Democrats who were in the Klan.

[Crixus]

the Democrat party invented and propagated the Klan

1. The Democratic party did not invent the KKK.
2. The Democratic party that exists today has little but a name in common with the Democratic party prior to the late 20th century.

1. In a previous post I listed a slew of Klan office-holders who happened to be Republicans. Somehow it does not seem to dawn on the mythology parrots that if their myth were a reality.... then a Democrat operation would not be working to elect Republicans...

​

Nor would it be working to oppose its own Democrats (Jack Walton... Oscar Underwood.... Al Smith.... Huey Long.... LBJ....) nor would it be railing against and persecuting its own constituents (blacks... Jews.... Catholics.... immigrants..... labor unions....)

The fact remains, Klan Democrats were opposed by rational Democrats, and Klan Republicans were opposed by rational Republicans. In Maine for example, which was a flip side of the "Solid South", a state where everybody was a Republican, Klanner Owen Brewster was countered and put down by anti-Klanner Arthur Gould. Al Smith and Oscar Underwood, the leading denouncer of the Klan at the time, opposed and blocked William Gibbs McAdoo at the Democratic convention simply because he was endorsed by the Klan in the same way Klanners endorsed Barry Goldwater and Donald Rump. Huey Long declared that if the Imperial Wizard came to Louisiana to campaign against him, he'd be leaving "with his toes turned up".

This was an infestation opposed in greater or lesser degrees by politicians of both parties --- like anything else, usually according to whether it would help them get elected or hurt their opponent.

Somehow all this flies over their collective pointy little head in favor of "what feels good to post". A wishful thinking exercise full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

It continues to stupefy me that there walk among us those who actually think some user-generated meme they find on Googly Images ...... somehow trumps historical fact. It's some kind of mental condition. The OP here actually has William McKinley a member of an organization that literally didn't even exist in his professional lifetime. Just because some Google Image generator put it on a poster without doing basic homework.

That's an astounding degree of self-delusion. Gullible's Travels.


2. Indeed, the function of political parties is simply to consolidate and organize power channels, yet there also walk among us those who strain to believe --- simply because they really really want to --- that the terms "Democrat" and "Republican" somehow mean today what they've always meant ideologically, which is quite impossible. Republicans when the party started were the Liberals and for their time quite radical in general, while the conservatives and "states rights" small decentralized government advocates were Democrats.

They continue to ignore the significant turn of the century shift when the Republican Party shook off its radical element and took on the interests of the wealthy and corporations, beginning in McKinley and culminating with its 1912 rejection of Roosevelt in favor of the corporate-minded Taft, and the Democrats beginning with William Jennings Bryan took on the Populist movement, culminating in FDR, which in large part repopulated them both ideologically. This is where the African American vote shifted from solid R to solid D, creating a bipolar condition where proponents of racism and victims of it shared the same party until LBJ excised it in 1964.

That looks like a wonderfully erudite link. I look forward to perusing it and thanks for putting it up.

You only brought one link. Your fervent defense of the KKK would lead one to believe you are a member in good standing as all democrats are. The proof is in how you are democrats are so invested in keeping black people poor and ignorant. I posted a list of a few of the many democrats who we're proud clan members. This is why you are so hot on the topic. You even admitted to that you have in your possession through inheritance, Klan records and history. Your defense of racism, and specifically the subjugation of minorities is plenty of proof that you specifically are a racist. Likely one of those "south will rise again" weirdos. Like I said dude, embrace your hate. You will feel better and not have to lie on message boards about being a Klan historian

 

[Crixus]

Red:
I don't know that I'd call it hypocritical, but "inaccurate" is what I'd call it. One can easily show that the KKK and it's members' values were what were considered "conservative values" from the day the Klan was created right up to today. To say they were and remain the values of a given party is simply not so. The sociopolitical stance of the two major parties has shifted and with that shift, racists' party affiliation has shifted.

Oh, so if we put the actual people aside and what parties they were in and ignore which parties policies were targeted to keeping blacks segregated and impoverished for generations and instead use this nifty neato-keeno 2 dimensional horsehit political spectrum to illustrate everything, then we can see, if we squint our eyes really tight and lean way to the left that, yes, the Republicans are now the party of the KKK.....roflmao what a bunch of ignorant ass propaganda.

My God, you have no shame 320, none whatso ever.

The KKK was DEMOCRAT!

Own it, the historical record doesnt change, bubba.

"The Trees":
The rebuttals I've presented highlight the distinction between the following --

• creating a thing vs. enabling a thing's development,
• encouraging a thing's creation/development vs. acquiescing to a thing's existence/development

-- and call observers to refrain from (1) oversimplifying the matter and/or (2) exaggerating the matter.

As goes the discussion at hand, there are several "things" in play:

• the KKK organization itself,
• the attitudes the KKK's members espoused,
• the activities in which the KKK's members engaged, and
• the party to which the KKK's members belong(ed).

Looking back at how and over what point I involved myself in this thread (post #100), you'll note that I focused on one assertion the OP provides as a premise for the remainder of the post. That assertion is that "the Democrat party invented ... the Klan." That assertion is false. The Democratic Party, quite simply, did not invent the Klan. The content found at the first link I included in post #100 makes that clear.

Now you can accuse me of presenting a revisionist version of history as goes the one point I made; indeed you have done exactly that in this thread. Be that as it may, your accusation holds no water because you have yet to provide any evidence that the Democratic Party of the 1860s invented/created the KKK. You have not because none exists that it did and there is solid evidence that a band of Tennessee college students did create the KKK.

We can play philosophical games with which fallacy or blend thereof be the one(s) in play, but doing so is of little value because no matter which one it is, the undeniable fact is that the Party was not the creator of the KKK. That makes the argument invalid, regardless of the applicable fallacy(s), because it rests on a factually false premise.


"The Forest":
As for the big picture, the OP relies on a "guilt by association" line of ad hominem argumentation. Though often ad hominem lines of argument are fallacious, that one is not insofar as one is describing the Democrats and the Democratic Party extant in the days of Justice Black and Presidents Wilson, Harding and McKinley. That the OP's position is illustrative of one of the exceptions to the "guilt by association" fallacy is why I did not take exception with it.

The problem with the rest of the OP is that it attempts to equate the Democratic Party of Black, Wilson, et al with 2016's Democratic Party. Well, that too I've shown to be a factually inaccurate representation of 2016's Democratic Party. That was the point of the second link in post #100.

I have not denied that the pre-1990s Democratic Party was the party of racists and bigots. Why haven't I? Because the "Dixiecrats" didn't make a singular mass migration to the GOP immediately upon the ratification of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. When did Southern Democrats flock to the GOP? Mostly during the Reagan and Goldwater years. That's something of an oversimplification, but if one is to hone in on key single moments in time, they are the most significant ones in modern times.

• Construction of the Racist Republican
  • Half a century ago, though he was not a racist, Barry Goldwater’s “Southern strategy” certainly contributed to the rift that still exists between the GOP and black voters because it aligned his campaign with segregationists. Even after the South’s racial attitudes were more comfortably integrated with the rest of the United States, sincere clashes in ideologies—and some inept positioning on the part of Ronald Reagan—did not heal that rift.
    
