Progressive RacismAnd the meat of the matter:
One hundred years ago today, Woodrow Wilson brought Jim Crow to the North. He had been inaugurated on March 4, 1913. At a cabinet meeting on April 11, his postmaster general, Albert S. Burleson, suggested that the new administration segregate the railway mail service; and treasury secretary William G. McAdoo, who would soon become Wilson’s son-in-law, chimed in to signal his support. Wilson followed their lead. He had made a bid for the African-American vote in 1912, and he had attracted the support of figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois, but, as he put it at the meeting, he had made “no promises in particular to Negroes, except to do them justice.” Burleson’s proposal he welcomed, but he wanted “the matter adjusted in a way to make the least friction.”
Today, self-styled progressives are wont, with considerable abandon, to label as racists those who object to their attempts at social engineering. They would do well to rein in their rhetorical excesses and curb their enthusiasm for the administrative state — for the Progressives of yesteryear, on whom they model themselves, really were racists in the precise and proper sense of the term, and in formulating public policy they were true to their principles.
Wilson, our first professorial president, was a case in point. He was the very model of a modern Progressive, and he was recognized as such. He prided himself on having pioneered the new science of rational administration, and he shared the conviction, dominant among his brethren, that African-Americans were racially inferior to whites. With the dictates of Social Darwinism and the eugenics movement in mind, in 1907, he campaigned in Indiana for the compulsory sterilization of criminals and the mentally retarded; and in 1911, while governor of New Jersey, he proudly signed into law just such a bill.Yeah -- public policy. And then in 1916, a woman named Margaret Sanger opened an illegal abortion clinic in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York. In 1922, this morphed into a legal entity called the American Birth Control League. 1929, they opened an abortion clinic in Harlem -- a largely black section of New York City. There is a lot of history concerning this very nasty person (here, here and here). She started a number of organizations -- her last one is still with us today: Planned Parenthood. A long post I know but I must finish off with an excerpt of this wonderful essay by Dr. William Briggs:
Prior to the segregation of the civil service in 1913, appointments had been made solely on merit as indicated by the candidate’s performance on the civil-service examination. Thereafter, racial discrimination became the norm. Photographs came to be required at the time of application, and African-Americans knew they would not be hired. The existing work force was segregated. Many African-Americans were dismissed. In the postal service, others were transferred to the dead-letter office, where they had no contact with the general public. Those who continued to work in municipal post offices labored behind screens — out of sight and out of mind. When the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Independent Political League objected to the new policy, Wilson — a Presbyterian elder who was nothing if not high-minded — vigorously defended it, arguing that segregation was in the interest of African-Americans. For 35 years, segregation in the civil service would be public policy. It was only after Adolf Hitler gave eugenics and “scientific racism” a bad name that segregation came to seem objectionable.
The Return of EugenicsThe origins of racism are never talked about in the Mainstream Media or the Progressive Left. Pot meet kettle... Posted by DaveH at April 11, 2013 11:08 PM
It’s beginning to look a lot like 1913, a decade before the peak of the Social Darwinism movement, a time when educated and concerned people joined the Race Betterment Foundation and looked to the settled science of eugenics to save civilization from the growing horde of the genetically inferior.
Events have since made the word eugenics distasteful, but not the notion. The idea of human perfection via managed procreation is back and stronger than ever, at least in the academy. Now instead of forcible sterilization, the call is for fetal genetic testing and selective abortion. Race is no longer the marker of unfitness; having incorrect thoughts or unwelcome moral attitudes and genetic unworthiness are.
Early eugenicists embraced contraception. In 1921 Margaret Sanger argued birth control was “not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical in ideal, with the final aims of Eugenics.” Two such aims were “racial regeneration” and “to improve the quality of the generations of the future.” She said the “unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit’” was “the greatest present menace to civilization.” She thought “Birth Control propaganda is thus the entering wedge for the Eugenic educator.” If undesirables didn’t voluntarily stop making babies, steps would be taken. “Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon society if it continues complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupidly cruel sentimentalism.”
The last thing they want to talk about. In 1988 Zogby, at the behest of Hillary Clinton, did a poll of 1.900 rank-and-file Progressives from prominent progressive groups to determine what would galvanize them, what a progressive agenda should look like. The results were reported in the Nation by David Dyssegaard Kallick. The number one issue was Racism: the country's most important social problem. Followed by poverty, corporate power, etc. Granted, that was 25 years ago, but I have seen no indication the they have changed their minds.
In 1957, 99 members of Congress signed the "Southern Manifesto" denouncing the court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Two were Republicans, 97 were Democrats. Forward to the election of 1968 and Nixon's "Southern Strategy". Democrats have claimed consistently that was about the "Dixiecrats"— the segregationists — leaving the Democrat party to become Republicans. "All", I believe consisted of Strom Thurmond. But the Democrats went into the Black Churches and blamed all segregation on Republicans.
It was false then, false now, but Blacks believe it— because Republicans are no good at combating propaganda. I wrote about this in late Feb.:http://americanelephant.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/are-the-rules-just-different-for-this-president/ I'd rewrite it differently today because I didn't make the point about why Democrats are so supportive of Obama when he's been such a disaster strongly enough.
P.S. Your link to Crossroads grocery video in the sidebar doesn't work.