats' handiwork — e.g. the tar pit that is public assistance, the Dresden that is the ghetto school system, and the pyramid scheme that is Social Security (which robs too many blacks who die before recouping their "investment") — black Americans should ask Democrats: "Yesterday's gone. What have you done for us lately?"

[John Simkin]

I already did...the members of the republican party in both the house and the senate who voted to make the civil rights act a law of the land. It seems to me they played the most important role of all. Unless you consider them liberals.

You are still dodging the point John.

If you are arguing that conservative members of Congress proved they were not racist because they voted for Civil Rights legislation in 1964, does that mean they were racist in previous years because they voted against this legislation?

[Tim Gratz]

John I believe it was Republicans who helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 as well.

[John Simkin]

John I believe it was Republicans who helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 as well.

The 1957 Act was altered so much in Congress that is was hardly a civil rights act by the time it was passed. That is why another act had to be passed in 1964.

[Craig Lamson]

I already did...the members of the republican party in both the house and the senate who voted to make the civil rights act a law of the land. It seems to me they played the most important role of all. Unless you consider them liberals.

You are still dodging the point John.

If you are arguing that conservative members of Congress proved they were not racist because they voted for Civil Rights legislation in 1964, does that mean they were racist in previous years because they voted against this legislation?

No I'm simply stating it was the conservative Republicans who made it possible for the civil rights act to become law. You asked for one important conservative in the civil rights movement, I gave you many.

Now prove to me there has never been in all of history a racist that was a liberal, socialist or communist.

[John Simkin]

John wrote:

It is of course wrong to say that all conservatives are racists. However, it is accurate to say that in a historical sense, all racists are conservatives. For example, in the United States in the 1960s, conservatives supported the racist view that African-Americans should be denied the vote in the Deep South. Tim’s hero, William Buckley was one of the conservative “intellectuals” who argued this racist philosophy (it was based on the idea that African-Americans in the Deep South were not “intelligent” enough to be given the vote).

John you have made this charge about Buckley before. I would like to see it substantiated.

William Buckley’s racism has already been discussed here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5078

Here is an extract from a previous post:

Buckley was particularly concerned with the sympathy that Eisenhower and Nixon showed towards racial integration and voting rights. In an article entitled “Why the South Must Prevail” (24th August, 1957) the journal argued that the Deep South was “right to disenfranchise blacks from voting in elections”. In an editorial of the same edition, Buckley wrote that the whites were the advanced race and that uneducated blacks should not be allowed to vote. He was particularly concerned that if given the vote, blacks would vote for socialistic measures to solve their economic problems.

Buckley argued that liberals who pursued the “absolute right of universal suffrage for the Negro were endangering existing standards of civilization". According to Buckley, this was not only true of America. He was also concerned about what was taking place in countries that were part of the old empires. He advanced the theory that “acceding to black demands for independence and one man, one vote, whites were inviting a return to barbarism”

Buckley’s racism is dealt with in John B. Judis’ book, William F. Buckley, Jr. Patron Saint of the Conservatives, Simon and Schuster, 1988. Judis quotes extensively from articles he wrote for the National Review. However, Buckley was at his most racist when he wrote to fellow racists such as his good friend, Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

I already did...the members of the republican party in both the house and the senate who voted to make the civil rights act a law of the land. It seems to me they played the most important role of all. Unless you consider them liberals.

Now prove to me there has never been in all of history a racist that was a liberal, socialist or communist.

Craig, just my two cents worth...Anybody who is TRUELY socialist believes, with every fiber of their being in equality, there for, by definition, they cannot be racist. The equvilant would be a Conservative who believed in the Nationalisation of private enterprise, either he is lying, or he is not a Conservative.

[Craig Lamson]

I already did...the members of the republican party in both the house and the senate who voted to make the civil rights act a law of the land. It seems to me they played the most important role of all. Unless you consider them liberals.

Now prove to me there has never been in all of history a racist that was a liberal, socialist or communist.

Craig, just my two cents worth...Anybody who is TRUELY socialist believes, with every fiber of their being in equality, there for, by definition, they cannot be racist. The equvilant would be a Conservative who believed in the Nationalisation of private enterprise, either he is lying, or he is not a Conservative.