    
  • Harkening back to the ideological foundations of Barry Goldwater, which promoted federalism, and expressing the belief that the country’s culture on race had changed since 1964, Reagan pushed to lessen the federal government’s role in all American life including aspects concerned with civil rights. In fact, from his first inaugural address in which he laid out his philosophical vision, he attempted to shift the national conversation to a more universalist approach to governing with less emphasis on special interests.
    
    He contended “this administration’s objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunities for all Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination.” This coincided with a conservative interpretation of fairness, which demands a society in which there is as even a playing field as possible but no expectations about results. As a consequence, Reagan’s policies often ran counter to perceived minority interests.
    
    One problem was Reagan’s style over his substance: a general lack of understanding on the Great Communicator’s part when it came to getting his message across to people of color. After all, George Wallace who had clearly been a segregationist for much of his career—who had quite literally stood in the schoolhouse door to stop black advancement—was able to win over an amazing number of black voters in his twilight years in politics.
• Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy
  • It has become, for liberals and leftists enraged by the way Republicans never suffer the consequences for turning electoral politics into a cesspool, a kind of smoking gun. The late, legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “******, ******, ******.” By 1968 you can’t say “******”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “******, ******.”​

• DOG WHISTLE POLITICS HOW CODED RACIAL APPEALS HAVE REINVENTED RACISM AND WRECKED THE MIDDLE CLASS
  • Campaigning for president, Ronald Reagan liked to tell stories of Cadillac-driving “welfare queens” and “strapping young bucks” buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In flogging these tales about the perils of welfare run amok, Reagan always denied any racism and emphasized he never mentioned race. He didn’t need to because he was blowing a dog whistle.
    
  • Reagan’s presidency also corresponded with the conservative popularization of colorblindness, which urges everyone to avoid race as the surest way to get past racial problems. This racial etiquette is widely embraced, including among liberals, yet colorblindness bolsters dog whistle politics in numerous ways.

So while, yes, it's accurate to depict the "legacy" Democratic Party as the home of racist policy and ideology, it's downright disingenuous to cast 2016's Democratic party that way. It is that disingenuousness that I have taken exception with in as I've sought to discredit the merit of the OP's thesis and your claims about today's Democratic Party.

Do I take shame in my remarks that "fairly present in all material respects?" Not one bit! The folks who should be ashamed of themselves are they who aim to misrepresent the present by associating it with the past. Times and people change. Racists haven't changed their views, but they have in the main changed their party preference from the Democratic Party to the GOP. And like the Democratic Party of the pre-1990s, neither the GOP nor its current Presidential candidate has told racists to "get out of the GOP and go form their own party for they are not welcome in the GOP."


Sidebar:

In the preface to Lopez's book, one finds the following historically accurate anecdote:

As a contemporary of Obama’s at Harvard Law, let me add my voice to the chorus of those saying that Obama was no militant minority. Obama did not study with [Derrick] Bell, nor take any course that focused on race and American law. On a campus highly polarized around racial issues, as it was in those years, this may have been an early harbinger of Obama’s tendency to hold himself aloof from racial contentions. Th en there was Obama’s election to the prestigious presidency of the Harvard Law Review . It’s widely known that Obama won as the consensus candidate after conservative and liberal factions fought themselves to exhaustion.

Less well known is that these camps were racially identifi ed, with almost all of the African American review members and their allies on one side. When conservatives threw their support to Obama, they ended a racial as well as political standoff. As others have observed, Obama’s conciliatory above- the fray political style from those years has carried over to his presidency. I would say the same regarding the approach to race Obama seemed to cultivate as a student—that one can heal racial divisions by standing apart from racial conflict, simply letting race play itself out. Th is is far from what Derrick Bell taught.​

End of sidebar.

Very good post, very informative. If you really dig you will see that many in all political organization was in the Klan or somehow courted them. And in those days it was okay I guess. When it became not cool, that's when you saw all this welfare stuff. Going to the strapping black man driving a caddy, and eating a T-bone bought with food stamps is in a way accurate. Food stamps are one of the tools used to keep minorities down. Elect a republican? Well, you will lose your food stamps and section 8. Democrats have never treated black people as anything more then a voting block and they traded in their whips for food stamps.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Then it started when the human race emrged from the ICe Age and encountered other tribes of human beings that they didnt recognize.

Lol, you libtards seem to think that the only solution to inhumanity is to eliminate the human race altogether.

 

[JimBowie1958]

It's kind of pathetic to watch.

This is the only part of that post with which I take particular exception. Watching folks "waddle" about isn't pathetic; it's the "waddling" that is pathetic.

What is pathetic is that you Democrats will go to any lengths to defend the most evil politifcal organization of the Western hemisphere that has promoted dehumanization of the weak and vulnerable via abortion, Jim Crow and the KKK, and then turn around and deny everything to do with these things and try to blame it on the Republicans who have been fighting to stop you!

roflmao, that is pathetic, dishonest and STUPID because no one is going to fall for this ridiculous revisionist history that says the KKK was not a DEMOCRAT ORGANIZATION FROM TOP TO BOTTOM.

 

[Norman]

So the Democrat party invented and propagated the Klan, and to this day are still extremely racist to this day. Look at Chicago, Detroit, the 4th ward here in Houston (which is getting better because the folks who live there stopped listening to house negro's like Shell Jackson Lee, a carpet bagger from no new Youk). Anyway, I figure a list of famous Klan members that were and are democrats, so here go's.

1. Justice Hugo L. Black a supreme court justice who never left or disavowed the organization.

2. William McKinley a republican. Dang, one for one!

3. Woodrow Wilson, damn, imagine the scandal if a modern president was found to be Klan member, and wasn't a Republican. And democrats, even Bammer canonized this dreg. What a dummy.

4. Warren G. Harding. Dang.

Looking at the list, there is way to many racist democrats to list. Seriously, do a serch on it.

Not to mention, Hillary's mentor was a KKK member.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Red:
I don't know that I'd call it hypocritical, but "inaccurate" is what I'd call it. One can easily show that the KKK and it's members' values were what were considered "conservative values" from the day the Klan was created right up to today. To say they were and remain the values of a given party is simply not so. The sociopolitical stance of the two major parties has shifted and with that shift, racists' party affiliation has shifted.

Oh, so if we put the actual people aside and what parties they were in and ignore which parties policies were targeted to keeping blacks segregated and impoverished for generations and instead use this nifty neato-keeno 2 dimensional horsehit political spectrum to illustrate everything, then we can see, if we squint our eyes really tight and lean way to the left that, yes, the Republicans are now the party of the KKK.....roflmao what a bunch of ignorant ass propaganda.

My God, you have no shame 320, none whatso ever.

The KKK was DEMOCRAT!

Own it, the historical record doesnt change, bubba.

"The Trees":
The rebuttals I've presented highlight the distinction between the following --

• creating a thing vs. enabling a thing's development,
• encouraging a thing's creation/development vs. acquiescing to a thing's existence/development

-- and call observers to refrain from (1) oversimplifying the matter and/or (2) exaggerating the matter.

As goes the discussion at hand, there are several "things" in play:

• the KKK organization itself,
• the attitudes the KKK's members espoused,
• the activities in which the KKK's members engaged, and
• the party to which the KKK's members belong(ed).

Looking back at how and over what point I involved myself in this thread (post #100), you'll note that I focused on one assertion the OP provides as a premise for the remainder of the post. That assertion is that "the Democrat party invented ... the Klan." That assertion is false. The Democratic Party, quite simply, did not invent the Klan. The content found at the first link I included in post #100 makes that clear.

Now you can accuse me of presenting a revisionist version of history as goes the one point I made; indeed you have done exactly that in this thread. Be that as it may, your accusation holds no water because you have yet to provide any evidence that the Democratic Party of the 1860s invented/created the KKK. You have not because none exists that it did and there is solid evidence that a band of Tennessee college students did create the KKK.

We can play philosophical games with which fallacy or blend thereof be the one(s) in play, but doing so is of little value because no matter which one it is, the undeniable fact is that the Party was not the creator of the KKK. That makes the argument invalid, regardless of the applicable fallacy(s), because it rests on a factually false premise.


"The Forest":
As for the big picture, the OP relies on a "guilt by association" line of ad hominem argumentation. Though often ad hominem lines of argument are fallacious, that one is not insofar as one is describing the Democrats and the Democratic Party extant in the days of Justice Black and Presidents Wilson, Harding and McKinley. That the OP's position is illustrative of one of the exceptions to the "guilt by association" fallacy is why I did not take exception with it.

The problem with the rest of the OP is that it attempts to equate the Democratic Party of Black, Wilson, et al with 2016's Democratic Party. Well, that too I've shown to be a factually inaccurate representation of 2016's Democratic Party. That was the point of the second link in post #100.

I have not denied that the pre-1990s Democratic Party was the party of racists and bigots. Why haven't I? Because the "Dixiecrats" didn't make a singular mass migration to the GOP immediately upon the ratification of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. When did Southern Democrats flock to the GOP? Mostly during the Reagan and Goldwater years. That's something of an oversimplification, but if one is to hone in on key single moments in time, they are the most significant ones in modern times.

• Construction of the Racist Republican
  • Half a century ago, though he was not a racist, Barry Goldwater’s “Southern strategy” certainly contributed to the rift that still exists between the GOP and black voters because it aligned his campaign with segregationists. Even after the South’s racial attitudes were more comfortably integrated with the rest of the United States, sincere clashes in ideologies—and some inept positioning on the part of Ronald Reagan—did not heal that rift.
    
    
  • Harkening back to the ideological foundations of Barry Goldwater, which promoted federalism, and expressing the belief that the country’s culture on race had changed since 1964, Reagan pushed to lessen the federal government’s role in all American life including aspects concerned with civil rights. In fact, from his first inaugural address in which he laid out his philosophical vision, he attempted to shift the national conversation to a more universalist approach to governing with less emphasis on special interests.
    
    He contended “this administration’s objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunities for all Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination.” This coincided with a conservative interpretation of fairness, which demands a society in which there is as even a playing field as possible but no expectations about results. As a consequence, Reagan’s policies often ran counter to perceived minority interests.
    
    One problem was Reagan’s style over his substance: a general lack of understanding on the Great Communicator’s part when it came to getting his message across to people of color. After all, George Wallace who had clearly been a segregationist for much of his career—who had quite literally stood in the schoolhouse door to stop black advancement—was able to win over an amazing number of black voters in his twilight years in politics.
• Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy
  • It has become, for liberals and leftists enraged by the way Republicans never suffer the consequences for turning electoral politics into a cesspool, a kind of smoking gun. The late, legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “******, ******, ******.” By 1968 you can’t say “******”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “******, ******.”​

• DOG WHISTLE POLITICS HOW CODED RACIAL APPEALS HAVE REINVENTED RACISM AND WRECKED THE MIDDLE CLASS
  • Campaigning for president, Ronald Reagan liked to tell stories of Cadillac-driving “welfare queens” and “strapping young bucks” buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In flogging these tales about the perils of welfare run amok, Reagan always denied any racism and emphasized he never mentioned race. He didn’t need to because he was blowing a dog whistle.
    
  • Reagan’s presidency also corresponded with the conservative popularization of colorblindness, which urges everyone to avoid race as the surest way to get past racial problems. This racial etiquette is widely embraced, including among liberals, yet colorblindness bolsters dog whistle politics in numerous ways.

So while, yes, it's accurate to depict the "legacy" Democratic Party as the home of racist policy and ideology, it's downright disingenuous to cast 2016's Democratic party that way. It is that disingenuousness that I have taken exception with in as I've sought to discredit the merit of the OP's thesis and your claims about today's Democratic Party.

Do I take shame in my remarks that "fairly present in all material respects?" Not one bit! The folks who should be ashamed of themselves are they who aim to misrepresent the present by associating it with the past. Times and people change. Racists haven't changed their views, but they have in the main changed their party preference from the Democratic Party to the GOP. And like the Democratic Party of the pre-1990s, neither the GOP nor its current Presidential candidate has told racists to "get out of the GOP and go form their own party for they are not welcome in the GOP."


Sidebar:

In the preface to Lopez's book, one finds the following historically accurate anecdote:

As a contemporary of Obama’s at Harvard Law, let me add my voice to the chorus of those saying that Obama was no militant minority. Obama did not study with [Derrick] Bell, nor take any course that focused on race and American law. On a campus highly polarized around racial issues, as it was in those years, this may have been an early harbinger of Obama’s tendency to hold himself aloof from racial contentions. Th en there was Obama’s election to the prestigious presidency of the Harvard Law Review . It’s widely known that Obama won as the consensus candidate after conservative and liberal factions fought themselves to exhaustion.

Less well known is that these camps were racially identifi ed, with almost all of the African American review members and their allies on one side. When conservatives threw their support to Obama, they ended a racial as well as political standoff. As others have observed, Obama’s conciliatory above- the fray political style from those years has carried over to his presidency. I would say the same regarding the approach to race Obama seemed to cultivate as a student—that one can heal racial divisions by standing apart from racial conflict, simply letting race play itself out. Th is is far from what Derrick Bell taught.​

End of sidebar.

Lol, Dog Whistle bullshit again? When you Democrats were lynching blacks from the nearest tree on a semi weekly basis, it wasnt a dog whistle bubba. roflmao.

When you Democrats were arguing daily for the dehumanization of the entire black race, that was no dog whistle either, just flat out lies and horse shit like your post above where you try to push your racist bullshit off on the GOP WHO FOUGHT TO END BLACK CHATTEL SLAVERY, Nimrod.

The only people you can convince of this utter bullshit are the most stupid in the population and that doesnt help you because they are already 97% Democrats anyway.

 

[320 Years of History]

Red:
I don't know that I'd call it hypocritical, but "inaccurate" is what I'd call it. One can easily show that the KKK and it's members' values were what were considered "conservative values" from the day the Klan was created right up to today. To say they were and remain the values of a given party is simply not so. The sociopolitical stance of the two major parties has shifted and with that shift, racists' party affiliation has shifted.