Ah...socialists never have bouts of situational behavior? Its blanket statements that are the problem here Stephen. People truly believe things all the time yet being humans they quite often do things that are contrary to thier very core beliefs. Do those bouts of situational behavior change who they are at thier core?

[Guest Stephen Turner]

If I am reading you right Craig, and I apologise if I am not, you are asking do Socialists ever encounter people of different race, creed or colour that they cannot abide. Well, first and foremost, being human beings of course we do, but its the person who is disliked, not the skin colour. Many racists I have encountered dont appear to have a quantifiable political opinion at all. They tend to specialise in hate.FWIW

[Craig Lamson]

If I am reading you right Craig, and I apologise if I am not, you are asking do Socialists ever encounter people of different race, creed or colour that they cannot abide. Well, first and foremost, being human beings of course we do, but its the person who is disliked, not the skin colour. Many racists I have encountered dont appear to have a quantifiable political opinion at all. They tend to specialise in hate.FWIW

You hit another point in the debate about racism. Its not just the politics of liberal or conservative or what ever but for many the core is hate.

As for racism, I think it extends beyond skin color. Depending on what dictionary you choose to use it can also be defined to include religion. That opens up a whole different can of worms. Based on religion do you think there has ever been a socialist who hated a group of people based on thier religion?

My point all along is that the broad brush and absolute nature of John's statement was troubling. There are darn few absolutes in this world and when dealing with human nature I would submit there are none.

Edited February 21, 2006 by Craig Lamson

[John Simkin]

Tim,

You seem to have missed my reply. I don't want you posting again in a few months time asking me to justify the calling of William F. Buckley a racist.

John wrote:

It is of course wrong to say that all conservatives are racists. However, it is accurate to say that in a historical sense, all racists are conservatives. For example, in the United States in the 1960s, conservatives supported the racist view that African-Americans should be denied the vote in the Deep South. Tim’s hero, William Buckley was one of the conservative “intellectuals” who argued this racist philosophy (it was based on the idea that African-Americans in the Deep South were not “intelligent” enough to be given the vote).

John you have made this charge about Buckley before. I would like to see it substantiated.

William Buckley’s racism has already been discussed here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5078

Here is an extract from a previous post:

Buckley was particularly concerned with the sympathy that Eisenhower and Nixon showed towards racial integration and voting rights. In an article entitled “Why the South Must Prevail” (24th August, 1957) the journal argued that the Deep South was “right to disenfranchise blacks from voting in elections”. In an editorial of the same edition, Buckley wrote that the whites were the advanced race and that uneducated blacks should not be allowed to vote. He was particularly concerned that if given the vote, blacks would vote for socialistic measures to solve their economic problems.

Buckley argued that liberals who pursued the “absolute right of universal suffrage for the Negro were endangering existing standards of civilization". According to Buckley, this was not only true of America. He was also concerned about what was taking place in countries that were part of the old empires. He advanced the theory that “acceding to black demands for independence and one man, one vote, whites were inviting a return to barbarism”

Buckley’s racism is dealt with in John B. Judis’ book, William F. Buckley, Jr. Patron Saint of the Conservatives, Simon and Schuster, 1988. Judis quotes extensively from articles he wrote for the National Review. However, Buckley was at his most racist when he wrote to fellow racists such as his good friend, Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society.

[Tim Gratz]

John, sorry, see the post on Young Americans For Freedom.

I simply do not trust your sources.

I doubt that you have read the article and editorial in question. You are just quoting a summary from a book, a summary which may or may not be accurate.

If you do indeed have the entire article and editorial, I request that you post it in full so we can determine if the summary is accurate.

Could I also point out that I believe there are more black Republicans running for elective office in the United States than there are black members of this Forum.

I know if I was black I would not want to be associated with a forum that accepted as a member a close associate of Willis Carto.

[John Simkin]

I simply do not trust your sources.

You have made this clear many times. It is therefore pointless asking me for my sources. I am afraid I do not have books that say this that have been written by leaders of the Republican Party.