Oh, so if we put the actual people aside and what parties they were in and ignore which parties policies were targeted to keeping blacks segregated and impoverished for generations and instead use this nifty neato-keeno 2 dimensional horsehit political spectrum to illustrate everything, then we can see, if we squint our eyes really tight and lean way to the left that, yes, the Republicans are now the party of the KKK.....roflmao what a bunch of ignorant ass propaganda.

My God, you have no shame 320, none whatso ever.

The KKK was DEMOCRAT!

Own it, the historical record doesnt change, bubba.

"The Trees":
The rebuttals I've presented highlight the distinction between the following --

• creating a thing vs. enabling a thing's development,
• encouraging a thing's creation/development vs. acquiescing to a thing's existence/development

-- and call observers to refrain from (1) oversimplifying the matter and/or (2) exaggerating the matter.

As goes the discussion at hand, there are several "things" in play:

• the KKK organization itself,
• the attitudes the KKK's members espoused,
• the activities in which the KKK's members engaged, and
• the party to which the KKK's members belong(ed).

Looking back at how and over what point I involved myself in this thread (post #100), you'll note that I focused on one assertion the OP provides as a premise for the remainder of the post. That assertion is that "the Democrat party invented ... the Klan." That assertion is false. The Democratic Party, quite simply, did not invent the Klan. The content found at the first link I included in post #100 makes that clear.

Now you can accuse me of presenting a revisionist version of history as goes the one point I made; indeed you have done exactly that in this thread. Be that as it may, your accusation holds no water because you have yet to provide any evidence that the Democratic Party of the 1860s invented/created the KKK. You have not because none exists that it did and there is solid evidence that a band of Tennessee college students did create the KKK.

We can play philosophical games with which fallacy or blend thereof be the one(s) in play, but doing so is of little value because no matter which one it is, the undeniable fact is that the Party was not the creator of the KKK. That makes the argument invalid, regardless of the applicable fallacy(s), because it rests on a factually false premise.


"The Forest":
As for the big picture, the OP relies on a "guilt by association" line of ad hominem argumentation. Though often ad hominem lines of argument are fallacious, that one is not insofar as one is describing the Democrats and the Democratic Party extant in the days of Justice Black and Presidents Wilson, Harding and McKinley. That the OP's position is illustrative of one of the exceptions to the "guilt by association" fallacy is why I did not take exception with it.

The problem with the rest of the OP is that it attempts to equate the Democratic Party of Black, Wilson, et al with 2016's Democratic Party. Well, that too I've shown to be a factually inaccurate representation of 2016's Democratic Party. That was the point of the second link in post #100.

I have not denied that the pre-1990s Democratic Party was the party of racists and bigots. Why haven't I? Because the "Dixiecrats" didn't make a singular mass migration to the GOP immediately upon the ratification of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. When did Southern Democrats flock to the GOP? Mostly during the Reagan and Goldwater years. That's something of an oversimplification, but if one is to hone in on key single moments in time, they are the most significant ones in modern times.

• Construction of the Racist Republican
  • Half a century ago, though he was not a racist, Barry Goldwater’s “Southern strategy” certainly contributed to the rift that still exists between the GOP and black voters because it aligned his campaign with segregationists. Even after the South’s racial attitudes were more comfortably integrated with the rest of the United States, sincere clashes in ideologies—and some inept positioning on the part of Ronald Reagan—did not heal that rift.
    
    
  • Harkening back to the ideological foundations of Barry Goldwater, which promoted federalism, and expressing the belief that the country’s culture on race had changed since 1964, Reagan pushed to lessen the federal government’s role in all American life including aspects concerned with civil rights. In fact, from his first inaugural address in which he laid out his philosophical vision, he attempted to shift the national conversation to a more universalist approach to governing with less emphasis on special interests.
    
    He contended “this administration’s objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunities for all Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination.” This coincided with a conservative interpretation of fairness, which demands a society in which there is as even a playing field as possible but no expectations about results. As a consequence, Reagan’s policies often ran counter to perceived minority interests.
    
    One problem was Reagan’s style over his substance: a general lack of understanding on the Great Communicator’s part when it came to getting his message across to people of color. After all, George Wallace who had clearly been a segregationist for much of his career—who had quite literally stood in the schoolhouse door to stop black advancement—was able to win over an amazing number of black voters in his twilight years in politics.
• Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy
  • It has become, for liberals and leftists enraged by the way Republicans never suffer the consequences for turning electoral politics into a cesspool, a kind of smoking gun. The late, legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “******, ******, ******.” By 1968 you can’t say “******”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “******, ******.”​

• DOG WHISTLE POLITICS HOW CODED RACIAL APPEALS HAVE REINVENTED RACISM AND WRECKED THE MIDDLE CLASS
  • Campaigning for president, Ronald Reagan liked to tell stories of Cadillac-driving “welfare queens” and “strapping young bucks” buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In flogging these tales about the perils of welfare run amok, Reagan always denied any racism and emphasized he never mentioned race. He didn’t need to because he was blowing a dog whistle.
    
  • Reagan’s presidency also corresponded with the conservative popularization of colorblindness, which urges everyone to avoid race as the surest way to get past racial problems. This racial etiquette is widely embraced, including among liberals, yet colorblindness bolsters dog whistle politics in numerous ways.

So while, yes, it's accurate to depict the "legacy" Democratic Party as the home of racist policy and ideology, it's downright disingenuous to cast 2016's Democratic party that way. It is that disingenuousness that I have taken exception with in as I've sought to discredit the merit of the OP's thesis and your claims about today's Democratic Party.

Do I take shame in my remarks that "fairly present in all material respects?" Not one bit! The folks who should be ashamed of themselves are they who aim to misrepresent the present by associating it with the past. Times and people change. Racists haven't changed their views, but they have in the main changed their party preference from the Democratic Party to the GOP. And like the Democratic Party of the pre-1990s, neither the GOP nor its current Presidential candidate has told racists to "get out of the GOP and go form their own party for they are not welcome in the GOP."


Sidebar:

In the preface to Lopez's book, one finds the following historically accurate anecdote:

As a contemporary of Obama’s at Harvard Law, let me add my voice to the chorus of those saying that Obama was no militant minority. Obama did not study with [Derrick] Bell, nor take any course that focused on race and American law. On a campus highly polarized around racial issues, as it was in those years, this may have been an early harbinger of Obama’s tendency to hold himself aloof from racial contentions. Th en there was Obama’s election to the prestigious presidency of the Harvard Law Review . It’s widely known that Obama won as the consensus candidate after conservative and liberal factions fought themselves to exhaustion.

Less well known is that these camps were racially identifi ed, with almost all of the African American review members and their allies on one side. When conservatives threw their support to Obama, they ended a racial as well as political standoff. As others have observed, Obama’s conciliatory above- the fray political style from those years has carried over to his presidency. I would say the same regarding the approach to race Obama seemed to cultivate as a student—that one can heal racial divisions by standing apart from racial conflict, simply letting race play itself out. Th is is far from what Derrick Bell taught.​

End of sidebar.

Very good post, very informative. If you really dig you will see that many in all political organization was in the Klan or somehow courted them. And in those days it was okay I guess. When it became not cool, that's when you saw all this welfare stuff. Going to the strapping black man driving a caddy, and eating a T-bone bought with food stamps is in a way accurate. Food stamps are one of the tools used to keep minorities down. Elect a republican? Well, you will lose your food stamps and section 8. Democrats have never treated black people as anything more then a voting block and they traded in their whips for food stamps.

Look, as I have written elsewhere on USMB, for me, race and politics in a 2010s context, is about establishing trust and goodwill among the parties to any such discussion. The most effective way of doing that is to "fairly present in all material respects" the historic and current truths of the matter.

Am I going to deny the verity at a high level of what you wrote in the last quoted passage above? No, of course not. That would be a disingenuous house of cards to build on my part. What I take exception with about that post it is that for folks who aren't very well informed about the evolution of the two major parties hastily arrive at a conclusion about 2016's manifestation of either major party due to having no or precious little understanding of the full picture behind your remarks.

Now I don't particularly know how well informed you are on the details that give teeth to the observed truths you've cited, I do know that a whole lot of folks here are poorly or simply not well informed about them. Accordingly, they are quite susceptible to arriving at an inaccurate conclusion about both major parties due to their placing undue emphasis on the literality of the observation and ignoring the details that make your summarization so.

And what is it when a writer/speaker presents a very limited rhetorical picture of a matter as "touchy" as race in America and in the Dem and Rep parties? It's inflammatory. Inflammatory rhetoric isn't useful at all in advancing anyone toward a "win-win" means of overcoming the ills, angst and animosity that suffuse the state of race relations in the U.S. In fact, it's rhetoric that is detrimental to achieving any such end.

 

[320 Years of History]

Very good post, very informative.

TY

 

[320 Years of History]

What is pathetic is that you Democrats will go to any lengths

I'm not a Democrat, and I know you are aware of my having attested to being an Independent.

 

[rdean]

So the Democrat party invented and propagated the Klan, and to this day are still extremely racist to this day. Look at Chicago, Detroit, the 4th ward here in Houston (which is getting better because the folks who live there stopped listening to house negro's like Shell Jackson Lee, a carpet bagger from no new Youk). Anyway, I figure a list of famous Klan members that were and are democrats, so here go's.

1. Justice Hugo L. Black a supreme court justice who never left or disavowed the organization.

2. William McKinley a republican. Dang, one for one!

3. Woodrow Wilson, damn, imagine the scandal if a modern president was found to be Klan member, and wasn't a Republican. And democrats, even Bammer canonized this dreg. What a dummy.

4. Warren G. Harding. Dang.

Looking at the list, there is way to many racist democrats to list. Seriously, do a serch on it.

WERE in the Klan.

Now, who IS in the Klan?

 

[JimBowie1958]

Look, as I have written elsewhere on USMB, for me, race and politics in a 2010s context, is about establishing trust and goodwill among the parties to any such discussion. The most effective way of doing that is to "fairly present in all material respects" the historic and current truths of the matter.

Am I going to deny the verity at a high level of what you wrote in the last quoted passage above? No, of course not. That would be a disingenuous house of cards to build on my part. What I take exception with about that post it is that for folks who aren't very well informed about the evolution of the two major parties hastily arrive at a conclusion about 2016's manifestation of either major party due to having no or precious little understanding of the full picture behind your remarks.

Now I don't particularly know how well informed you are on the details that give teeth to the observed truths you've cited, I do know that a whole lot of folks here are poorly or simply not well informed about them. Accordingly, they are quite susceptible to arriving at an inaccurate conclusion about both major parties due to their placing undue emphasis on the literality of the observation and ignoring the details that make your summarization so.

And what is it when a writer/speaker presents a very limited rhetorical picture of a matter as "touchy" as race in America and in the Dem and Rep parties? It's inflammatory. Inflammatory rhetoric isn't useful at all in advancing anyone toward a "win-win" means of overcoming the ills, angst and animosity that suffuse the state of race relations in the U.S. In fact, it's rhetoric that is detrimental to achieving any such end.

You are truly hilarious.

If the Nazi Party were legal in Germany, I could just see a Nazi campaigning for the Jewish vote, "That was all in the past. Just forget about those death camps, we havent done anything like that in over 50 years. L:ets keep this about the election in 2010 and later, shall we? Why dig up ancient history?"

 

[rdean]

Democrats who were in the Klan.

there was lots of them

still are lots of them

Like who? Because all the one's I've seen, like David Dukes, call themselves Republican.

https://psmag.com/how-the-kkk-helped-create-the-solid-gop-south-9dd3ad90a3e#.f23dit56e
How the KKK Helped Create the Solid GOP South

 

[320 Years of History]

Red:
I don't know that I'd call it hypocritical, but "inaccurate" is what I'd call it. One can easily show that the KKK and it's members' values were what were considered "conservative values" from the day the Klan was created right up to today. To say they were and remain the values of a given party is simply not so. The sociopolitical stance of the two major parties has shifted and with that shift, racists' party affiliation has shifted.

Oh, so if we put the actual people aside and what parties they were in and ignore which parties policies were targeted to keeping blacks segregated and impoverished for generations and instead use this nifty neato-keeno 2 dimensional horsehit political spectrum to illustrate everything, then we can see, if we squint our eyes really tight and lean way to the left that, yes, the Republicans are now the party of the KKK.....roflmao what a bunch of ignorant ass propaganda.

My God, you have no shame 320, none whatso ever.

The KKK was DEMOCRAT!

Own it, the historical record doesnt change, bubba.

"The Trees":
The rebuttals I've presented highlight the distinction between the following --

• creating a thing vs. enabling a thing's development,
• encouraging a thing's creation/development vs. acquiescing to a thing's existence/development

-- and call observers to refrain from (1) oversimplifying the matter and/or (2) exaggerating the matter.

As goes the discussion at hand, there are several "things" in play:

• the KKK organization itself,
• the attitudes the KKK's members espoused,
• the activities in which the KKK's members engaged, and
• the party to which the KKK's members belong(ed).

Looking back at how and over what point I involved myself in this thread (post #100), you'll note that I focused on one assertion the OP provides as a premise for the remainder of the post. That assertion is that "the Democrat party invented ... the Klan." That assertion is false. The Democratic Party, quite simply, did not invent the Klan. The content found at the first link I included in post #100 makes that clear.

Now you can accuse me of presenting a revisionist version of history as goes the one point I made; indeed you have done exactly that in this thread. Be that as it may, your accusation holds no water because you have yet to provide any evidence that the Democratic Party of the 1860s invented/created the KKK. You have not because none exists that it did and there is solid evidence that a band of Tennessee college students did create the KKK.

We can play philosophical games with which fallacy or blend thereof be the one(s) in play, but doing so is of little value because no matter which one it is, the undeniable fact is that the Party was not the creator of the KKK. That makes the argument invalid, regardless of the applicable fallacy(s), because it rests on a factually false premise.


"The Forest":
As for the big picture, the OP relies on a "guilt by association" line of ad hominem argumentation. Though often ad hominem lines of argument are fallacious, that one is not insofar as one is describing the Democrats and the Democratic Party extant in the days of Justice Black and Presidents Wilson, Harding and McKinley. That the OP's position is illustrative of one of the exceptions to the "guilt by association" fallacy is why I did not take exception with it.

The problem with the rest of the OP is that it attempts to equate the Democratic Party of Black, Wilson, et al with 2016's Democratic Party. Well, that too I've shown to be a factually inaccurate representation of 2016's Democratic Party. That was the point of the second link in post #100.

I have not denied that the pre-1990s Democratic Party was the party of racists and bigots. Why haven't I? Because the "Dixiecrats" didn't make a singular mass migration to the GOP immediately upon the ratification of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. When did Southern Democrats flock to the GOP? Mostly during the Reagan and Goldwater years. That's something of an oversimplification, but if one is to hone in on key single moments in time, they are the most significant ones in modern times.

• Construction of the Racist Republican
  • Half a century ago, though he was not a racist, Barry Goldwater’s “Southern strategy” certainly contributed to the rift that still exists between the GOP and black voters because it aligned his campaign with segregationists. Even after the South’s racial attitudes were more comfortably integrated with the rest of the United States, sincere clashes in ideologies—and some inept positioning on the part of Ronald Reagan—did not heal that rift.
    
    
  • Harkening back to the ideological foundations of Barry Goldwater, which promoted federalism, and expressing the belief that the country’s culture on race had changed since 1964, Reagan pushed to lessen the federal government’s role in all American life including aspects concerned with civil rights. In fact, from his first inaugural address in which he laid out his philosophical vision, he attempted to shift the national conversation to a more universalist approach to governing with less emphasis on special interests.
    
    He contended “this administration’s objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunities for all Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination.” This coincided with a conservative interpretation of fairness, which demands a society in which there is as even a playing field as possible but no expectations about results. As a consequence, Reagan’s policies often ran counter to perceived minority interests.
    
    One problem was Reagan’s style over his substance: a general lack of understanding on the Great Communicator’s part when it came to getting his message across to people of color. After all, George Wallace who had clearly been a segregationist for much of his career—who had quite literally stood in the schoolhouse door to stop black advancement—was able to win over an amazing number of black voters in his twilight years in politics.
• Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy
  • It has become, for liberals and leftists enraged by the way Republicans never suffer the consequences for turning electoral politics into a cesspool, a kind of smoking gun. The late, legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “******, ******, ******.” By 1968 you can’t say “******”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “******, ******.”​

• DOG WHISTLE POLITICS HOW CODED RACIAL APPEALS HAVE REINVENTED RACISM AND WRECKED THE MIDDLE CLASS
  • Campaigning for president, Ronald Reagan liked to tell stories of Cadillac-driving “welfare queens” and “strapping young bucks” buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In flogging these tales about the perils of welfare run amok, Reagan always denied any racism and emphasized he never mentioned race. He didn’t need to because he was blowing a dog whistle.
    
  • Reagan’s presidency also corresponded with the conservative popularization of colorblindness, which urges everyone to avoid race as the surest way to get past racial problems. This racial etiquette is widely embraced, including among liberals, yet colorblindness bolsters dog whistle politics in numerous ways.

So while, yes, it's accurate to depict the "legacy" Democratic Party as the home of racist policy and ideology, it's downright disingenuous to cast 2016's Democratic party that way. It is that disingenuousness that I have taken exception with in as I've sought to discredit the merit of the OP's thesis and your claims about today's Democratic Party.

Do I take shame in my remarks that "fairly present in all material respects?" Not one bit! The folks who should be ashamed of themselves are they who aim to misrepresent the present by associating it with the past. Times and people change. Racists haven't changed their views, but they have in the main changed their party preference from the Democratic Party to the GOP. And like the Democratic Party of the pre-1990s, neither the GOP nor its current Presidential candidate has told racists to "get out of the GOP and go form their own party for they are not welcome in the GOP."


Sidebar:

In the preface to Lopez's book, one finds the following historically accurate anecdote:

As a contemporary of Obama’s at Harvard Law, let me add my voice to the chorus of those saying that Obama was no militant minority. Obama did not study with [Derrick] Bell, nor take any course that focused on race and American law. On a campus highly polarized around racial issues, as it was in those years, this may have been an early harbinger of Obama’s tendency to hold himself aloof from racial contentions. Th en there was Obama’s election to the prestigious presidency of the Harvard Law Review . It’s widely known that Obama won as the consensus candidate after conservative and liberal factions fought themselves to exhaustion.

Less well known is that these camps were racially identifi ed, with almost all of the African American review members and their allies on one side. When conservatives threw their support to Obama, they ended a racial as well as political standoff. As others have observed, Obama’s conciliatory above- the fray political style from those years has carried over to his presidency. I would say the same regarding the approach to race Obama seemed to cultivate as a student—that one can heal racial divisions by standing apart from racial conflict, simply letting race play itself out. Th is is far from what Derrick Bell taught.​

End of sidebar.

Lol, Dog Whistle bullshit again? When you Democrats were lynching blacks from the nearest tree on a semi weekly basis, it wasnt a dog whistle bubba. roflmao.

When you Democrats were arguing daily for the dehumanization of the entire black race, that was no dog whistle either, just flat out lies and horse shit like your post above where you try to push your racist bullshit off on the GOP WHO FOUGHT TO END BLACK CHATTEL SLAVERY, Nimrod.

The only people you can convince of this utter bullshit are the most stupid in the population and that doesnt help you because they are already 97% Democrats anyway.

Red:
Look, if you think Lopez's book is BS, why do you offer a sound counterargument to its premises, inferences and conclusions rather than just declaring it to be BS?

 

[JimBowie1958]

WERE in the Klan.

Now, who IS in the Klan?

WERE in the Mafia.

Now, who IS in the Mafia?

roflmao

From the historical perspective if there is one party in this hemisphere that has held top executive office in a major nation-state and was the most racist and evil it is without any competition the DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES that defended slavery, Jim Crow, abortion on demand, confiscatory tax rates on working people and LYNCHING.

Your whole heritage is RACISM FROM THE START. OWN IT, BITCH.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Democrats who were in the Klan.

there was lots of them

still are lots of them

Like who? Because all the one's I've seen, like David Dukes, call themselves Republican.

https://psmag.com/how-the-kkk-helped-create-the-solid-gop-south-9dd3ad90a3e#.f23dit56e
How the KKK Helped Create the Solid GOP South

That is total horse shit.

The people that defended slavery, Jim Crow and signed the Southern Manifesto all remained Democrat (with one exception) till the day they died.

Today the Democratic Party is responsible for more death and misery in the black community than any other organized group. They are pushing policing standards that will tie the hands of the police and leave blacks more vulnerable to the most murderous among them; gangs and criminals.

This is no accident and is entirely by design to scare blacks into voting for them while at the same time continuing their genocide against free black s across this nation that they have pursued since the 1950s.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Red:
I don't know that I'd call it hypocritical, but "inaccurate" is what I'd call it. One can easily show that the KKK and it's members' values were what were considered "conservative values" from the day the Klan was created right up to today. To say they were and remain the values of a given party is simply not so. The sociopolitical stance of the two major parties has shifted and with that shift, racists' party affiliation has shifted.

Oh, so if we put the actual people aside and what parties they were in and ignore which parties policies were targeted to keeping blacks segregated and impoverished for generations and instead use this nifty neato-keeno 2 dimensional horsehit political spectrum to illustrate everything, then we can see, if we squint our eyes really tight and lean way to the left that, yes, the Republicans are now the party of the KKK.....roflmao what a bunch of ignorant ass propaganda.

My God, you have no shame 320, none whatso ever.

The KKK was DEMOCRAT!

Own it, the historical record doesnt change, bubba.

"The Trees":
The rebuttals I've presented highlight the distinction between the following --

• creating a thing vs. enabling a thing's development,
• encouraging a thing's creation/development vs. acquiescing to a thing's existence/development

-- and call observers to refrain from (1) oversimplifying the matter and/or (2) exaggerating the matter.

As goes the discussion at hand, there are several "things" in play:

• the KKK organization itself,
• the attitudes the KKK's members espoused,
• the activities in which the KKK's members engaged, and
• the party to which the KKK's members belong(ed).

Looking back at how and over what point I involved myself in this thread (post #100), you'll note that I focused on one assertion the OP provides as a premise for the remainder of the post. That assertion is that "the Democrat party invented ... the Klan." That assertion is false. The Democratic Party, quite simply, did not invent the Klan. The content found at the first link I included in post #100 makes that clear.

Now you can accuse me of presenting a revisionist version of history as goes the one point I made; indeed you have done exactly that in this thread. Be that as it may, your accusation holds no water because you have yet to provide any evidence that the Democratic Party of the 1860s invented/created the KKK. You have not because none exists that it did and there is solid evidence that a band of Tennessee college students did create the KKK.

We can play philosophical games with which fallacy or blend thereof be the one(s) in play, but doing so is of little value because no matter which one it is, the undeniable fact is that the Party was not the creator of the KKK. That makes the argument invalid, regardless of the applicable fallacy(s), because it rests on a factually false premise.


"The Forest":
As for the big picture, the OP relies on a "guilt by association" line of ad hominem argumentation. Though often ad hominem lines of argument are fallacious, that one is not insofar as one is describing the Democrats and the Democratic Party extant in the days of Justice Black and Presidents Wilson, Harding and McKinley. That the OP's position is illustrative of one of the exceptions to the "guilt by association" fallacy is why I did not take exception with it.

The problem with the rest of the OP is that it attempts to equate the Democratic Party of Black, Wilson, et al with 2016's Democratic Party. Well, that too I've shown to be a factually inaccurate representation of 2016's Democratic Party. That was the point of the second link in post #100.

I have not denied that the pre-1990s Democratic Party was the party of racists and bigots. Why haven't I? Because the "Dixiecrats" didn't make a singular mass migration to the GOP immediately upon the ratification of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. When did Southern Democrats flock to the GOP? Mostly during the Reagan and Goldwater years. That's something of an oversimplification, but if one is to hone in on key single moments in time, they are the most significant ones in modern times.

• Construction of the Racist Republican
  • Half a century ago, though he was not a racist, Barry Goldwater’s “Southern strategy” certainly contributed to the rift that still exists between the GOP and black voters because it aligned his campaign with segregationists. Even after the South’s racial attitudes were more comfortably integrated with the rest of the United States, sincere clashes in ideologies—and some inept positioning on the part of Ronald Reagan—did not heal that rift.
    
    
  • Harkening back to the ideological foundations of Barry Goldwater, which promoted federalism, and expressing the belief that the country’s culture on race had changed since 1964, Reagan pushed to lessen the federal government’s role in all American life including aspects concerned with civil rights. In fact, from his first inaugural address in which he laid out his philosophical vision, he attempted to shift the national conversation to a more universalist approach to governing with less emphasis on special interests.
    
    He contended “this administration’s objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunities for all Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination.” This coincided with a conservative interpretation of fairness, which demands a society in which there is as even a playing field as possible but no expectations about results. As a consequence, Reagan’s policies often ran counter to perceived minority interests.
    
    One problem was Reagan’s style over his substance: a general lack of understanding on the Great Communicator’s part when it came to getting his message across to people of color. After all, George Wallace who had clearly been a segregationist for much of his career—who had quite literally stood in the schoolhouse door to stop black advancement—was able to win over an amazing number of black voters in his twilight years in politics.
• Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy
  • It has become, for liberals and leftists enraged by the way Republicans never suffer the consequences for turning electoral politics into a cesspool, a kind of smoking gun. The late, legendarily brutal campaign consultant Lee Atwater explains how Republicans can win the vote of racists without sounding racist themselves:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “******, ******, ******.” By 1968 you can’t say “******”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “******, ******.”​

• DOG WHISTLE POLITICS HOW CODED RACIAL APPEALS HAVE REINVENTED RACISM AND WRECKED THE MIDDLE CLASS
  • Campaigning for president, Ronald Reagan liked to tell stories of Cadillac-driving “welfare queens” and “strapping young bucks” buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In flogging these tales about the perils of welfare run amok, Reagan always denied any racism and emphasized he never mentioned race. He didn’t need to because he was blowing a dog whistle.
    
  • Reagan’s presidency also corresponded with the conservative popularization of colorblindness, which urges everyone to avoid race as the surest way to get past racial problems. This racial etiquette is widely embraced, including among liberals, yet colorblindness bolsters dog whistle politics in numerous ways.

So while, yes, it's accurate to depict the "legacy" Democratic Party as the home of racist policy and ideology, it's downright disingenuous to cast 2016's Democratic party that way. It is that disingenuousness that I have taken exception with in as I've sought to discredit the merit of the OP's thesis and your claims about today's Democratic Party.

Do I take shame in my remarks that "fairly present in all material respects?" Not one bit! The folks who should be ashamed of themselves are they who aim to misrepresent the present by associating it with the past. Times and people change. Racists haven't changed their views, but they have in the main changed their party preference from the Democratic Party to the GOP. And like the Democratic Party of the pre-1990s, neither the GOP nor its current Presidential candidate has told racists to "get out of the GOP and go form their own party for they are not welcome in the GOP."


Sidebar:

In the preface to Lopez's book, one finds the following historically accurate anecdote:

As a contemporary of Obama’s at Harvard Law, let me add my voice to the chorus of those saying that Obama was no militant minority. Obama did not study with [Derrick] Bell, nor take any course that focused on race and American law. On a campus highly polarized around racial issues, as it was in those years, this may have been an early harbinger of Obama’s tendency to hold himself aloof from racial contentions. Th en there was Obama’s election to the prestigious presidency of the Harvard Law Review . It’s widely known that Obama won as the consensus candidate after conservative and liberal factions fought themselves to exhaustion.

Less well known is that these camps were racially identifi ed, with almost all of the African American review members and their allies on one side. When conservatives threw their support to Obama, they ended a racial as well as political standoff. As others have observed, Obama’s conciliatory above- the fray political style from those years has carried over to his presidency. I would say the same regarding the approach to race Obama seemed to cultivate as a student—that one can heal racial divisions by standing apart from racial conflict, simply letting race play itself out. Th is is far from what Derrick Bell taught.​

End of sidebar.

Lol, Dog Whistle bullshit again? When you Democrats were lynching blacks from the nearest tree on a semi weekly basis, it wasnt a dog whistle bubba. roflmao.

When you Democrats were arguing daily for the dehumanization of the entire black race, that was no dog whistle either, just flat out lies and horse shit like your post above where you try to push your racist bullshit off on the GOP WHO FOUGHT TO END BLACK CHATTEL SLAVERY, Nimrod.

The only people you can convince of this utter bullshit are the most stupid in the population and that doesnt help you because they are already 97% Democrats anyway.

Red:
Look, if you think Lopez's book is BS, why do you offer a sound counterargument to its premises, inferences and conclusions rather than just declaring it to be BS?

Comparing alleged "Dog Whistle" tactics to flat out lynching, segregation and demographic annihilation that Democrats have advocated for the last 200 years against blacks is just stupidly hilarious.

But hey, keep at it all you want. I think you already have the moron vote all sewn up.

 

[320 Years of History]

Look, as I have written elsewhere on USMB, for me, race and politics in a 2010s context, is about establishing trust and goodwill among the parties to any such discussion. The most effective way of doing that is to "fairly present in all material respects" the historic and current truths of the matter.

Am I going to deny the verity at a high level of what you wrote in the last quoted passage above? No, of course not. That would be a disingenuous house of cards to build on my part. What I take exception with about that post it is that for folks who aren't very well informed about the evolution of the two major parties hastily arrive at a conclusion about 2016's manifestation of either major party due to having no or precious little understanding of the full picture behind your remarks.

Now I don't particularly know how well informed you are on the details that give teeth to the observed truths you've cited, I do know that a whole lot of folks here are poorly or simply not well informed about them. Accordingly, they are quite susceptible to arriving at an inaccurate conclusion about both major parties due to their placing undue emphasis on the literality of the observation and ignoring the details that make your summarization so.

And what is it when a writer/speaker presents a very limited rhetorical picture of a matter as "touchy" as race in America and in the Dem and Rep parties? It's inflammatory. Inflammatory rhetoric isn't useful at all in advancing anyone toward a "win-win" means of overcoming the ills, angst and animosity that suffuse the state of race relations in the U.S. In fact, it's rhetoric that is detrimental to achieving any such end.

You are truly hilarious.

If the Nazi Party were legal in Germany, I could just see a Nazi campaigning for the Jewish vote, "That was all in the past. Just forget about those death camps, we havent done anything like that in over 50 years. L:ets keep this about the election in 2010 and later, shall we? Why dig up ancient history?"

To the extent there is credible evidence that today's Nazi Party is the same as the one of the 1920s - 1940s, I would not at all make that sort of an argument. Why would I if it's so that nothing about the party's general makeup and espousals have not changed?

The fact is that the Democratic and Republican Parties have changed and among those changes are the race-related positions held and policies advocated by significant blocs of adherents within them. Having this discussion as though those changes have not occurred is absurd.

I have provided a well supported argument indicating what are the changes that have occurred within the makeup of the two major parties. Where's your argument/evidence that those changes have not occurred? I don't see that you've even made one. All I see from you is your unsubstantiated assertions and implications that the parties are some sort of monolithic organizations that are the same now as they were some 40 and more years ago. So what am I asking of you? I'm asking that you either "put up or shutup."

 

[JimBowie1958]

To the extent there is credible evidence that today's Nazi Party is the same as the one of the 1920s - 1940s, I would not at all make that sort of an argument. Why would I if it's so that nothing about the party's general makeup and espousals have not changed?

The fact is that the Democratic and Republican Parties have changed and among those changes are the race-related positions held and policies advocated by significant blocs of adherents within them. Having this discussion as though those changes have not occurred is absurd.

Oh so you are completely unaware that HRC was an admirer and follower of Senator Byrd a KKK Grand Dragon poohbah?

Or that her husband Bill Clinton was an admirer of J. William Fulbright, a Southern racist and signer of the Southern Manifesto?

Are you seriously that ignorant about the Clinton royal family or are you just dismissive because it is not ever likely to affect YOU?

 

[jon_berzerk]

Democrats who were in the Klan.

there was lots of them

still are lots of them

Like who? Because all the one's I've seen, like David Dukes, call themselves Republican.

https://psmag.com/how-the-kkk-helped-create-the-solid-gop-south-9dd3ad90a3e#.f23dit56e
How the KKK Helped Create the Solid GOP South

why are you so one sided asshole

everyone knows that grand wizard will quigg endorsed hillary clinton

and his group donated 20 grand to her campaign


so either your blind or your a liar

 

[320 Years of History]

To the extent there is credible evidence that today's Nazi Party is the same as the one of the 1920s - 1940s, I would not at all make that sort of an argument. Why would I if it's so that nothing about the party's general makeup and espousals have not changed?

The fact is that the Democratic and Republican Parties have changed and among those changes are the race-related positions held and policies advocated by significant blocs of adherents within them. Having this discussion as though those changes have not occurred is absurd.

Oh so you are completely unaware that HRC was an admirer and follower of Senator Byrd a KKK Grand Dragon poohbah?

Or that her husband Bill Clinton was an admirer of J. William Fulbright, a Southern racist and signer of the Southern Manifesto?

Are you seriously that ignorant about the Clinton royal family or are you just dismissive because it is not ever likely to affect YOU?

Can you say "jumping to conclusions?" Can you say "cherry picking?"

• From prejudice to progress: The political evolution of Sen. Robert Byrd
  
• On Fulbright and Bill Clinton:
  My own father was (maybe to some extent is) a Southern racist. He was surely one of mentors; however, on matters of race, he is my mentor only insofar as having shown me what is wrong with the views, positions and attitudes he used to extoll. In other words, it is in part from my close association with him that I learned what and how not to think about non-whites, and what I do think about non-whites' character and comportment is not remotely similar to what my father thought. Does that make me overall a non-admirer of my father and his personal and professional accomplishments? Not by any stroke of the imagination. There is plenty my father accomplished that is admirable notwithstanding that there are also things about his past that are not.
  
  So if you want to cite Bill Clinton's relationship with Fulbright as being pivotal to Bill's own views on matters of race and central to an argument that the Democratic party remains the home of racists and bigots, I suggest you put forth an actual argument to that effect rather than tossing arbitrary facts out as though they carry the weight you imply they do by having cited them.
  
  You may want to try to find something in Bill Clinton's eulogy of Fulbright. Perhaps instead you can find it in Fulbright's remarks on the arrogance of power.

In the meantime, why don't you just cease and desist with the myopic approach to making your point that has thus far imbued your remarks in this thread with the lack of gravitas, the childish insouciance of a ten year old?